Football kick v02

This one is a bit better, I added the character to it, and changed the arm so it doesn't move so awkwardly, I also put in a bit of a lean forward, to put more emphasis on the forward kick I only added it to a few frames though, I also kept the leg in the air for a frame more so it gives a better sense of when the kick ends.

I will need to add more lean forward, and also put a bit of backward lean when his leg is in front of him to balance it. and I need to sort out his head as it very suddenly turns forward towards the end of the kick. I could also put in more in betweens to make it feel a bit smoother. 

Rough football kick

Here is a rough animation of my character hitting a football. 

I originally looked at some youtube videos to see how the processionals do it, however when I thought about it I realised that a man who is getting paid thousands of pounds to kick a ball might do it a bit better than someone who just happens to find a football and wants to kick it. 

So I based the kick on how I would kick a football. Oddly enough I found that my torso rotated one way and that the only bit of me that moved (other than my leg) was my left arm which swung up to counteract the leg movement and keep me in balance.

I may make the torso lean back to compensate for the leg movement more and also to give the character more energy.

Happy walk cycle slow down

Ok so I tried to make a him slow down rather than suddenly stop so he can look at the football and here is what it looks like! I also made the walk cycle into a character.

The reason that the walk appears to jump a little bit is because I am missing a few frames and I will try to track them down after I have finished writing this. I think that the slow down is still a bit sudden, but I think it will do. 

If anyone has any opinion on this that would be helpful

Happy walk cycle

Here is a happy walk cycle, made using double bounce where the character bounces twice in one step to give them that light happy feel. I also made him lean backwards a little bit to make him seem more relaxed. 

I am quite pleased how this turned out and will be applying my character to this walk cycle soon and I will probably use this in my actual animation. Next I want to have a stab at doing a sad walk as my 20-30 second animation will involve both happy and sad walking.

Double bounce walk cycle

This is a walk cycle I made in Flash, I read about double bounce walk cycles from The Animators Survival Kit and thought I'd give it a go.

Bouncy walk cycle

I am quite pleased with it although when I come to do the actual thing I will probably make the body bend backward a little bit and the head tilt up. I am going to go back and edit this and see if I can make it look happier, and use what I have found out to do a hand drawn version.

Character walk cycle

So we have to design a character and in a 20-30s animation make them react with 3 different objects, we can choose from: a football a boulder,a heavy box, a balloon, a kite, steps, an icy surface and a puddle.

I have chosen to go for a simple male character, who is pretty plain as it is more about the animation and the movement than how extravagant the character is. The objects I have chosen are a football, a boulder and a balloon.

The story will basically be he walks along happily and finds a football, then he kicks it but a boulder comes out of no where and crushes it when its in midair, he tries to move it but its too heavy so he walks on dejected and sad, then he finds a balloon and skips to his next destination with the balloon.

I am going to do some simple stick man test walks on flash to see if I can animate a happy walk and a sad walk etc. Then I will move on to hand drawn as it has to be hand drawn.

Below are some examples of happy and sad walk cycles that I have found on youtube

Sad walk cycle
happy walk cycle
Double bounce walk cycles
Skipping walk

Lip sync

I have decided to put walk cycles to the side for now so I can get on with the lip sync as I am a bit worried about it.

I have decided to do a lip sync of a sound file from "The Room" the exact quote is "You are lying, I didn't hit you, you are tearing me apart Lisa!" however the actor has a very strange accent so I thought that this would be interesting to do.

As for characters I have decided to just go for a humanoid face, as I am running short of time, the disposition of the character is meant to be angry.

Lip sync can be found here

I am ok with this, there are a few problems like when he says "are" it just looks odd because the mouth doesn't move. plus I dislike how jumpy it looks.

I like the bit at the end however, when his head bobs on the P of the "apart" and how his eyes close, I may go back and make his head move a little bit more. 

This experience has shown me why there are so many "silent" animations, lip syncing is hard to do and easy to spot when something is wrong. but I am overall happy with what I have done

Walk cycle 3

Here is a third attempt at a walk cycle, I measured the leg length of both the upper and lower leg so that he wouldn't get shorter and the legs would stay the same length, I also added arms and kept them the same length like with the legs, I tried to do it with the body but he bends down when he hits the ground to show the force of the impact so that was harder to do.

        There are quite a few problems with the arms, first of all they look very jerky and seem to clump around the keyframes, so I will have to go back and change that. When his foot hits the ground his body bends and this makes it appear as though his arms grow longer making him temporarily apelike, plus I don't like how the hands suddenly move. Other than that I am pretty happy with this, especially the legs as they don't seem to jump any more.

Walk cycle 2

OK So here is another walk cycle, the only thing that I can spot that is glaringly obvious is that the leg that the character is standing on wobbles from about frame 14 to frame 23. I also think that the passing position on the foreground leg goes to fast, because it seems to jump a little bit. The knee circle also seems to jump around quite a lot I have noticed.

I think I will go back and change the wobbling leg, and perhaps play around a bit with the spacing so that the passing position is longer/more obvious. I will try to change the knee's but they aren't my biggest concern at the moment.

Flash Walk cycle

Ok so I thought that I'd just knock up a quick walk cycle on flash as the animation room is locked during weekends I believe.

I am actually quite happy with this one, it seems quite smooth and I like the amount of bounce on the body, although I have noticed that the body keeps changing shape and size so it seems a little squashed, also the feet keep going below the line of the floor which isn't that big of a problem but it sort of irritates me. 

The pace is also very slow and stately so I could play around with the frame rate a little bit.

I am going to add arms and make a few changes to the body so it doesn't shrink, then I may experiment with different frame lengths and character poses.

Lip sync update

Ok so you may have noticed that I took all of the things about what I have done for my lipsync down apart from the hand drawn stuff, this is because it was just taking to much time, as much as I love blender it is difficult for me at this stage to do a proper piece of animation on it, so I shall hand draw it all in flash, using a drawn version of my demon character.

I want to finish of my walk cycles first as they are key, and I completely forgot about doing them when we had to do lip syncs so I will make a few of them first and when I have got one that I am happy with I will move onto lip syncs.

I have also got a copy of The Animators Survival Kit and will be scouring it for useful information, regarding walk cycles and lip syncs.

Lip Sync "Shoot The Duck"

Ok you can pretty much ignore the last post! because I did a different (and more annoying) part of the sound file which goes "Shoot the Duck! Shoot the Duck!". This is just a test which is why only his mouth/eyes move and why its not really a character is just kinda a blob with eyes and a nose and a mouth. I just wanted to see how hard it would be...it was pretty tough and it still doesn't look all that good. When it comes to doing the proper one I may use Blender just because I can.

Also the sound is a little bit of the lip sync.

Lip Sync

We have been given an .mp3 file containing some dialogue which we have t do a lip sync for. I have seen the video on Youtube  so I have an idea of what is actually going on. In the video there are three characters: Bugs Bunny who says "Quack Quack" Daffy Duck who says the rest of the dialogue and Elmer Fudd who shoots Daffy.

Even though we don't have to do the whole thing I think I am still going to design three characters. Although I will probably start of just designing one.

There are three different ways of doing mouths: with no teeth or tongue, with no teeth but a tongue and with both teeth and tongues. I am going to start of just having the mouth with no teeth of tongue just to get the basic idea.

Walk cycle 1

Here is my first attempt at a walk cycle, there are quite a few issues as is to be expected in the first one but I don't think its all that bad.

The hands are the worst bit as I couldn't decide what shape to put them so the shape basically changes every frame which results in the flickering look, also when he goes up it does kind of jump, plus I think he goes to high considering how low down the foot is at its highest point.

I also noticed that the whole body changes angle imbetween frames 8 and 10, and that often the position of the knee cap often shifts around...making the upper part of the leg longer than the shorter. I also think that the arms need to move more as they pretty much stay locked in the same shape and the whole arm rotates. So I will have a look at that.

The frame rate could also do with slowing down, perhaps to 12 fps as it almost looks like he is running.

I am going to make a few changes to this walk cycle and reshoot it, if I'm not 100% happy with it I will start a new one, without arms shoot it at all the different stages-keyframes, then keyframes with one imbetween imbetween them then with more imbetweens etc.

Walk Cycles

Right so we have moved on from ball bounces and are now doing walk cycles, using the same method as before, I have done walk cycles before one on flash and the other in Blender 3d, I shall put a link to both on this blog.

The one in flash was ok, it started of as a stick man but I thought I'd Jazz it up a little by making the stick man into a zombie...as you do! I realise now that the legs move much to fast as I only used 8 frames, for two steps.
you can look at that one here

The Blender one was pretty much a disaster now I look back on it. I over exaggerated the steps plus the foot goes through the box the character is standing on you can look at the 3d one here

I have started on my first hand drawn one but I am already noticing problems where the arms aren't the right length and the legs are thinner in some frames than others, hopefully as they will be on for a grande total of 1/25th of a second it will not stick out too much, but I intend to continue anyway because at least it will give me a good idea of ways to improve

Bouncing Ball

Well here we are, the bouncing ball, the start of the beginning, so we were told to do a bouncing ball and to keep a blog of everything we do (well animation wise ;) ), so here I am writing about a bouncing ball...anyway we have to use the traditional 2d method of drawing on pieces of paper to make the ball bounce (its surprising how hard it is to draw 20 balls that are all roughly the same size), I have done 3 ball bounces and one ball roll. The ball role file doesn't work though, and neither does one of the ball bounces, because I pressed the wrong button on the export screen which is a shame because it had a smiling face on it and a bird on the bottom...it was fun! So I only have two to show.


The one on the top is the final one, the bottom one was a practice that was ok but I didn't like how it suddenly stopped...the final one is ok if not a little bit too bouncy...but to be honest I could probably spend a whole year doing bouncing balls and never make one I like!