Primary reference video's

This video below is a friend of mine and he agree to do some of his sets out of his martial arts practice, which is karate. Just some live reference to help me out with this project, i did do a couple short animation tests of this video but i dont have them with me right now to upload to compare but i will add them at a later date.

Evaluation & Project Brief

Project Brief:

Developing animation skills

Learning Outcome:  Gathering a better understanding of the human anatomy

                                        Animating skills & Style

        More understanding of the animation principles

Purpose and intent

With my animation skills being the main area of interest, I want to challenge myself and get a better understanding of the human anatomy. And with this I can get the opportunity to improve my drawing skills and my style through tests and my final outcome, all this will hopefully help me out in my future projects.

Target Audience

A more younger audience, who enjoys the thrills and experience of a hard worked animation 

Medium

Purely 2D hand drawn animation, to get across my expressive imperfect hand drawings. Other I’ll be using Photoshop and Adobe Flash for editing and composing the final outcome.

Platform

A hand drawn animated video that shows my animation skills and tells you that I have a better understanding of the human body.

Learning Outcomes

This project will enable me to get a better understanding of the human anatomy.

My preproduction skills will be improved greatly through choreographing action scenes

It helps me to improve my animating skills and prepare me for my final project.

Evaluation

Looking back on this project and I’m thinking to myself I could have done so much more, I think that’s what everybody thinks most of the time but the problem that I had was from the start I didn’t quite get what I could and couldn’t done I was getting different feedback from both my tutors, so for weeks I was confused and I ended up starting what I eventually have weeks into the project, but I only have myself to blame.

In summary, even though I wanted to focus initially on my animation skills alone this was not enough I know that, after just randomly throwing a quick narrative together it doesn’t really show that I have any clue in what I’m doing for this project . So next time around I’ll have to put my thinking cap on, use an existing story or work on a live brief because my story telling skill aren’t up to the mark they should be.

Improvements for next time:

Create a good story narrative that will excite the audience or use one that works.

Gather all the Intel I can for preproduction including more primary research then secondary, don’t be happy with the minimum.

Better preproduction in my storyboard/animatic make it clear and easy for the audience to understand.

Final Animation

Any feedback would be appreciated.

SS1 More tests

More more and more tests woop woop,

SS1 micro tests

As you look at this next test you can tell its a lot better with the main character falling over after being surprised, it gives it a more dramaticness to it and gives the character more life and characteristic.
The video above is only the first test of him falling over so it will look alot better afterwards.




For this second test i original wanted to have the main character stepping backward in shock and putting his guard up, but after having ago at it I decided that is wasn't the best option. Even though it needed more frame added or changing it completely it may have looked better but I stood with my decision and changed it.



The first test i did and my character is walking, it took me a few attempts after added extra frames and tweeking I little but here is the result,

Sketchbook (RVJ) studies

Studies out of my sketchbook, these are the quality that I would like the whole of my animation to turn out like (I know it’s quite basic and there are no features show personal character designs but I’m not looking for that in this project at the moment), but with time pushing on it doesn't look like that will be the case.

Secondary Research Video's

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL88D13DA90A88F1FD&feature=mh_lolz


The link above is to all my reference video's that i have found, looked at and has helped me with me final out come. But to narrow it down these video below were the major inspirations that kept me going.




Thought of You - by Ryan Woodward


A great inspiring video, this was the video that wanted me and did get in to do what I did for this project. Just a simple dance performance piece that was beautifully drawn and composed. Even though my piece has a small narrative to it i wanted it be a simple performance.













http://youtu.be/lYDquzEPLsw

Idea's (martial arts)

Sorts Jujitsu

Kung fu

Kung fu

Jujitsu

Karate

My contribute

My contribute to the collaborative project, our group had four animators all together and we each had our own section of the advert to animate, so instead of each of us having our own part or character to animate throughout the advert we split it into four parts and did it that way, so what we needed to do was to link the scenes all together to have the style of our animation the same, so we had the illustrator design the characters and we all had to copy it.
The second thing we needed to do was to have our first and last frames draw and completed so that the person before and after ourselves could link up the whole video and have it without any jumps.

Show Reel full

Here my show reel

L5 Animation - Pre-Production for Specialist Study
The youtube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OL345WBkPo
That e-mail no longer exsits, my mew e-mail is: 021ssmith021@gmail.com

Evaluation

Animation Unfinshed

link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUY6caM_o_A

Evaluation
Here is the start of my animation, i am extremly disappointed with myself in not completing a finished product. This term has been by far the worst term ever for myself in not being able to work to my full potential, somehow the time on this project has just flow by but thats no excuse.

I had a very well planed out story by my standards and i was going to put my up most determination into the the movement of the characters in this animation but time went by and i found myself producing this failed attempt and i was having to rely on the animating tools in adobe flash which was a hugh let down.

My Animatic

the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nChdkIQLUFQ
because my blog has gone and cut the ends of the video again

Heres a bad animatic with an even worst audio dubbing over the top of it the voice is mine, the idea was to ask someone i know that person has a good voice and was right for the project but in the end he let me down and with no time left on the clock i had to swollow my pride and do the recording myself.
The story is able a nice guy who is in a conflict with himself and in the process he has developed a split personality, this story is about how one can over come that little voice in your head and not to do any bad thing it tells you to do FIGHT BACK!

Final Mock-up Character

This is the final mock-up of the character im going to be using in my animaition, i know the colours are borrow but there wasn't many colours to choose from because im goin to be usnig alot of greens and browns in the backgrounds of my animation and most of the colours would either clach or i didn't like them.

Character Mock-up Testing Colours

Here's just a few ideas for what the colours of my character is goes to be, to be far i'm not that keen on any of them, colour pallets has never been a strong area for me it's something that i need alot of practise with.

Final Character Design

My final character design it had taken me a while after lots of drawing all looking very similar it this out come if i may add but i had finally came up with a design i liked and that i would enjoy animating.

More Research and Inspiration

gris grimly, four above






jen wang, three above

Its been hard i couldn't find or think of any other animations that have this slim, bony style to them but i did manage if find some inspiring illustrators like gris grimly and jen wang.

Research and Inspiration

Corpse Bride

nightmare before Christmas

Here is a couple of film that have inspired me for this project, not for their unique storylines or their dark fantasy persona (which are great by the way) but for the style in which they were created, i love the tall and thinness of the characters and i find it fascinating in the way they move.

piggy project!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJqT61ZJuRg

Its long over due had problems rendering it in short with the sound.
The link is below the video because for some reason the video has been croped on my blog.