More Animation done

I’m Exhausted!

 

I’m hoping talking a little time to write about what I’ve done will at least give me a bit of breathing space.

Having finished the two hardest pieces of Animation I’d ever done the next piece on the table looked quite fun, albeit pretty difficult. I had to show the distant and melancholy Eziecal getting a big surprise hug from behind from Hestia. A chance to do something short but with a lot of movement.

As I mentioned here https://wordpress.com/post/johnhawk.art.blog/139 Morgan wasn’t happy I had gone ahead and made my last pieces without linetesting them. I waited till he was free and talked over everything that was going to happen. We mimed out the motions several times and found several “key” moments.

The Start (Obviously)

A small accent of her arms going up before going down, an industry standard called: Anticipate

The arm swinging in: The Swing

The Arms making contact: The Contact

Hestia’s arms pulling together tight: The Squeeze

Ezekical’s head going down as an anticipate of his reaction: The Down

An intense physical and emotional reaction from Ezekiel: The Overreact

A moment where the Overreact is finished but not totally over and Hestia’s arms loosen: The Release (Which ended up being the Key drawing)

And finally a shot where her arms are loose and he has finished reacting: The Settle

If this seems like a lot of info. The scary part is this is (I think) just standard practice for any piece of animation.

 

With our key moments picked Morgan told me to make a very simple (read, shitty) drawings to stand in for each key drawing. I did so. But I still tried to make every head an opportunity to get better at drawing foxes, 3D space, consistent size and shape, expressions, and different angles. I’m never going to get good at any of these things if I don’t try.

The Linetest drawings came out looking pretty funny. I went completely over the top with the Overact and drew something straight out of Loony Toons with bulging eyes bigger than his head. But I liked the effect so much I put it in the final animation. Morgan found it funny too.

With the linetest keys ready we guessed where they would fall on the timeline and filmed them. The result already had some kick to it. But the hug didn’t have enough impact to it and we needed more precise timing.

Suggested putting the Down and the Squeeze in the same drawing. That would keep the impact from feeling too rubbery. For the second bit it was clear more was needed.

I’d been planning on doing this on Twos (12 frames a second) from the start. Threes (8 frames a second) just wouldn’t convey the action at all. Fast motion needs a high framerate. But it was clear the delicate timing and spacing meant this would have to be a mixture of Twos and ones (24 frames a second), industry standard. I hadn’t animated like that since last November. But If it was what was needed I’d do it!

 

Morgan and I wrote down the new timing on an X-sheet (Something he is keen I use more often) And I got down to work. My first job was to turn the linetest keys into real Keys. Most pretty easy. Except for Ezekiel’s damn face! I regret giving Ezekical a fox’s face. Human faces are hard enough for me, But as a human I have an inherent understanding of what a human face is like and where everything is. Everytime I had to draw his face I had to go into Google images look up pictures of foxes. Finding new ones that had the fax at a similar angle to where Ezekical was at that moment. And I do mean EVERY! SINGLE! DRAWING!.

I didn’t help that I had chosen to have him at a new angle each time rather than keeping him and one pose and expression I could easily trace over and over. But given what a fluid piece of animation this was that would have looked awful anyway. Given the piece his head would have had to have been moving around. I did the right thing even if it made my life hell.

I wonder If making him a fox was a mistake? But given my fascination with humanoid animals I know I’d end up doing this sooner or later. And he is a pleasure to watch for me. So maybe it’s just as well.

 

Working on Hestia’s arms was a lot of fun. I got a good and logical movement out of them. I also got pretty creative animating the Overreact. Adding in some secondary animation. Add to that the way I somehow (Maybe accidentally?) got Ezekical to slam back into her made this probably the most lively piece of animation I’ve done yet. I know I’ve said this before. But it feels like the first piece of real animation I’ve ever done. Like cleaned up, coloured, and better drawn it would be okay in a movie.

The only downside is that the last few drawings, around the “Settle” are awful and it shows in the final product. It’s true. A bad drawing can’t hide in a piece of animation. I guess I was just tired and off my game,

But On the plus side I think I’m actually getting better at drawing expressions! I can’ be sure but it feels like I’m spending less time rubbing out my old expressions and starting again. I can only hope.

 

With that done I could look forward to something easier. The reaction shot of Ezekiel looking up at Hestia. This would be so much simpler because only one thing, Ezekiel’s head, is moving. Unlike on the hug where everything was moving, meaning I had to change a redraw everything everytime. Here I could push about a third of it into a background boilline, and most of the res of it I could trace. Something I’ve become very good at by now….. I hate my life.

The other thing that would make this much easier is being a simple and slow movement i could go back to working on Threes. Beautiful, work-saving Threes!

 

Morgan was keen I start using “ladders”  when planning. But I’m having a lot of trouble understanding the concept. So he felt we should just try mastering the X-sheet for now. I tried using the X-sheet. But quickly found it was such a simple motion I could just do this on straight-ahead animation. Morgan wont be happy.

I might be crazy, but I think I’m getting better at drawing cartoon foxes (touch wood). The animation came out fine. Unimpressive. But fine. Where the trouble is is lighting the damn thing right when filming it.

I’m used to filming with the paper lit from above. See almost any of my previous pieces of animation for examples.It looks a little harsh, but it’s fine. But the multiple layers of drawing Morgan is asking me to use require backlighting (Lighting from underneath) for all the layers to be visible. I wouldn’t mind, but it gives the animation a blue-ish quality that will be horribly at odds with the rest of the animation when it’s put together. I decided to film it three different ways to see if one worked better.

I started off with the standard backlighting and it didn’t look good. Too much light shone through and you couldn’t make out what was happening at all. I then tried lighting from both above and below, but that just made things even worse. Now the footage was so overexposed your couldn’t see a thing almost.  I then tried a lighting just from above. Hoping the thinness of the paper would let the background show through. No such luck. The Background was almost invisible.

I made a fourth attempt, just using backlighting again.But this time I used an extra piece of paper underneath the other two. My reasoning being that when I did this before I’d had a background and a foreground under the main drawing, but here I’d only had a background. Maybe the third sheet was what had given me slightly better results in the past? I gave it a shot, and yes, it made things better. Not massively better. But it helped. If I can’t find a better way of lighting it I’ll use this version. Or maybe I’ll try it with two sheets of paper underneath!?

 

My course is nearly over. And I am tired. This morning I felt like I couldn’t do any work at all. I amazed myself by doing three Four Key drawings. But I feel like I’m running on fumes. About to fall apart at any moment. Even writing about the challenges I face costs me a huge amount of mental effort. Whenever I start it feels like my brain has turned to cotton wool. I keep on waiting for things to get easier. To have a breakthrough. To get my second wind. But I just feel more and more drained and my mind feels more and more foggy and I feel like I’m getting less done.

But on the plus side, I think my drawings are getting better. In my Keys my fox is actually starting to look like a fox!