Final Animation Sequence!

Finally finished my animation today!

Watch it here! :D 

Big thanks go to Nik Stojkov and Phil Canvin for all their help with the sound! 

Animation: Character Design Sheet

I'm so glad that my animation work is coming to a close! Today I sent of this, along with some other things to get printed ready for the start of assessments next week and I can't wait to see a physical copy of them! This is one of the final sheets I've produced to accompany my animation and I'm pretty happy with it considering I made it at 4am today! 

Animation: Storyboarding

Once again, something I anticipated that would take me less than half a day has consumed almost the entirety of it! Today I've been working on finishing everything to do with my animation, which includes a story board and character sheets (still on my to do list before the night is through) and I've pretty much had to re-draw the entire thing, but in a simpler form. I definitely couldn't have done a storyboard with as much detail as the actual animation and to be honest, it's not necessary.

I'm fairly happy with how this is looking so far. Still some finishing touches to add before I get on those character sheets though. ROLL ON 9TH MAY! Summer has been well and truly earned by everyone on my course this year.

Animation: Preview Clip

The past two days I've been trying to refine and perfect the scenes in my Animation sequence ready for next weekend when I am hoping to add in my sound effects and Narrative. I've finally gotten around to adding in a small black dot to represent a small fly that my frog looks up to eat. 

This clip is just a small section of the scene. 

Check it out!

Animation Preview: Clip Still Under Construction

I thought I'd take a quick screen recording of one of my animation scenes to show you. 

I haven't yet finished the scene - I still need to add a bounce into the leaves when the frog jumps on each one and some sound, as well as play around with the graph editor to make the jumps look a little more weighted and lifelike! 

What's going on here has taken me a good few hours to make considering it's only a 12 second clip, but thats due to the fact that there's so many layers involved. Typical of me to make things more difficult than they need to be! Ah well. Hopefully it'll turn out good in the end! 

Animation Development: New Background Design

Today I've been continuing with some animation work and I've started making up the components of my next scenes background! I love adding texture to things like this, it gives it so much more character and life, and I even messed about with the blending options just for a bit of fun!

Original Image with black outline

Original Image, No outline

Altered Image - Looks tropical! 

Final Image - White Outline

This is what I'll be using in my animation for the background. 

It fits with the style I've created so far and looks pretty cool too! I'm happy.

Animation Sequence: Hot Air Balloons

This was something I made around the beginning of January after one of our first animation lessons. It was basically to learn how the tools worked for positioning, scale, opacities etc for the final project we're now working on. 

Animation: Sequence Sketches

Animation is currently taking up a lot of my time at the moment and no wonder when you have to draw every little movement in a different sketch! I'm trying to enjoy the process, and when I see the final sequence coming together the effort you've put in does make you feel good, it's just the hassle and stress whilst doing it that gets me down. Especially if you have to re-draw something that doesn't fit properly. Thankfully for these, tracing paper was a life saver and Im not that bothered that they change shape slightly. It'll make for an interesting transition I'm sure. 

These images are part of a sequence where my frog is looking up to catch a fly.

Animation: Background Design

I keep forgetting how long making one part of an animation takes! As part of my second scene I've started to create these layers, which will form part of a forest-type background for me to animate over the top of. To fit my running theme / style of illustration I've given them a white outline with painterly textures overlaid within the leaves. Something tells me this is going to take a lot longer than I had planned to make everything this way though. 

Bring on the sleepless nights! 

Before and After: Vectorising An Image

I'm still working on my Animation project, slowly but surely and yesterday completed the main image for the final scene of it. (Even though I've not made the middle of it yet, hah!) 

I thought it was an interesting before and after shot, and it was my first time of trying to make an image made completely of Vectors in Adobe Illustrator so I learnt a few different things from Googling my problems. I'm sure there's quicker ways to do what I did but considering it was my first attempt at a fully Vectorised image, without using Photoshop for the majority of the work I think I did pretty well. 

I'm not quite sure what name to give him though. Thoughts............?

Style Tests: Glass Frog

As part of my animation I've started experimenting with different styles in which to draw my Frog for the sequence. I found one geometric style by Matthew DiVito, which really caught my eye and made me want to try it for myself... So I did. 

As much as I love it though, I think I'd be making things more complicated than they need to be with this particular style. I do love it though. He looks like a piece of ceramic in the 4th image!

Ant Animation Sequence

Today, our animation class was set the task of animating this small ant sequence in Adobe After Effects with some new features that we haven't used before. This is in preparation for our own animation that we'll be creating over the next few weeks. 

It was a lot easier to make than it seemed when our tutor was talking through it and I think the clip is pretty cute! I'm definitely looking forward to seeing what I can manage to create with my own now.