#reference photos are tricky since I start comparing my drawing to them and it never ends well

[lov-illust]

Spikes

Photo reference by Outi Neuvonen

[sleepy-ki-blog]

Evaluation

My focus in animation 102 was always going to be stop motion. Animation 101 helped me realise that Maya and I just don’t click or get along and I’ve still being trying to get a grips on Toon Boom, having left it alone for a period of time meant I’d essentially forgotten how to use it; Intro to the Making Of helped me reintroduce myself though. Kick-starting the module off with looking at posture and body language was definitely interesting – it’s something I enjoy – so it was nice to have a lesson on internal and external displays of emotion depending on if they’re more introverted or extroverted. The drawing exercise was fun too; I want to work more on dynamic poses and silhouettes as a 2D artist so body language is important in that. Because it was for the purpose of an armature exercise the drawings didn’t need to be too anatomically correct as they’d be translated into that and Buckid on Maya.

Using Buckid was a test and a half. As I’m not great at Maya as is, learning rigging was tricky and took explanations from James until I understood how it worked. And it was still a bit of a nightmare even just making still poses of him. Because he has a cartoony and simple silhouette (big head, small body, hands are like mittens so no fingers, big feet) translating the posture drawings I did onto him took a bit of interpretation (especially because his legs were quite limited due to the small length). But it was actually a fun experience and I ended up with some good photos of him and honestly, I was quite proud of them? Animating in Maya may be difficult and if I were to do stills again I’d probably need a reintroduction to how the rigging works but the end results this time around didn’t turn out too horrible. I even managed to slide in a little fun pose before the lesson ended once I’d gotten the hang of it. Classmates helped me out with the rigging and using the programme too which was super helpful, it made the lesson fun and we made Buckid dab and all those good memes which really helped me feel more comfortable in class too?

Regarding the armatures. Using them for the first time was difficult as I wasn’t used to moving something so stiff around. Also the anatomy is very lanky – long legs and arms – so the arms never seemed to sit right on screen. I also couldn’t put it in some of the poses I’d done (like the ‘hopeful’ pose) because it wouldn’t balance on its heels with just the use of the magnets. If I wanted to replicate it properly I’d probably need to use a rig. Armatures seems easy enough to use at this point though, if not a tad fiddly if the joints were too loose or stiff; the ankle joints and wrists were usually floppy and limp so posing them was a bit of a pain. Also I still think they look super weird with just the neck and no head representation so I ended up using the neck stick as a way of improvising where the head would be so they’re not very anatomically correct in the pictures.

 This semester was super bumpy in work motivation. My depression acted up right before strikes (which sucked super bad because unless I have to be in I have no motivation to come into university and since lecturers weren’t in for like three weeks I just had no energy to do any work) and then Easter break followed right after. So for around 8 weeks I just did absolutely nothing which knocked me way back on the module schedule and because Script to Screen was so big and I had to prioritise it over my other modules which meant animation 102 and animation context had to be done very last minute.

Using the poses we originally drew up and translated onto armatures and Buckid, we had to pick opposing emotions (like happy, sad or angry, shy) to do a pose to pose animation. Because Maya is my mortal enemy, I decided to do it in stop motion (I’m still stupid slow in Toon Boom and was running out of time so stop motion was kind of my only option). I picked confident and timid to do. Had my friend Slime be my reference for it (they didn’t know what to do too well so when I animated it was more like taking snippets from the original video). One thing I discovered a lot with this particular animation is that armatures look very different in person compared to on camera. Particularly the breastplates. If the armatures torso is leaning forwards or backwards then the breastplate looks very odd, almost squashed rather than at an angle which means that it can be hard to interpret the angle that it’s actually positioned in. But in person it looks perfectly fine. I’m not sure if it’s the angle it’s positioned at on screen, or the lighting shining off the metal or something else. It would probably look better with a skin or model around it to give it more dimension and shape.

In sit to stand I encountered the same issue of the armature looking different on camera than in person. It was probably the angle I was working at when moving it – since I worked on it from the side rather than in front to avoid knocking the camera. The animation (well all of them) is very clunky and when it sits back down, because it leans forward and is also facing the camera, the armature ends up looking like a complicated clump of metal before it gets to the ground rather than actual limbs and parts. The spine is lost behind the breastplate and you can’t see the neck, the arms aren’t really identifiable nor are the hips. And the breastplate (again) looks very flat when it’s angled. Also, I tried following the reference video as much as possible but soon came to realise that it would be impossible to get the armature to cross its legs due to how they’re shaped and how the joints work. They’re also too short compared to the arms which means that any animating with the arms looks rather strange in comparison to the rest of the body, like when the hands are on the hips they look ridiculously long and stick out too far.

So, walk cycles are more difficult than I anticipated. Again, I tried following the reference video but apparently I don’t have a knack for timing. I was thinking of working it like a 2D animation (my first mistake) so that was more what each frame would look like rather than trying to make it fluid at a 25fps rate. The armature ended up slouching by the end due to me over doing it on the spine movement (you lower your head at certain points when walking) and I forgot to bring the head back up to its original position each time (instead it just ended up getting lower and lower). The animation is clunky and I’d have liked to redo it or maybe try it in Toon Boom but as previously mentioned I was on a rather tight schedule and did all of these animations overnight and the stop motion room is really effective in bringing out my stress what with the hot lights and confined space.

The sneak is possibly the animation I’m most proud of. Just because it fits to the original reference video the best and is actually fairly smooth. I didn’t have to move the arms at all, and only had to make the torso bob down slightly. I did encounter and issue with the legs again (it wasn’t as prominent during the walk cycle) as they aren’t very flexible and don’t allow for any movement above the pelvic plate. So moving a crouched character was a challenge as the legs could only go so high which resulted in shorter steps because the foot couldn’t really get off the ground and move forward very far before it was down again. I tried adding comedy of being caught in at the end to cut it off quicker because it would take very long to finish such a slow moving character all the way across the screen with the restriction posed. I personally think it worked quite well. A rig would have most likely been the best choice for this animation because it would allow me to put the armature on its toes and allow for more leg movement directly below the pelvis.

 To conclude, my time management definitely needs to improve and putting in a reasonable adjustment plan in place would be wise to counteract my depressive episodes and deadline issues. Script to Screen was far too big of a module to just be one semester long (in my opinion) and having all the modules on the same day meant my prioritising was based more on workload and motivation than anything else. I would also like to improve on my stop motion skills and become more acquainted with Toon Boom.