End of the Line (Or Year)

Welp, I guess this wraps things up.

I learned this year that in order to make a project that you will truly be proud of, you have to be able to take criticism for it as well as use your own skills to balance out the help you get from other people. This year I've greatly improved my ability to both know when to step back and let others pull their own weight as well as take leadership if need be. Collaboration projects like the Montage animation that we did for stop motion showed our willingness to work together. But it also showed our inability to be patient and look to make sure things were perfect before actually putting the animation together. I also learned how to crete good flowing animations like Midnight Flight and the start of the Time animation and Itzal. 

I learned by both watching other similar animations on YouTube, in theaters, and on TV. I drew poses for the frames by watching the way animals moved and studying the walk cycles of the creatures. That's how I learned how to do Chucho's walk, which is mixed between a cat and a dog, and was able to create my own spin on how to make him move. I also learned to plan out the animations and storyboard before actually animating. It helped as I was watching behind the scenes to movies, I got an idea for an animation, and I just began drawing out a short story-board to help organize my thoughts.

This has helped me become more confident in my own ability, and grow as an animator. Projects like my Itzal project and Midnight Flight showed me that I could create cute animations with my own ability. I learned the importance of drawing out a story, and it helped improve my work quality. It even got me to win imagine despite my own lack of confidence of my work. The reason why the lessons I learned helped so much is due to the confidence it placed in myself.

Have I improved? Yes I believe so, and I'm able to now tell my skills and the abilities I have to practice getting good at. My greatest strength I would say was my ability to create engaging environments and my attention to detail in the background. One of the comments from an eMagine judges backs up the claim. However, this leads to one of my greatest weaknesses I believe I'm improving, which is my character animation. Yes, I am attentive and detailed for the movement, but the design of the character itself is what normally lacks. It's often that I simplify too much to ease the stress of animating. But slowly I'm improving that fatal flaw in order to make bigger and better projects for competitions next year for eMagine.

Over the summer I'm going to try and develop a new animation, involving new characters more complex than this year's animations. I could also start learning how to make a story animation, which is something I've never done before. I can use the skills I have, plot out the story, maybe even start animating on my own to test out my own skills without help. But I'm also going to try to get an internship to help improve the skills I have. Then I can get professional opinions and even information how to improve myself.

2D rendition of Maya Character

Some things that I wish I could change would be my failure of Maya animation. I designed a character in Maya that was fluffy and for months I tried adding fur to my Maya outline, but unfortunately I didn't know how to make it into the character. My biggest regret was leaving it unfinished and making stupid mistakes on the character like adding stripes, which ruined the look I was going for. I wish that I hadn't ruined and wasted those months of work that I spent trying to make the animation perfect. But since I can't, I can promise myself that I will not let this happen again and I won't give up next time and complete the project I set out to do.

All in all, this year was full of ups and downs in my animating career. I did flops and I even won eMagine, which was an unexpected blessing and it boosted my confidence in my ability. I began animating better each time I started new projects with more improvements upon both the quality and the animation itself. I enjoyed this year thoroughly due to my abilities starting to make a noticeable improvement upon my work. I look forward to the upcoming months to continue to better myself and I can't wait to test and surpass the limits I have now. I loved animation this year and I can't wait for more. So for now, my friends, have a great summer!

Professional Review: The Maker

The Project:

The Maker was a professionally made project by Zealous Creative in order to boost awareness for their own animation studio as well as to show off a fellow artists's creations, including the aforementioned Maker of the tale and the composer of the animation. The summary is that The Maker must race against the clock (Actually an hourglass) to make a very important, beautiful creation before it runs. This project obviously took them several months, maybe even years to complete as the animators had to create the set as well as a camera that would give the animation proper justice.

The Maker

The Stopmotion used in the film is beautiful, fluid, and realistic to the point I believed that it had to be computer animated. Accompanied by the actual animation was a behind the scenes video detailing some of the aspects needed to bring the Maker to its fullest potential. It is crafted delicately and I couldn't find a place where the frames felt choppy or unnecessary. One element I could apply from this animation is that I can use the amount of detail in my own animations in order to give them more life and beauty than I could before, while an element I do know that is inside this animation is that the camera had to capture every movement in every frame in order to create the illusion of movement for the animation, like in the Stop-motion project given to us at the beginning of the semester.

Based on my observations, the director and animator did beautifully on creating a life-like, beautiful little world with characters with personality even though neither speak. This work could improve on, however, its story telling abilities, as I had to watch it a few times before I finally got what the story was in the animation.

Conclusions

I believe that this is one of the pinnacles that could be reached with stop-motion animation, with an environment that provokes thought with characters that could move in and out of their world fluidly so that it doesn't disrupt the backgrounds, or the characters. I hope to one day aspire to goals like these and create realistic moving characters inside an engaging environment. I love this animation to bits and hope that I could be able to do this well at an animation.

Tutorial: Head Turn

Head Turning from Profile to Full Front:

My character in the first scene I wanted to turn from looking forward to turn towards the audience. So  I had to learn how to make that turn happen. You have to draw out each frame carefully, starting with the first, middle and end frames. To make it better, add in-between frames to make the character flow better. This could help people learn how to do better 2D animations to help express the movements of their characters, as well as help give an insight into the proportions of the character the turn is given to. Helps people wanting to further developing their characters.

Here is the end test result:

1) Actually Prepare an image.

Have a character that is not too complicated and you've drawn several times that you want to move. It is best with characters with few complicated details in order to achieve this well.

2) Have a picture of your character in profile view and in full front view

This displays the total motion necessary for your character to face from one direction to another. Take note of how you move your own head, or account the animal that animation is based off of. Are they quickly turning in fear? Responding to another character? Take these into account when creating these things.

3) Draw In-between Images

The turn will seem choppy and very unfinished, so draw the midpoint between the profile and full front, the three-quarter turn. Also, keep in mind the proportions of the characters and the features, as it wouldn't look good if the character didn't look consistent. 

 4) Color!

Color is key to making this character look professional. Make it a color that matches the personality of your character and make sure that it is the same for all necessary frames.

Use these resources for more info!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLbqmyE8OvE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQjfVVWk_cE

Results:

The results should be a satisfactory, flowing animation of your character turning to look at the audience from looking forward. Use these skills to help make a unique animation instead of using the same position or angle for a project. I will be using these skills to help keep my animations flowing smoothly. These will help define the movements of my character and characters I want to animate in the future.