ANTICIPATION (JUMP)
I did two animations for this task: an original jump, and then a more refined one.
"Starting off, I knew that I'd need to make multiple layers for my guide. The neutral start / end positions and the anticipation / follow throughs would be standing on the exact same piece of ground, with overlap in the positions if done on one sheet. So I made 3 different guide layers; one for extremes, one for anticipation / follow through, and one for inbetweens. This was a big help, although did prove a little tricky when trying to inbetween, because I was trying to look through my current sheet at two sheets underneath, instead of the usual one.
I linetested my first attempt, resulting in this.
While it gives off a convincing enough effect, I realised that the anticipation at the beginning didn't signpost the movement coming up well enough. I needed BIGGER movements.
So, I went back to the drawing board (literally), and made more inbetweens at the beginning to give a bigger movement. The arms go up further to a bigger extreme, and thus, give off a better signal.
The second jump feels a lot more natural, with the more obvious anticipation and smoother jump in general.
I think if I was to do this jump again, I would try and give it a little bit more personality to the jump with more unique actions for the anticipation and recoil, instead of generic poses.
Overall, I'm fairly happy with this task. I did hit a bump along the way, but instead of letting it get to me and make the work seem lesser, I took it and improved upon it. The talk on failure last week made me feel a lot differently towards work going wrong, especially comparing this task to when my pendulum swing originally went wrong." - original thoughts from this post.
Looking back at the end of the week, I'm definitely more happy with it than I was originally. While it was still fresh in my mind, I was deliberately looking too hard, being too nitpicky. But taking a step back after a while helped to see how the animation actually turned out; it's fine, and while a few things could be tweaked and altered, I'm satisfied at this point with it.
FINAL DYNAMICS TASK
For this task, I'm still going with the idea of the guy throwing his head towards a basketball hoop and ultimately missing. I've found a good piece of live action reference for the ball hitting the wall, made by professors at San Diego State University. Their tennis ball in slow motion shows the exact type of squash and stretch I want from my cartoon head when it hits the wall. I'll make individual blog posts for tests, timings and final productions.
(credit: Prof. Matt Anderson of SDSU)
ANTHROPOMORPHISM
Anthropomorphism was the topic of our character essay lecture. While this didn't apply all too much to my chosen character (Emmet, The LEGO Movie), it was an interesting lecture nonetheless. For all my thoughts and notes on this lecture, see this post.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This week went well overall. The dynamic exercise brief definitely had me the most intrigued, since we were allowed to really go in depth with whatever we wanted to do, without any real limitations. Creativity trumps most other things in this case, so I'm excited to get started on actual animation! The anticipation workshop went well, and I came out with a lot more knowledge about the topic than I originally had. It also helped to go and work on something, then go back and make it better. As mentioned in previous posts, the talk about failure and iteration really helped with that.
Anthropomorphism, as mentioned before, was in intriguing lecture but not one I can apply all too much to my essay. At this point, I’m pretty certain on my question, being something along the lines of “How does Emmet represent the LEGO brand and group accurately?” I have to talk about visuals and movements regarding this, and I think that I have some good points that tie in with both of those factors, plus my question. Visuals can be discussed with how Emmet has little imperfections and LEGO accurate designs, which show the more realistic minifigure look than other LEGO projects have. For movement, I want to discuss how Emmet only moves in ways LEGO minifigures can; no “illegal” movements. Hoping to have a solid plan of action for the essay soon!
Still, excited for the character design workshops and for more to come!
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