Maya Modelling: Turntable

The final task we had to do was to create a turntable of an object we created ourselves. I would have used the Spongebob Squarepants model I had created but unfortunately I didn't still have the original Maya project with the Spongebob Squarepants object on it. So I had to quickly create another object that would be very simple, I settled on a laptop. I feel the turnaround looks very smooth and it was very easy to create, but looking back I wish I had a more interesting object to do a turnaround of. 

Overall I found my experience of animating with Maya to be far more successful than modelling with Maya, this could be down to me slowly learning the tools so I could work more effectively or that creating animations is just a simpler process than modelling.

Maya Modelling: Bouncy Ball

This was also one of the hardest tasks. It consisted of animating two balls bouncing, one had to be solid and heavy meaning when it dropped on the floor it hardly bounced up again, and the other and to be lighter and more squishy so when it hits the floor it bounces immediately up again almost as high. I did have a problem with this animation. Not so much the heavy red ball, but the squishy green ball was a challenge because for some reason whenever it bounced up again to would bounce up faster than it hit the floor which goes completely against gravity. Eventually I fixed this problem and I feel the movement looked smooth.

Maya Modelling: Segmented Pendulum

So building on the Maya Pendulum animation I now had to make a Segmented Pendulum which is essentially the same as a pendulum animation but with secondary movement. This was definitely more complicated to create but once I knew all the controls it was a lot simpler to create than I had anticipated and I feel the movement looked pretty fluid, definitely a lot more fluid than animating with 2D animation on paper.

Maya Modelling: Pendulum

One of the other study tasks was to create a pendulum animation. This too was a relatively simple and quick process and again it was literally a case of just positioning the pendulum at one side then re-positioning at the other and then when I played it back it swung smoothly.

Maya Modelling: Anticipation

I had animated the animation principle Anticipation in the past with traditional 2D drawn animation on paper. But I knew this would be very different. In fact, it was actually far simpler than I thought it would be. In fact it only took me a few minutes and was actually a very informative experience. I didn't entirely understand how to create this motion on Maya when we were shown it the first time but I felt all I needed was another go.

The results I felt looked pretty successful and I felt the ball definitely looked bouncy.

Maya Modelling Do It Yourself

I felt like even though I struggled immensely with the Keep On Truckin' studio task, i felt that the skills I had learnt would aid me with the next study task that allowed us free rein to create an everyday object, but essentially it could basically be anything. I decided to make a model of the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants. I felt like this would be a good subject to model as he has a simple boxy design with relatively few smooth edges which meant I could essentially make him up with custom cubes.

The results were well, okay. I mean, it's recognisably the character although the design is fairly lacklustre. But I have to say it was a lot faster to create than my truck so I definitely feel like I am getting better at using the software.

Maya Modelling: Keep on Truckin'

As a studio task we had to learn basic principles about how to use the 3D animating software Maya. It was fair to say I didn't get along with this software at all. I've always hads an interest in creating 3D animation as I would love to go work for Pixar. But I just could not get my head around how to use this software at all. I love 2D traditional animation because it is all drawing but I found Maya to be a lot more about moulding objects, like a virtual ceramics.

The first task was to create a truck. Even this, with very simple straight forward instruction I found very hard to get my head around. I basically completely messed up the truck I was trying to create in class so decided to reattempt it again at home. But even at home after having tried top do it once it still took a few hours to do.

The above image is of my final truck. I wasn't particularly happy with it. I couldn't even frame the picture properly but it's finished and now I can move on having felt like iI've learnt the very basic principles about how to use the software.

Flipbook Research: Matrix style Flipbook

I'm sure many people have seen this flipbook before, because it is absolutely amazing. It covers everything and makes even the simplest form of animation look incredibly complicated and intricate. It plays around with every camera angle and we spend little if not no time looking at a character from one position. I also love how it plays around with timing.

The Matrix is an excellent example of how great action sequences have excellent timing with the famous bullet time sequence and here, in this flipbook it is used to create the same mind blowing effect. Even if the whole thing is drawn it still feels like watching a series of highly complicated visual effects.

Pose to Pose Animation Research: Itchy and Scratchy

Pose to Pose animation is basically when a character moves from one pose to the next in an animation so instead of just non-stop running a character might run, stop and run again. Basically a main animator will plot out all the keyframes; so what positions they want the character to get into and then it is the role of the other animators to fill in the gaps with other frames.

For example we can see from the above Itchy and Scratchy cartoon; Scratchy walks outside, he stops in a position (keyframe) picks up Itchy and hugs him, stop (keyframe), then Itchy proceeds to attack him.

Frame by Frame Animation Research

Above is an example of Frame By Frame animation that I found on YouTube. As might be able to make out, below the main frame we can see many frames underneath and each frame contains the horse in a slightly different position. When the animation is played back it runs as a sequence, this sequence happens to be a running cycle. 

But unlike Pose to Pose animation there are no keyframes meaning that if an animator is animating this sequence there is no filling in the gaps, the animator will just animate from beginning to end until the shot/scene changes. Although the animation is simple in that there is no back drop, it clearly demonstrates what frame by frame animation is as we can clearly tell what we're looking at.

Evaluation

Throughout this course I have learnt so much as we've covered so much content. The entire module has been about learning animation skills and the 12 principles of animation, in particular applying the 12 principles of animation to our own work. We began with storyboarding potential animations of our own. Initially I was skeptical about storyboarding because I just wanted to dive straight into creating animation, it was soon that I learnt how important the storyboarding process is. My storyboard needed to be clear and easy to understand so it could be simple to follow if I was the animator going to animate it.

When we were tasked to create to create flip-books I felt it would be the simplest thing in the world to do. I was not at all prepared for just how much skill is involved to create a flip-book that flows well. We had to factor so many aspects into account with just a simple ball bouncing up and down movement for example timing (a problem I had with my ball animation is that my ball would move at the same speed throughout the animation when it should speed up and slow down) and squash and stretch.

I feel my flip-book animation skills have improved greatly and feel these skills can be applied to every form of animation. The concept of squash and stretch I have used on every animation I have created since, obviously this concept is much harder to apply to pixilations.

I found the Pendulum animation far easier to create than my flip-books. I feel this is because the experience I had creating my flip-books gave me more confidence that I could apply to proceeding animations. When I played my pendulum back it ran much smoother than anything I had created in the past.

I feel not only my animation skills have improved throughout the module, but so has how I approach animation. I feel like now I approach animation with a lot more planning because I now realise that without an effective plan I can only get so far without either hitting a wall or it effecting how well my animation flows.

When it came to creating a pixilation I admittedly did not dedicate as much time to it as I should have done. Because it was live-action photography I felt that I did not need to plan it out as much as a drawn animation. My lack of planning was evident when I played my final pixilation back but when I created another pixilation in Apply it allowed me the opportunity to vastly approve on my skills and create something of a far higher quality due to more thought out planning.

Overall, I have found this module incredibly interesting and I have learnt so much that I can apply to my own skills. I feel that although I still have so much to learn about even the most simplest forms of animation, I now have the confidence to try new things I would before have been to skeptical to ever attempt.

Gravity Falls

Gravity Falls is a show about two siblings, a brother and a sister who go to live with their eccentric Grand-Uncle Stan in the strange town of Gravity Falls. Throughout the series the pair embark on bizarre adventures and get themselves into extreme situations, often due to poorly thought out schemes (strange how similar all these animated series sound when I describe them. I guess if you find a formula that works you stick to it.) 

I really like the show because it gives us something different. The plot lines are completely wacky and I love shows that have well thought out universes. Often my problem with cartoons is that the world around the characters is given hardly any thought, it just seems to be set in two settings, the characters house and a local bar for example. But I love how in Gravity Falls the world is so large and there are so many different places that are explored in every episode.

Attack on Titan

Apart from being incredibly depressing to the point it'll put you in a bad mood for the rest of the week. This Japanese anime series is an incredibly good watch.



I actually found a pretty lighthearted photo which is good because wow, is it depressing. Attack on Titan is about a small society of people who live in a walled city protected from Titans. Titans are giant people basically who like killing humans for apparently no reason. One day the Titans break through one of the walls and after that event three friends Eren, Mikasa and Armin must join an elite group of people dedicated to wiping out the Titans once and for all.

What I like most about the show is not the beautiful, painstaking animation or the breathtaking action sequences of which I imagine is incredibly hard to create in animation, but is actually the characters. Throughout the one series we see these characters age five years and are given more and more back-story.

Every character is significant and complicated. Its not just a case of humans-good, Titans-bad. Frequently the three protagonists are up against everyone else as well. It covers everything, its a coming-of-age story but its also about finding your place in the world. To me even though it's called Attack on Titan it isn't really about the Titans at all, they just symbolise 'the enemy'. The Titans could just as easily be war, famine or an ecological disaster. What the show is actually about to me is how humans deal with these sort of situations and how human nature can sometimes become just as bad as the big evil.

The Amazing World of Gumball

The Amazing World of Gumball is an American animated series about a blue cat called Gumball and his adopted goldfish brother Darwin. The two characters frequently get themselves into weird situations due to poorly thought out schemes. I really like the series because to me, nothing is less interesting than a central character who is cool, popular and smart. I cannot see how anyone would find this concept interesting. One of my main problems with Adventure Time, to me an otherwise great show is that the main character is too cool and popular. To me your protagonist needs to be a bit of a loser because it gives you something to root for.



The character Gumball is likable to me because he is a bit of a loser, and an idiot.



When I began watching the show, initially I didn't like the animation style. As you can see from the images, the show uses so many different styles of animation and design. There are characters that are rendered in 3D and there are simply 2D animated characters with outlines (see Gumball's family). When I began watching the show I felt this was not inventive, it just made everything look messy. A friend of mine who loved the style explained to me that it's a show for Graphic Designers. Since then I have come to appreciate and love the style, now I understand messiness is kind of the point of it.

South Park

South Park has always been one of my favourite animations, if not favourite shows. I've watched it, got bored of it, went off it, rediscovered it, loved it etc. so many times now I've lost count. It's still on the air, I don't know what season it's on now, fairly certain it isn't too far behind The Simpsons which I'm sure many will find hard to believe. I'm sure a lot of people who loved it in the early days probably don't know its still going.



To me the show has peaked, there isn't a particular series to me that comes to mind, just every so often there's a masterpiece of an episode. What I love about this show is yes it's incredibly crude with it's rigid paper cutout animation style, it's incredibly rude with endless fart gags and many consider it incredibly offensive; it seems like every week the creators think up someone knew to annoy. But it always has a point to make.



To me it's not like something like Family Guy where its rude gags, rude gags and if you look underneath it all to try to find some sort of beating heart, you're just going to find more gags. In South Park, something I've only come aware of in the past five or so years is that if you look past the crudeness and approach it with an intelligent perspective you will see that every episode has a point to make.



My favourite episode of South Park is probably Imagination Land where terrorists bomb the magical world of the kids imagination and after chaos unfolds the US government think about the possibility of nuking Imagination Land for good. Now many people who might be slightly stubborn might just see this episode as plain offensive because Trey Parker and Matt Stone (the show's creators) are having terrorists blow up stuff in a cartoon. But I hope most intelligent people will understand the point of that episode, to me anyway is that terrorism has become such a massive thing in the public eye that so much hysteria has been created it's almost successfully invaded our imaginations.

The Life and Times of Tim

The Life and Times of Tim is an adult animated HBO series that revolves around Tim, a normal guy who frequently gets into bizarre situations. With only three series,the show has been off the air since 2012 but to me it remains memorable due to its humor and style. The animation is incredibly basic. The characters rarely move at all apart from their mouths, I can't remember actually ever seeing any of them walk.



But even though the characters look rigid and paper-thin, I never found it boring to watch. I liked the style because to me it fit the tone and added to the comedy. In fact I don't think it would have been anything like as funny if the style was more 3D for example. It's like to me if something like South Park was drawn in a much more dynamic and complicated way it wouldn't work to me because the reason both these shows work is because they can get away with such crudeness because they are so crude.

Adventure Time

Adventure Time is an American animated series about Finn the human boy and his best friend Jake the dog. Jake can talk and has the power to stretch himself like an elastic band, Finn is just a kid and has no powers.As you can probably imagine from looking at the above image, the show is completely bonkers, makes zero sense but is insanely fun.

The animation is also gobsmackingly beautiful so you can watch it, and even if you've completely lost track of the plot you can still enjoy it for its incredible colour pallet and amazing scenery. It isn't all wacky weirdness though, at the center of the show is the strong beating heart of these two central characters. One of my favourite things about television series that sets apart from the movies slightly is character development. One of my main complaints about cartoons, even my favourite of all time The Simpsons, is that there is not enough character development. In Adventure Time we're almost watching this kid grow up in this surreal world and the writers have aged him.

Obviously I'd like more character development, things pretty much go back to normal after every episode but at least over the years there has been character development to some degree.

Bee and Puppycat

Bee and Puppycat is a bizarre animation I was shown on YouTube. It is a cartoon developed by the Cartoon Hangover web channel and the show was created by Natasha Allegri. I've only seen one episode so far but from what I have seen, I have really enjoyed. The story is incredibly bizarre and the characters are very likeable, especially the main character Bee. Although she lives in a slightly surreal setting the show succeeds in making her realistic and relatable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOG_UtLxh58

I also really like the style of the show and it reminds me of a similar show of which fans of Bee and Puppycat I'd assume would be more than aware of, Adventure Time, created by Pendleton Ward. It just so happens that Ward and Allegri are friends and Allegri also works on Adventure Time so to me it is fairly easy to see where some of the inspiration comes from.

Gorillaz Do Ya Thing

Jamie Hewlett's work is going to appear on this blog a lot, sorry but he is one of my favourite artists. And to me it doesn't get better than his work on the band Gorillaz. Here I'm going to talk about the most recent music video he directed for the band before they went on a massive, unbearably long hiatus. I've loved this band for around ten years now and in that time its been amazing to watch something like this evolve and grow. The characters have changed. Rare in animations the characters have aged with the time as have their creators.


(Gorillaz band member Noodle age ten to 20)

Not only have the characters changed in their looks to keep things fresh and interesting but so has the animation style. We're now at the point, around Phase 3 where the characters are rendered in 3D CGI. At first I didn't like the style. I was annoyed because I felt that everything was turning 3D and traditional animation was dying out so it was nice that in 2010 a massively successful band like Gorillaz still animated in good old 2D. To me it felt like trying to appease fans instead of doing their own thing.



Eventually I grew to like the style and feel that it particularly works in this video set in the band's new house. To me what I feel the charm is of Gorillaz and why to this day they are so popluar is not just the music, but how these characters co-exist in their own slightly surreal universe in the music industry. They are slightly separate but kind of always want to be accepted.




To me now that these band members look more life-like they fit in a tiny bit more with the real world but still keep their insane cartoony-ness. E.G. 2D does have a more solid look and his movements are less rigid, it actually feels like if you touched him it would be more like touching a person than a piece of paper. But don't get me wrong, his eyes are still massive black circles.

Photoshop Induction

Admittedly I wasn't to keen on having a Photoshop induction. This was due mainly to me being ignorant and thinking I knew enough about the program already and that for me it might just be a waste of time. Initially I did already know about what we were doing as we started out with the basics. But then I found later on in the session that I was learning new things.

These new things were often very helpful and would be things like shortcuts and massive time savers to things I could do already. I also learnt how to mask layers and while I am confident using the eraser tool I learnt that the masking tool can be used in a way that is far more practical.

The above is a Photoshop experiment I created using a photo of a man facing the camera head on. I wanted to try to make the image look as terrifying as possible. To be honest the more I messed with the image with the tones, hues, and contrasts I feel I began to slightly ruin it.