19th January 2021
by Jahiem Walker
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VFX day 1- research and initial ideas

Today is my first day on the vfx rotation. In this rotation we’ll have to create cinemagraphs (still images with some moving elements) and eventually combine them into videos. The theme for the cinemagraphs is quite broad; it has to relate to you in some way, but this could vary from a daily routine of yours to your interests to something more personal.

To start generating ideas on what i want my cinemagraph to be like, i first need to set a foundation for myself with some primary and secondary research. I made a quick mind map to get rough ideas, so that i knew what direction to go in with my research.

This mind map gave me a very rough idea of the kind of cinemagraph i want to make; something unusual and funny, and kind of stupid. something so weird that you question the intentions behind it, kind of like a parody or a viral video. As stated in the mind map, i think the best two ways to achieve this would be through camera work and the concept/acting; capturing odd poses or movements from dynamic places with the camera (or phone in this case) would help to create an exaggerated and silly atmosphere to each shot (along with other editing tricks such as sound, colour and lighting), and having a unique concept will help the cinemagraph to stand out, along with some unusually exaggerated acting from me/whoever else is starring in it.

Conceptually, i want to take an ordinary task and add an unexpected twist on to it; something like me washing or doing homework, spiraling out of control. I think throwing in an unexpected twist will make the video more funny, as the audience would be expecting something else from the set up in the beginning.

There are some existing pieces of media that kind of encompass what i want my cinemagraph to be like thematically;

The Ullaeli Kkollaeli muaic video by kpop group 1team.

I think this video is very successful in creating a wacky and surreal atmosphere; the concept starts off fairly simple, but quickly spirals out of control. The combination of the exaggerated acting, the imaginative scenarios and the surreal editing give the video a comedic, early internet viral video feeling. I think that the song adds to the atmosphere too; it’s bordering on cheesy sounding, which ties everything together nicely. Sound can be effective in influencing the atmosphere of a piece, and i’ll keep that in mind for my cinemagraph. There are a few other details in the video that subtly add to it’s overall tone, like the man at the beginning being barefoot outside, which is an unusual thing to see.

Now that i had a basic concept down for my cinemagraph, i wanted to look more specifically at cinemagraph artists, so that i could hopefully take some inspiration from them. I quickly browsed the internet for fun and eccentric cinemagraphs, and i came across one artist in particular that i liked;

Zack Dougherty

Zack dougherty is a cinemagraph artist based in portland. He creates cinemagraphs mostly of sculptural elements coming to life, with either the sculpture itself moving or things moving around it.

Although dougherty works a bit differently to how i’ll be working for this project (he seemingly uses some special effects/3d animation), i think the basics behind his work are the same; one still image with one or more moving elements. I like that his works play around with the perception of reality; everything is seemingly normal looking, apart from one thing that is ordinary; you could even say that once you look closer, his work is really odd because the backgrounds don’t move at all. I think to someone who doesn’t know what cinemagraphs are, his works would be confusing and you’d question how they’re made. I like the slightly surreal quality to his work, which he achieves well without breaking the mold of what a cinemagraph is too much.

I know i’ll be tempted to add a lot of other elements into my cinemagraph, but i want to focus mostly on just a moving element within a still image; in part because i don’t want to give myself too much to do, but also because i don’t want to rely too heavily on other mediums to make my cinemagraph feel complete.

petra svajger

Petra svajger is a cinemagraph artist from slovenia, who graduated in fashion design but went on to become more interested in cinemagraphs. Her works often feature odd characters doing somewhat ordinary movements, with props.

I like svajger’s work because she’s able to build atmosphere with subtle details; the slightly creepy elements of her work above are achieved by small things working together, such as the expressionless rabbit mask, the almost pure white colour pallet and not much sense of light direction (making it seem like the character is in some sort of void), the vignette and the unclear location. She has considered a lot of things that might not be noticeably individually, but work together to enhance how her work is perceived. I can take some inspiration from this; i can set up my shots creatively to build character and atmosphere for my cinemagraphs, and i can include some subtlety in editing that will contribute to it’s overall perception.

18th January 2021
by Jahiem Walker
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Finishing my shrine

As of writing this blog post, i have finished my Shrine. I more or less finished the colouring and lighting in the previous post, so all that was left to do was rendering.

I was having a lot of trouble with Rendering at first; I couldn’t capture my whole world properly, as it was too big. I tried moving the camera around to show individual parts of the shrine, but it made for a very fast and unclear video in the end (unfortunately at the time of writing this I’ve saved over this version of the render, so i can’t include the video). I knew i couldn’t hand in this video, so i had to fix it in some way.

My first step in improving my render was deleting the camera and re-making it, as it moved around way too much and it was hard to fix. I then played around with shrinking my shrine and making the camera bigger, until it captured the whole thing well enough. I added some animation, which was simple enough, and with that my render was done.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tou0uQDQS2c

My aim was to have the camera slowly move up on the model, revealing small details and then the whole image, and making the viewer wait to see the full shrine, which added a sense of suspense.

I was okay with this first render, but there were a couple problems. My fish stopped moving at one point, which looked odd, and at the end the camera wasn’t really centered in the way i wanted it to be. So, i re-did my render after going back in and fixing my problems with it;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4LwKyvx3ec

I moved the fish for a longer period of time, so they didn’t randomly freeze at one point. I also tried moving the camera around to centre the last shot a little better, but i don’t think it made much of a difference.

This project was something very new to me; i had always wanted to try 3d modelling, but i never knew where to start. It was fun and interesting; it felt different from creating 2d art, as there was more to learn on the technical side and you didn’t have as much control over how things turned out, as you would if you were just drawing directly on to paper. The part i enjoyed most was watching my model slowly come more to life as i added things like light, colour and details like 2d objects. The hardest part for me was sculpting and getting the shapes to look how I wanted them to; I ended up not doing a lot of things that i wanted to, because they didn’t come out right when i tried to sculpt them and i didn’t want my model to take too long. I think if i had worked with a little more patience and diligence, my model could’ve looked a lot more detailed. I also think my animation was a bit choppy and unnatural; i need to improve on timing things so that the movements don’t look so abrupt.

I enjoyed this project a lot, even though i didn’t think i would. I think i’ll definately carry on experimenting with 3d modelling in my free time, although i’d still like to do 2d professionally. 3D is a useful skill to have because it can also be used to create references for 2d pieces, and it helps with visualising how far apart things are and the scaling of different objects.

4th January 2021
by Jahiem Walker
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Creating my shrine

I was ready to start my Japanese low poly shrine after some of my blender lessons, as i had enough knowledge now to start planning it out.

I started with the basic shapes for my model. I tried my hardest to vary the shapes; i used a combination of YouTube tutorials and the uni recordings to create a variety of shapes, so that my model wouldn’t look too repetitive. I also wanted my world to look a bit stylised, so i used some odd shapes for different objects, such as using the ico sphere (a sphere with faces instead of a smooth sphere) for the clouds and the fox. I added a few details that weren’t present in the drawing, such as the two lanterns, as i felt there was too much empty space in the model. i also added some fish to the water, so that i’d have more moving objects in the animation stage.

Next, i added colours to my piece. I wanted some things to emit light (the sun, fish and windows) so i followed a tutorial and got them to glow. I tried to lean more towards pastel colours with my palette than darker ones; i wanted my world to look mysterious in more of an ‘enchanted’ way than a ‘creepy scary’ way.

I added some different materials to my world, so that it didn’t look too flat and untextured. I put in some water, and a little bridge as a walking path. I also made the floor a little shiny, so that it would reflect light and look magical.

i added a glowing material to my fish, because i thought it would look cool if they illuminated the water. I also wanted to put something in that would match the colour of the sun.

I imported some 2D images as planes to add subtle details to my piece. Too much of these would look tacky, so i opted to only use them for the lamps.

Lastly i added some lights to the model, which brought everything together. I added three types of light; a white point light over the temple to draw attention to it, some pink and blue point lights to add a mystical look to the piece, and an orange sun light, to make the sun look like it was the main thing illuminating the place. The world ended up a lot brighter than expected, but I’m happy with the result.

Overall, I’m happy with my piece and I look forward to finishing it. I feel it gives off the kind of magical, Disney like atmosphere that I was aiming to create well.

8th December 2020
by Jahiem Walker
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Poly world day 1- Robots and a mysterious shrine

Today, I started my 3D rotation. The task is to create a low poly (a small number of polygons, rather blocky looking) world using a 3D software, blender. Our worlds will be based on a ‘What if?…’ question that we come up with by ourselves.

My first task for this rotation was to come up with some interesting ‘What if?’ questions, and choose one to develop into a world. I wanted to come up with concepts thati thought would be interesting visually, but i also wanted to enjoy what i was creating, so i swearched for a theme that satisfied both my desires. I did a quick brainstorm to generate some initial ideas;

I jotted down ideas for quick prompts, underlining the ones that i found the most interesting. I was left to decide out of 3 options; An ice world, a world with a traditional japanese aesthetic or a world in space.

In the end i decided to go with the Japan world. I’m really interested in japan’s history and traditions, and i like the aesthetics a lot, so i thought this would be the most enjoyable idea to go with. I also think it will provide me with the opportunity to make a range of interesting 3d objects for the model.

Now that i had my what if question, i needed to start thinking about the aesthetics. I gathered some traditional japanese pictures, to give me ideas on what kinds of things i wanted to have in my model, and what i wanted it to look like overall.

This moodboard was helpful in giving me some ideas of what i wanted to appear in my world, and what kind of atmosphere i wanted my piece to have. I really like the imagery of japanese shrines; they’re often beautiful and surrounded by nature, but also desolate, mysterious and somewhat haunting. Although they’re man-made, they feel like structures that grew naturally, managing to look both old and new at the same time.

I want to create something with a bit of a mysterious and magical feeling; my question is ‘what if you found a mysterious shrine in japan?’ i want to leave some of my work to the viewer’s imagination, leaving them to wonder what is beyond the doors of the mysterious temple.

With some aesthetics in mind, i was ready to start coming up with quick initial designs for my city.

With these rough drawings, i wanted to consider things like shape, arrangement and hierarchy. How tall did i want the temple to be? what was it surrounded by? how was it interacting with the atmosphere around it? i tried to keep my drawings extremely simple and fast, breaking everything down into basic shapes, as this would make it easier to model when the time came.

Next, i drew a more refined version of my design, working out some of the smaller details and finalising some shapes. I decided to have the shrine surrounded by both sakura trees and torii gates, creating a contrast between natural and man made features. I made the sky dark to add to the ‘mysterious’ feeling of the piece, and i added a brightly coloured sun and some glowy windows so that it didn’t feel too dark. I also didn’t want to shrine to come across as creepy, so i added a happy little character to bring the mood up and make the whole thing look more inviting. I chose to make him a fox, as foxes commonly dhow up in japanese prints and mythology.

As we have to develop our cities into 3d models eventually, we have to learn how to navigate a 3D software. we’re using blender, and to gain an understanding on how it operates, we were tasked with creating simple robots using basic shapes.

This was the first robot i made; a man with a hat, holding an ice cream. I made this before actually watching the lesson tutorial, so i was just improvising on how to put objects together. I don’t have much to say about this robot, because i didn’t follow any particular process while creating this, but it was fun.

This was the robot i made after watching the class tutorial. it was based on this image;

Witch Bot - found object robot sculpture assemblage | Robot sculpture, Robot art, Found art

I gained a better understanding on navigating blender after creating this robot; I learned a lot of blender shortcuts, and i was able to make this robot more quickly. I’m happy with how it turned out, because i feel it has more personality than my other 3D model. I deviated from my reference image a bit, because i wanted to add more of a personal touch to my robot.

Overall i’m enjoying 3D a lot right now, even though it’s all quite new to me. I feel like i’ll come out of this rotation as an improved and more skilled artist, and i’m looking forward to learning more.

1st December 2020
by Jahiem Walker
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Final game arts post- colouring and the final outcome

For my final game arts class, i had to come up with a colour palette for my sloth character, and present the final outcome.

Colouring was the part of this process i was initially the most lost with, because i’d usually just go with whatever colour palette first popped into mu head with art. This time, i was challenged to experiment with different palette, and i had to put a lot of thought into each one.

These were the 4 palettes i came up with. For the first palette, i used mostly colours from my mood-board; my goal was to give a more ‘sleepy’ feeling to my character through the use of my colour palette, but to me this palette ended up looking more energetic than relaxed because the colours were really bright and different from each other.

For my second palette i tried to fix the problem i had run into on the first palette by using more pastel and dark colours, with a bright yellow to add some contrast. I liked the turn out of this palette, and i strongly considered using it as my final one.

For my third palette, i wanted the character to look a little more demonic. While keeping most of her colours blue (from my research i knew that blue was a colour associated with sloth) and darker/pastel, i gave her red skin to give her a bit of a traditional demon look. I really liked this turn out as it was a perfect balance between ‘sloth’ as a concept and a demon character. I also think the red contrasted the blue well without looking too bright and lively, and the contrast between red and blue kind of reminds me of the contrast between the character being super lazy (which isn’t a very threatening concept) and the fact that she’s a demon, a typically malicious and scary being.

For my final palette I wanted to try something more natural looking, because i was curious about how it would turn out. I liked the blue gradient on her clothes, but outside of that i thought this palette made the design look a little bland.

I shaded each palette, but highlights didn’t really look right on the drawing (most probably because of the fact that i haven’t experimented enough with colouring as of now) so i ended up not including them in my finished work. I tired to carefully consider where shadows would fall on this drawing, but looking back i feel maybe i could’ve exaggerated the darker areas better, maybe by using a darker colour for shading.

I ended up going with my third palette for the final outcome, as it complemented the design best in my opinion. I drew a background and thought up a quick logo and description of the character, and the game she would be in. I decided to name her ‘Oneiri’, after the word ‘Oneiric’ which means ‘in relation to dreams’ in film theory.

Overall, i enjoyed this rotation a lot, even though it did stress me out a little. I enjoyed how imaginative it was; there wasn’t really a limit on what we could do with the character, and we were encouraged to work in our own styles or use a style that suited us best. I was also able to look back on my steps and analyze them a lot since it didn’t take too long, which made me realize that i have some work to do on A) my drawing skills and B) my character designing skills; although i like my design, i feel i didn’t really end up applying much research to the final outcome, and i might’ve lacked research and influences overall. I’ll take what i learned on this rotation with me into the future and use it to try and become someone who can create more meticulously designed characters, and draw them out a little better. I’d also like to explore my ideas a little better in the future, and work outside of my comfort zone while creating characters.

28th November 2020
by Jahiem Walker
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Game arts 2- Roughs, Refinements and Line art

Now that we had applied some research and started to generate ideas through our silhouettes, it was time to work on our ideas and come up with a more refined idea on what our characters would look like.

I had a few motifs that i wanted to try out for my character; goat themed designs, clouds, traditionally ‘sleepy’ imagery like the moon, clouds, pillows and z’s, and facial expressions ranging from malicious and evil to sleepy-looking and relatively unthreatening.

I started off my refinement process by choosing 4 of my silhouettes and creating roughs out of them. I wanted to experiment with a range of ideas i had for these roughs; a moon-shaped piece of hair looming over the top of the character’s head, a goat plushie and some goat imagery on clothes. Some features i noted down were the use of clouds, pajamas being what the character wears and a Z shaped tail; these were all features that i really liked and wanted to carry through to the final design. The roughs i liked the most were the 1st, 2nd and 6th; i felt that the 6th and 1st designs represented sloth the best, while i liked the more wild and non human looking qualities of the 2nd one.

After creating my roughs, i came up with 4 refinement designs. All of these designs are quite similar, but i was going for something different with all of them; the first one was the standard design i had in my head and a template for the others, the second one had very long arms and claws to reference an actual literal sloth, along with some animal-foot looking shoes, the third was meant to go down a cuter road, with over sized sleeves, rounded off horns and uneven shoes, and the fourth one was meant to look a bit more monstrous than the rest. There were features i liked from all of these designs, but there wasn’t one i liked a lot more than the rest; in all honesty i had some problems with my design, such as the fact that it didn’t really look like a demon, and that i felt like i wanted to play around with mixing up some of the features a bit. Nonetheless, i needed a character design, so i took it into line art;

I wasn’t especially happy with this line art. I still had all of my initial problems in mind, like not really liking how the character looked so human, but i also found working on Photoshop to do line art a bit harder than usual because of the pressure sensitivity. The line art looked a little messy and unbalanced, and i wasn’t sure if sloth would be the first thing people thought of when they saw my design. I decided to re-do it, because i didn’t want to work with a design that i wasn’t happy with. A feature i knew i wanted to keep for sure was the open mouth; not only did it give off the impression of yawning, but it linked to my research of Belphegor, a demon who represents sloth. Belphegor always had a gaping open mouth, and i thought this would be a fun feature to work with in my design. Another feature i wanted to keep was the Z shaped tail, as i thought it was a clever incorporation of the letter Z into her design.

I used some features from other refinements to achieve two things; to make my final design look more monster like, and to make it look more like it represented sloth. The changes i made where;

making the horns longer and pointier to give off a more monster like impression
removing the goat plush as it felt a little out of place
covering her eyes with her hair, which i think helped with making her look a bit more unique
sharpening her claws and ears to exaggerate that she was non human

I added a few finishing touches to my design to give it more of an obvious ‘sloth’ look; i was trying to be a bit more nuanced and subtle in my reference to the sin before, but i realized that with character design for games, people need to have an idea of what they’re looking at as soon as they see it; it needs to be obvious what sin it is. I added a pillow, a snot bubble and some Z’s to give her a more obviously sleepy look, and with that, i was finished with my line art.

Finally, i asked someone who wasn’t on the project and had no idea what my drawing was for what they thought the character would be like. I wanted to do this because they would answer without any bias, giving me a perception of my character from someone who wasn’t looking at it through the eyes of someone who knew what i was going for. If they never said the character looked sleepy or lazy, i’d know that my design was somewhat unsuccessful. I started by just simply asking what they thought the character would act like, then followed up with a question on which of the sins she’d represent.

I asked one more person, to see things from yet another perspective, and she said the same thing (in the voice notes she said the character looked ‘nonchalant’ and maybe a little rude). I was now confident in my design, and i’m ready to add colour.

For adding colour, i want to work on making the character look a little less human, as i still think she could look a little more monsterly.

17th November 2020
by Jahiem Walker
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Beginning game design- research & silhouettes

This week i started my second rotation, game design. I’m very excited about this rotation because i enjoy character design, and it’s involved a lot here. I’m not really considering going in to game art in the future, but i’m sure i’ll learn valuable skills here.

Our task is to create a character design for one of the seven deadly sins, starting with research and 8 rough silhouettes influenced by the research. I knew right away that i either wanted to choose sloth or lust, so i looked at these two sins in particular detail.

I started with general secondary research about the sins, to grasp an understanding of their origins. According to ‘psychology today’ (link https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-red-light-district/202002/where-did-the-7-deadly-sins-come), the sins are rooted in Christianity, and have gone through many different meanings and amounts of sins to become the 7 deadly sins known currently. Each sin was associated with an animal and a punishment; http://www.deadlysins.com/sloth says that sloth’s animal is a goat and it’s punishment is being thrown in to a pit of snakes in hell, while lust’s animal is a cow and it’s punishment is burning in hellfire and brimstone. Each sin is also associated with a colour; light blue for sloth and regular blue for lust.

I also found out that there are specific demons associated with the sins; Asmodeus is a demon associated with lust, and Belphegor is a demon associated with sloth. By now i was leaning more toward sloth, so i looked more into Belphegor; according to https://mythology.net/demons/belphegor/, belphegor is a former angel, and a sinister demon who lures people into adultery and procrastination. He’s an unpleasant demon, often pictured with a gaping mouth, horns, leathery skin and sharp teeth.

I created a moodboard for the sin of sloth before starting on my silhouettes, to get some inspiration and ideas from other artists that would influence my design. I noticed that most things associated with sloth and the night time are round in shape, and use a variety of blues, greens and yellows.

image sources
-3 depictions of sloth as an anime character from manga ‘the seven deadly sins’ by nakaba suzkuki
-a depiction of sloth from the game ‘sweet sins’ (artist uncredited)
-a depiction of the sin of sloth from the movie ‘shazam’
-a depiction of belphegor from the dictionnaire infernal
-shutterstock ‘sleep symobls’
-creepy cute zombie doll by ares crea
-picture of a victorian posessed teddy bear (uncredited)

Finally, i started on my silhouettes. I thought of what i usually do while procrastinating; i usually stay in my bed with my phone or other distracting things. Because of this i wanted to portray sloth in pajamas, looking lazy and a bit out of it. I tried to avoid energetic poses; i avoided anything too dynamic, mostly going for yawning poses or more simple ones. I wanted to make my character cute, but i wanted to keep some of the demonic elements without them feeling out of place, so i added small horns and tails to most of my designs. i made all of my designs either feminine or more androgynous looking, because Belphegor would usually appear to humans as a young girl. I also gave some characters very long and large arms/hands, to represent the sloth animal a little. I contemplated adding snakes to my designs in reference of the punishment for sloth, but i avoided this because i feel like snakes are more often recognized as a symbol of envy, and i didn’t want an overlap of concepts. I also tried to include mostly round and floppy shapes in my silhouettes, because they feel less energetic and sharp than sharp lines and shapes.

There are a few features in paricular that i think i’ll carry over into my rough designs; i like the motif of clouds for the character, because they remind me of dreams and imagery associated with sleeping. i also like the moon as a piece of imagery, and i like the z-shaped tail i gave to some of the characters, as sleeping is often represented by the lettr z (zzz), and the tail corners contrast well with the rounder lines on other parts of the designs.

Overall i’m happy with my end result; i have a rough idea for what i’d like the character to look like, and i think it’s clear from looking at the image that i chose the sin of sloth. My next step will be considering what subtle details outside of the outline/shape of the character i can include to reference symbols associated with sloth in my design.

17th November 2020
by Jahiem Walker
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Last paper animation tasks- head turn & walk cycle

This is my last task on this rotation, so it will be my last post about paper animation for now.

For my last tasks, i had to complete a walk cycle animation and a head turn animation. I’d say these were the hardest paper animations i’ve done so far (especially the latter); they required a bit more planning and attention to detail than my previous animations.

The first of the two i completed was the walk cycle animation; i had to animate someone walking on the spot. Before beginning this animation, i had to draw out two lines on a frame to prevent my character from changing size too often. I then had to draw out the key frames, and make sure there was enough movement going on before filling in the frames in between. Lastly i added the arms, which was more straight forward.

I found this task to be challenging. It was hard to keep the character proportionate while also trying to make them move up and down subtly in the animation, and i constantly had to re draw parts of previous frames after completing new ones to make the walk look more natural. Thankfully i got the hang of it by the end of my first step, and drawing the frames for the second step was easier. I’m happy with my end result, although i feel like it could be a bit smoother, but i’ll achieve that with practice and time.

(i’m sorry about how zoomed out the video is, i had a lot of trouble with rendering this time)

Next, i did my head turn animation. This animation was hard because i had to work out the timing by myself, which i’ve never done before as i never really planned my animations before starting uni.

My first step for this animation was a quick sketch of my character; a frog girl. We had to put something in the animation that would move with the character, so i chose her tongue and hair to move. I wanted to draw a cute and kind of grumpy looking character, which i think i achieved well. (fun fact about my character; the Japanese characters on her shirt read ‘rueka’, which is a re arrangement of the Japanese work for frog, ‘kaeru’.)

I had a lot of problems with pacing in this animation. i initially didn’t anticipate how quickly it would play (although i wanted it to be fast), so i had to go back in and add some frames. It was also hard because the character had to move from one side of the paper to the other, so i couldn’t re draw it as accurately as i would’ve been able to if she stayed in one place. I had an easier time drawing the key frames and in between, because i had some practice on this from both my walk cycle and pose to pose animation. In the end i liked my result, although going back i’d probably add some more frames to make it last longer and flow a little smoother.

All in all I’ve enjoyed this rotation a lot, and I’ve learned a lot of valuable skills and techniques, even if it was only for a short while. This was my first time animating in any way other than digitally, and while i still enjoy digital animation the most, i can see myself doing this again. I’m grateful that i was able to learn a lot and have fun while doing it.

6th November 2020
by Jahiem Walker
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Squash and stretch & ease out/ ease in

This time i created two animations; one object bounce where i used the techniques of squashing and stretching, and one ease out/ease in animation.

The first animation i did was the object bounce. The goal was to animate a bouncing object that transfers most of it’s energy to the next bounce. There was a little more planning behind this animation than the last one; i created an arc of motion frame before starting the animation, where i planned out where the object would bounce, and how high it would bounce each time. Next i planned how many frames roughly each bounce would take; i initially over estimated it (13 frames for the 1st bounce), but after looking at a diagram, i was able to adjust my timing and start animating.

As I’ve done a ball bounce animation before, the squash and stretch technique was fairly easy to me; in areas where the ball was using the most energy (falling & rising), i stretched it out by increasing it’s length, and i squished it whenever it touched the floor. In my opinion this bounce looks a lot better than the one i did before i started uni, as i had a better understanding of the planning that was needed before starting, and my stretches look more natural, and i animated on 1s which prevented the object from looking like it slowed down between bounces. I was also able to work at a frame rate that made the movement look quick. Lastly, i made the object into a character; a small and round cat that changed facial expressions every time it hit the floor (although it isn’t very clear in the video).I was able to render he animation clearer than i did on mt first two paper animations, as i set up a proper station for it this time around.

The next animation i did was an ease out & ease in animation. There was a big focus on timing & spacing for this animation; Using an animation chart i had to draw someone moving between 3 poses, and add frames between each pose that would bring the person from one pose to the next at the right speed. Similarly to my pose to pose animation i first drew in the key frames, then the breakdowns, and lastly all of the frames in between. i had to photograph the key frames around 30 times each, so that the character held each of the 3 poses for long enough before moving on. I decided to go for a character without too much detail, so that i could focus more on the arm movements and getting my timings right.

This animation was quite similar to the pose to pose animation, so it wasn’t too hard for me. The hardest part was probably making sure my timings were right; i had to re draw a lot of frames because i made the character move too quickly, and the movements didn’t look natural. One thing i wish i had done differently now that i look back on it is the timing of the facial expressions; i synced them to the timings of the movement, which made the animation look a little too calculated and unnatural. This is a small thing that i’ll aim to avoid in future animations.

All in all i think these were useful techniques to learn; i can see myself using them in the future to make movements in my animations look a little more natural, and exaggerated when they need to be.

27th October 2020
by Jahiem Walker
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Paper animation- straight ahead, pose to pose, and a combination of both

On Monday, i started my first university task; Paper animation, a traditional method of animation that was used a lot for early animation films, such as Disney’s first few films and cartoons. I was excited to start this task, as i like the aesthetic of hand drawn paper animations, and I’ve always wanted to try this method of animation out but i never knew where to start.

I was introduced to a piece of equipment that i had little knowledge of before; a light-box. a light-box is used to that you can layer the animation frames, and it acts as a kind of onion skin so that you can keep consistency between frames. The light-box was relatively easy to use, and it was a great help to me.

There are two methods of creating paper animation; pose to pose, or straight ahead. The first method i tried was straight ahead; this was where you draw straight on to the paper without any planning. I found this task challenging as i didn’t have a clear idea of what my end result was; i constantly had to challenge my imagination to come up with something coherent. I started with a circle, and i focused on trying to change it’s shape; i eventually turned it in to a shape that looked like the outline of a small slime creature to me, so i decided to turn it into a cute slime monster. I line tested it by using stop motion now, ensuring that i took each picture twice (as we animated in twos) and kept the frame rate at 25fps. I was happy with the result of this animation, as i feel it had some of my own personality and character in it.

The second method of paper animation i tired out was pose to pose animation. This method was a little bit easier, as there was a predetermined order of events in place; we had to draw a character’s facial expression changing between three emotions, with a neutral expression being the first one. I decided to go from normal to afraid to happy, as i thought this would be a fun challenge due to how different the expressions look from each other. I came up with a quick design that wouldn’t be too hard to re-draw; a cute alien man.

There was a technique to creating this animation; we started with the first frame, then we drew the middle frame, the transitional frames and then finally the last frame. We used the pre-drawn frames as reference for the frames that we would draw in between. We had to have the earliest and latest frames on the light box while drawing the frames between them (foe example when drawing frame 9 i had frames 1 and 17 on the light box). This confused me at first, but i was quickly pointed in the right direction and carry on the task with ease.

I’m happy with how this animation came out because it looks a lot smoother than most of the animations i did prior to it, mostly because of the increased amount of drawings i produced. I also learned about using key frames, which i didn’t really understand prior to doing this animation. I think this is a method of animation that can be applied to other types of animating (e,g 2d digital), and i’ll be sure to keep on using it.

The last animation i did was a combination of both techniques. On top of my pose to pose animation, i created a straight ahead animation that would interact with my alien and be the reason of his emotional changes. I started with a circle like i did previously, and i ended up developing it into a creature similar to the one in my first straight ahead animation. This was the easiest of the 3 animations, as i already had an idea of what i was doing and what was going to happen.

Lastly i created a second pose to pose animation, since i had extra time. I did this because i made a lot of mistakes in my first animation, and i wanted to do another one to ensure that i understood the process well. i worked in the same way i did to create my first pose to pose animation, and again i went with a simplistic idea as i wanted to pay more attention to the process than the drawing. I worked a lot faster this time around, and i made significantly less mistakes. All in all i’m happy with how this turned out, and i feel that i fully understand pose to pose animation after creating these.

All in all i feel that this was a good introduction to paper animation; it was challenging but not too complex. i learned some small things that i can carry over to other ways of animation, and i had fun while completing each of the tasks. i hope to be able to properly render them next time, as i had to use stop motion now because i wasn’t on site, so i still don’t know how to render paper animations in the right way. I’m excited to play around more with this style of animation, and i’m curious to see what kinds of things i can come up with.

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