Walk Cycle Animation

This animation was drawn on paper using a lightbox. Although this is my favorite way of working, I chose to create my other animations for this project digitally. This is simply due to the time consuming nature of this style, however as this piece is only a twelve frame loop, time was not an issue. The element of this animation I am most happy with is the secondary motion of the drawstrings on the character's jacket - which add a nice bouncy rhythm to the walk - and the way his excessively long shoes flop and drag as the toes remain on the floor during the cross-over of the legs, giving a very stylised look to the feet. Upon reflection however I think more attention could have been be paid to the arm movements, which sometimes appear to swing back too fast/with too few inbetweens. I produced several line-tests (See below finished video for my last line-test) over the course of which these arm movements were improved, however I don't feel I could have perfected them without redrawing every frame. Also, the filming of the piece could have been more accurate had I used a peg-bar to register each frame. As with my last piece, I decided to record some quick sound effects to accompany the animation - here I simply recorded myself walking in front of the mic wearing hard shoes, lining up the steps in Premier Pro later. In hindsight the steps could have been synchronised much better by recording the steps in time to a metronome set to the speed of the animation rather than syncing in post-production. Both videos below can be played in 1080p HD.

Above: Finished Walk Cycle Animation

Above: Linetest for Walk Cycle

Weight Animation

The purpose of this animation is to show weight; I achieved this primarily through showing one object's resistance to the movement of another. As speed is a highly important factor in the portrayal of weight, I animated on a variation of ones and twos here in order to add emphasis to faster movements. This is in contrast to my other pieces for this project, which were both shot purely on twos. Similarly to my 'Morphing Animation', this piece was drawn entirely in Flash. The video below can be viewed in 1080p HD.

Above: Finished Weight Animation

Morphing Animation

Here I used Photoshop and Flash to produce a simple animation of a newt transforming into a crocodile. I began by sketching my keyframes - the initial character and the morphed character - in Photoshop using a graphics tablet (See image below the video). I then moved into Flash where I coloured and inbetweened the images, still using the graphics tablet. Once I had completed the morphing part of the animation, I wanted to add a bit of character; I did this by adding anticipation and reaction to the movement. For anticipation I had the newt's skin ripple slightly followed by a pause, just to signal that something is about to happen to him. I then gave the character a slightly gormless look by having him casually blink before and after the transformation, subtly conveying the character's apathy/unawareness to what just happened. Once the animation was complete I created some sound-effects which I added in Premiere Pro. I was particularly pleased with the morphing sound effect, which I made by stretching an inflated balloon. This video can be played in 1080p HD.

Above: Finished Morphing Animation

Above: Character Sketches Produced in Photoshop