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Motion Studies Project

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Motion Studies Project

Hello everyone! I haven't posted in quite some time so I figured I'd show you guys what I've been working on for the past two weeks. The animation is for a screen space project in my waste of time motion studies class. I spent last weekend on the 3d animation to use as a reference for my 2d version. I started the 2d version on Wed but relized I'd have to start over because I'd drawn my background wrong. By this time it was Friday and I had drawn 113 frames. Needless to say, I was not very happy. Rather than redoing the whole thing, my roommate helped me come up with a simple concept for a new animation (none of my own ideas are ever simple).

After about 23 hours of work, here is the final 2d animation and the 3d reference animation:http://studentpages.scad.edu/~jcofer20/msRef.mov.

Please feel free to critique the animation, although I doubt I'll change the 2d one since I'm turning it in tomorow.

MightyMew1's picture
"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane

"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane

As usual, no one has any comments...

"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane

i just clicked those links and they appeared to stop loading once the quicktime logo appeared. had to download them so maybe that turned people off.

im kinda confused on what these are for exactly.

In the 2d one it kinda lacks when the ball he is bouncing on his head goes off (then he has to go pick it up). Both the first time and the last one. Just doesnt feel like it is being tossed that way accidentally or intentionally.

"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

Sorry about that Blinkmetoys. I dont know why the animation stops loading >_<. The 3d animation was supposed to be refrence for my 2d animation. As I said I had to start the 2d one over so I just went with a completely different "story".

I completely agree with the points you made about the 2d animation. I couldn't seem to figure out how to draw it to make it look like he intentionally hit the ball to the side/at the camera. It was a challenge to make it look like the cat was bouncing the ball rather than the ball bouncing off of the cat. I don't know why this animation gave me so much trouble. What ever the reason, it's completely unacceptable. There's no excuse for me to not have been able to animate that part properly. I will have to work even harder and use more refrence to ensure this doesn't happen again.

Thanks for the crit Blinkmetoys, I appreciate it.

"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane

Well they are kinda big files...only 5mb...but streaming stuff should be less than that for quick results. even then i think it should of got rid of the quicktime logo and showed the video at start...but....who knows.

but hey, dont be SO hard on yourself. Thats a subtle characteristic and personality to get in. Takes trial and error.

I really think the 3d ones story would have been a lot cooler though. I thought it was a squirrel though, not a cat. haha. although when the face is put on it, it would probably help that.

"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

Lol, I think the 3d one is cooler too. Things were going well until I had to animate the bouncing box and the moving background at the same time. I couldn't figure out how to draw that. I looked at the 3d version frame by frame and noticed the box looked like it was bouncing forward but it was moving backwards towards the edge of the resolution gate. While trying to figure out why this happened I noticed I drew the backgrounds wrong and thats when the whole having to start over thing came in. :mad:

"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane

The 3D one looks pretty nice MightyMew1. One thing that I noticed right off the bat. When doing a squash and stretching ball, or box in this case, the last stretch pose should actually be contacting the ground. Then on the next frame it should be the squash pose. I find that when the stretch pose is off the ground, there's too much of distance between it's center point.

The best way to animate your project traditionally, is to animate each thing on it's own layer. The cube on one layer, the ball on another, and the BG on a third layer. That way if something gets messed up, you don't have to scrap everything, just the BG layer.

I don't understand the point of this class assignment. You have to animate something in 3D and then rotoscope the 3D version traditionally? That sound counter productive and a waste of time. Just my oppinion. Maybe I just don't understand the assignment.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Hey AnimatedApe, thanks for the response. I'll remember to use the stretch contacts when I do more bouncing objects.

As far as the 2d version goes, I had everything on seperate layers. I messed up though because the horizon line on the background was too high. When I fixed it all of the characters ended up floating in the sky.

The point of this project is to prove that there's space beyond the screen. We're supposed to use object movement, camera movement, object size/position etc. to suggest depth. I think the assignment was dumb, but at the same time I was like "I'll just use it as an opportunity to learn how to animate camera motion". The other part of the project was to use reference to help with the animation. The ref could have been video ref, models, other animation etc. I decided to create a 3d version to help me visualise how I'd draw the camera movements.

Honestly though I think the entire class is a waste of time. I dont know if my classmates are learning stuff, but I know I'm not. Everything we've done so far I already knew how to do (minus animating camera motion). My teacher claims he was an animator and worked on music videos, yet he couldn't answer one of my classmate's questions about where a bouncing ball should have the most drawings. As he stubbled around to try to answer the question I felt like standing up and explaining it myself. Thankfully I didn't, since I'm sure that would have upset him. On Monday we watched each other's work and I commented on one person's animation by saying "I like it, your character has a good sense of weight". The teacher gave me this blank stare as if he had no idea what I was talking about. I asked my roommate about it (she's in my class) and she agreed that he seemed to not know what I was saying. Not only does the class suck, the teacher doesn't seem to know anything about the basics of animation.

Anyway, I had considered skipping that class and going straight to animation 1, but decided not to because I might learn something. Now I see I was wrong and I regret my decision to take the class.

"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane

where you go to school? might want to talk to your academic director or somethin about that.

"who wouldn't want to make stuff for me? I'm awesome." -Bloo

I go to the Savannah College of Art and Design. I think I'm so frustrated with this class because I'm not new to animation. The other people in my class seem to enjoy it since they've never animated a day in their lives. I guess they didn't notice that the teacher struggled with the bouncing ball and didn't seem to know what I was talking about when I mentioned that weight issue.

It's rather late to switch out of that class and into animation I since midterms are next week. I'll have to just grit my teeth and bear it, lol.

"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane

I've had simular experiences at my art school. I went to a comunity college for three years first and took a bunch of art classes that didn't transfer to the Academy of Art College. I had to take a still life class doing charcoal drawings of white cones, spheres and cubes. I spent the whole class drawing with my non dominate hand. It actually made the class kind of fun and challenging. If you know what they are teaching in class, look at the assignments as good opportuinities to hone your animaiton skills with more practice.

Hopefully your class gets better.

Aloha,
the Ape

...we must all face a choice, between what is right... and what is easy."

Yeah, that's what I'll try to do. Thanks animatedape! :D

"Animation isn't about how well you draw, but how much to believe." -Glen Keane