De nuevo a flote. y otras notas

Bueno, ya terminé la escuela y tengo un poco de tiempo libre en mis manos de nuevo. Así que escribiré.

En primer lugar (y notarán que ahora está en español el blog... ya buscaré como traducir sin perder mucho tiempo, cualquier idea es bienvenida) me pondré por meta conectarme mucho más con el medio de la animación y el arte digital. Espero encontrar blogs de interés y links que valgan la pena compartir y los colocaré aquí, comenzando por estos:

DEADLINE SURVIVOR blog

Este blog habla de algunas cositas de animación referentes al mercado, el medio, algunas recomendaciones (como la última que me parece muy buena[Cómo tratar con colegas] ) y temas varios. Muy vigente para todos nosotros que estamos comenzando en este negocio.
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Tim Rudder's Animation Mentor Progress Blog

Si buscan algo de inspiración para empezar a entrenar animación en 3D desde lo más básico, con un clásico muñeco descargado de internet, aquí es donde hay que buscar.
Tim se ha puesto a la tarea de colocar su progreso en este blog donde se pueden ver sus ideas, las instrucciones que se le asignan, y sus soluciones y correcciones.
Es algo así como mirar sobre el hombro de un buen estudiante de animación, y pues claro, tener la oportunidad de seguir sus pasos.







Y en cuanto a mis proyectos personales, quisiera poner algunas cosas, ya que tiene rato que no actualizo.

ESTORNUDO

Este fue otro ejercicio de escuela. Tenía varios temas juntos a tratar, como overlapping, buen timming, vibración y follow through.

Creo que en éste me tomé demasiado tiempo diseñando al personaje y dibujándolo como loco que realmente trabajando en su timming, por eso es que al final hay errores y cosas bastante raras.

No estoy diciendo que esté totalmente mal el ejercicio, hay cosas que sí me gustaron, como la absorción de aire, pero la trompa del final podría haber quedado muchísimo mejor. ¿Ustedes qué opinan?


DIÁLOGO
Síi! mi primer trabajo de animación de diálogo. Tomado de uno de los ejercicios de 11 seconds club, éste diálogo es parte de alguna película de por ahí. La intención no es copiar la escena sino representar la forma en la que los diálogos se van diciendo. [ESCUCHAR CON AUDIO]

 Como podrán notar faltan muchos inbetweens, animar más el final, la explosión, etc. Pero el poco tiempo no daba para más...
aun así creo que se logró dar el acento a las partes del diálogo que valían la pena, y en lo personal, me gusta mucho como quedó el diálogo del tipo del final :P

BAILOTEO DE UN CONEJO
Este es otro de los ejercicios escolares, esta vez tratando algo de movimientos repetidos, ritmo, etc.

Debo admitir que me ha resultado mucho más difícil de lo que parece animar un baile, sobre todo porque hay tantas cosas que se pueden hacer, pero obviamente hay que elegir entre una de ellas, y eso, precisamente eso, descartar movimientos, me cuesta trabajo...Por lo que termino con una animación llena de cosas que es todo menos clara...

En fín, aquí el resultado, con cambios en el terminado, así que AUNQUE LA CANCIÓN SE LOOPEE. HAY COSAS DIFERENTES EN CADA LOOP, COMO LA LÍNEA, EL COLOR, COLOR CAMBIANDO DE RITMO, ETC. Así que chéquenlo hasta el final que esta animación es de las primeras que coloreo :P

Por el momento es todo! Muchas gracias por leer, y recuerden, todos los comentarios son bienvenidos!! :D 

Traditional Animations Update (from school)

School and some proyects have taken my time away from writting on my blogg, but here I am again, trying to keep it up to date.

The next excercises are all part of the school course designed to teach a little bit of traditional animation, using Richard Williams' Animator's Survival Kit as a guide.

SIMPLE CAT DOING A SIMPLE WALK 

Checking simple walks again, this time was required as an assignment. I think it came up better than the last ones I've done, considering that this time I solved entirely by myself, without books or references.

It is kind of fast and exaggerated, but hey, it is a cartoon after all =P



A FAT BEAR 

Aaah this bear walking, I really enjoyed working on this one.
I wanted to work with weights, counteractions and some overlaps too, and a fat bear had all it was needed to do so.

I went through a lot of planning for this one, i had to:
>think about how his tiny legs would open to avoid tripping with his belly

>Show a good weight not just with size but with timming

I made these charts to figure out the poses and the extremes on the belly (curve). The curve shows how the weight shifts from left to right. Since the curve is not entirely symmetrical, the belly goes slowly to the side, then returns quickly to the center, and then goes again.

>Understand how mass remains static until something acts upon it (the leg pushes the belly forward and to the side)

>Have balanced poses through the walk cycle. 

Here is the finished animation, the first gif has only key poses.

A HAPPY WALK

Not much can be said here. The enterity of the movement and poses were taken from the book...And yet is too fast for my taste.

GOAT KID DOING A SNEAK

Awww yeah! I really loved working on this one too! But maan it was hell of a ride...

It is a slow movement, so I needed lots of frames... this one runs at 33 per step, making a huge total of 65 frames.

The excercise was asked to be worked on 12fps(twos), but I thought "hey, perhaps the goat kid deserves a little bit more effort, I'll go for 24(ones)"  Hahaha, what a crazy idea! I drew tons of tiny goat kids this past week!
Certainly it was really hard to do the entire animation, and what is more, cleaning it up.

I worked on the pencil test at first, fixed some head and arm issues, and the went to the cleanup phase, in which the clothes and face were added.

As you can see, the clothes are not perfectly done, but I like them ^^. In fact, I really like this animation, even if it's not perfect. First, I like it because it as one of my characters, and actually makes me think he is there moving!! :D

Second, it took me a huge effort to finish it on time(almost). And third, it has to be my first nice cleanup :P.

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And for the non-animated stuff, here are some pastel pictures I did:

thanks for reading!! :D

Walk and Fall - A traditional animation

Some more school excercises, this time a guy that walks, gets distracted and falls.


DISTRACTION while walking

gif:

This one was planned with these things in mind:
-A walk (any walk)
-The character turns around
-Something obstructing his path
-Character hits object
-Character falls

But let's see the planning here :D

PLANNING

The first ideas came up with a simple character who looks like a cat because of the funny horns I drew on his head. But those are just to figure out the head rotation :P

I began sketching something on the paper (left), exploring some funny poses and important sequences that told the simple story (narrative - what's going on)

I also doodled the way I wanted the walk to be a crazy walk with some spaghetti movements.

Here I laid down some preliminary poses. Designing the movement is important and fun to do. Is spend a lot of time during this phase, writting down ideas that will affect movement, thinking about particular aspects of the walk cycle, etc.

Since the character had to turn around, I began to thing when he was going to do it (top of the page), and also doodled how and with what he crashes.

At the bottom of the page I created the way he was going to begin walking. I noticed I've never designed such a thing before. My characters just came walking through the page, but never began walking  XD. In any case, it was a good opportunity to think about it.
I added a quick anticipation to the moment he begins with the step, just to let the audience know something is about to happen. 

In this piece of paper I drew the walk cycle I was going to use. The important poses (contacts, downs, passings and ups) are designed here.
There is nothing too crazy here, but I wanted to begin exploring something fun with the arms at least.

And, if you remember from my past works, this time I decided to do a simpler set of legs, with a simpler, more cartoony set of joints :P


LAYOUTS

For the drawings I call "layouts" I drew the poses and extremes which I considered the most important ones.
Some spacing can be seen here,

Beginning of the step - Here I draw the anticipation and how he begins moving his left leg

Here the overall walkcycle is laid down. In this case I wanted him to approach to the viewer with some perspective, which made the cycle expand while going forward. That was knew since all my walks were from side to side or frontal view.

In this one, the contact pose, I just drew the turning (I studied that in more depth later on). In this sheet I also wrote down my time charts for the steps, figuring out when he was going to hit the post.

The last layout, when he falls down, rests a little, and then goes to the floor. I added the path his arms were going to follow when falling (blue)

TIMMING

Timming suffered some changes from the one I build in the beginning.
At first, I was thinking of a huuuge walk cycle, but then noticed the character had to be turning around a little bit more time before hitting the post.

The bar below shows the new timming, where the impact is changed, and there is more hold time for the character to understand what happened to him :P


THE TURN

The turning of the character was something new to me, as well as fun to work with.
I decided he was going to turn his head and upper torso around while his legs would keep walking.

Since the turning happens during the walk, it was important to make the movement natural. Without a good care, the turn could look away from the character's intentions, more like a robot. to avoid that, I mixed the walk with the turn, using the arms' motion to give the eye something to follow, and then turning the entire head quickly.
I added a small blink to it, just to keep it natural ^^

Back to school

I'm back again to school, which explains the late update, but here it is, a huge amount of stuff I've done during the last few weeks of summer and this first week of school.

SOME 2D ANIMATIONS DONE AT SCHOOL

-Eased arm

I've done one before. This one has a small anticipation.

-Eased ball

-pingpong ball

I really do not like this one, it has too much spacing. What I wanted to do was to get the timming for a pingpong ball, which has a quick bounce. 

What makes it look even more wrong I think is the squash...

It's lacking a nice cushion at the top of the last bounces, which adds to the lousy movement...

-bouncing marbel 

And this one is much better, with a quick bounce, not much energy is preserved. 

-falling ballon

-falling vase

Hmmm, I think that's it for animation. I havn't done too much with traditional these days... 

I've also worked on some dialogues and words, but those with some 3D characters. When something nice is done I'll show it to you  ;)

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OIL PAINTING

I've got a lot into oil painting lately. It has a lot more to it than digital stuff, even though it's harder, without instant mistake correction (ctrl+z), and it doesn't dry out instantly either XD-

But it does has a lot of artistic stuff, improves decision making and problem solving.

Here are some of the tiny paintings I've done.

All of them have been done in one sit, taking from 1 to 1:30 hours each. Some made from direct observation, others from imagination, and others from places I've been. 

I saw this scene on the airport, then some days later I made the painting from what I remembered, but mostly liked, about the scene. 

observation

observation

observation

observation

observation

imagination

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ILUSTRATIONS / SCENE STUDIES / NARRATIVE

This picture came to me while reading Crime and Punishment. This scene has to do with the main character walking down the streets, when suddenly hearing some particular conversation that pushes the series of events that makes up the whole story.

It is a really quick picture, focused on the colors and the composition. Figures are not defined, just enough to understand the scene. What I wanted to settle down was the way colors, ligths and shadows, tell a story within a picture. 

In this case, the silhouette, watching from the dark, belongs to the obscure character thinking obscure things. The bright guys in the right side of the scene talk about random stuff, not so random for the main character though, but they are good guys. 

I added a little bit of red just to make a small "prediction" within the picture. Perhaps going too much into the cliché (Red = danger), but it helps tell the message. 

This way of doing pictures, taking inspiration from stories, really puts the basic concepts of art into work, since they are not just created to paint nice pictures, but to make pictures work, or say something. 

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Here is another picture, this time without a concrete story, but with some words in mind:

afternoon, coffee shop, rain, comfortable, city. 

Yes, it has something to do with the Goat Kid story, it may exist within its world; cluttered buildings, a dirty city, lots of stuff, etc.

What I was looking for here was the contrast with these two colors: yellow and blue, and how yellow, being a warm color, can create a comfortable atmosphere within a blue, cold scenario. 

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And here is a quick sketch with another character that may be part of the Goat Kid world.

This guy, The mechanic, perhaps is someone that lives alone, building weird things, inventing machines, talking to 

himself, etc. 

He is a cat or something similar. 

And thats all for now! 

Thanks for reading :D 

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RANDOM 3D STUFF I FOUND AND DID

Funny smoke

Falling Brick and more 3D

Following that schedule I wrote about the other day, here is the third excercise.

3.- FALLING BRICK
This one has to do with timming to achieve a sense of weight -I think XD

Here is my planning. I decided to give it half a rotation and make it hit hard with the edge.
I noticed that, in this case, the full movement ending suddenly adds a lot to the stiffnes of the object, but what do you think?

I also kept myself from using squash and stretch, since it is a very solid brick, it should not deform at all. BUT, perhaps I could use some kind of stretch to create more impact to the exact moment it touches the ground. 



Here is the outcome:

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I also did a tiny animation with my goat dude. It was aimed to practice small movements, eyes, and some expressions.

I know he lacks his mouth hahaha but I decided the eyes were enough to tell what's going on.
I have to say I didn't made too much planning on this one, it was more like straight ahead and just from what came to my mind, trying to keep the idea as fresh as possible.

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Aaand the 3D stufffs!

>>watching some kind of sports<<

Using the same character I used last time on my walkcycles, with a simple rig (no iks, no animation curves) I'm creating a scene in which the character is watching some sports broadcast, having a good time.
I'm using 3 poses to tell the idea:
1)just sitting down watching
2)interest
3)reaction to goal

THE SITTING DOWN WATCHING POSE

 In this pose I want the character to look relaxed, almost uninterested. He is sitting on a sofa, with his shoulders relaxed, hands and arms on the armrests, no tension nor stress.

I went trough some issues with this one, form the position of the soulders, to the overall tension of the body.
In the picture at left I drew some front views of the guy, looking for the way his shoulders and hips would tilt.

The doodles at the top left are the first ones I did with the idea in mind, perhaps too exagerated, they help to explore the strongest poses. I also drew some kind of timming chart to figure out the overall rythm of the scene.

This is the pose I chose in the end. It has a much more relaxed hip, shoulders tilted to the other side, and a straight head.

This sheet has some alternate version, with a very sassy pose, not what I was looking for. His shoulders have too much energy and the hips are way too high. 

INTEREST POSE

Before getting into the actual interest pose I created a tiny anticipation in which the character notices something on the screen, which makes his body go up a little.

This picture shows some studies on how the guy will go from resting to stressed. I was thinking on something getting you to the edge of the seat pose, in which his hips go forward, hands go to thighs and head gets closer to the T.V. I also explored the idea of making a small gesture with his right hand, like arguing with the T.V.

In this frame the character lifts his chest a little, showing some interest on what he is watching. This happens before the entire movement takes place.

Breakdown pose from notice to interest. Arms get closer to body, torso straightens, legs get closer to sofa.

This is the extreme interest pose, in which his head is going forward, and his arms pressing his legs, just as if he is going to jump, but holding in emotion.

 The fact that this guy has no eyebrows, mouths, ears, or something that can create a face expression makes it quite difficult, but leaves the job to the entire body gesture. The pose is the subject I'm trying to get here, on how it can tell the story, even without a character blinking or saying something.

This is the 3D animation. Extremes are done, as well as some inbetweens and breakdowns.

Timming is also done, but it doesn't read as much with the long hold frames.


















And that's all for today guys! No picture making this time. I did worked on some stuff, but is not dry enough to scan it... :P

Thanks for reading and see you later!! :D