Monday, August 6, 2007

Animation Course Level 1, Lesson 1

I did an animation lesson of Johnk K.

I used trace paper (I hadn't enough paper for the last frames).
I made some mistakes, the biggest is that on each frame I made the character a bit smaller... On the end the character was really smaller then in the first frame. Argh!!


Click here to see my shot
1.0 See below for new version

#EDIT#
I did make a new version (with the frames I drew in the last shot), I used this time 24 fps and I used drawings (starts from frame 34) to repeat the cycle.
Only now my problem of it is getting smaller is now more visible...
New version 2.0

the original version

Please tell me what you think of my attempt to animation :) I need to learn alot and feedback would really help me.

Should I use a computer program to make the next animation? Or should I use normal paper?

9 comments:

Brad said...

Your animation looks great. So you used tracing paper for the drawings, and then how did you animate it? I'm guessing you took digital pictures but what program did you use to make it move?

Mitch Leeuwe said...

Thanks Brad.

I used the tracing paper for reference for the frame I drew before. I only forget to look at the first frame I drew, because of that the last frame looks a bid different.

I used a digital cam on a statif. I used the red pencil to get the position good on a white paper under the drawings. And then used photoshop action to crop and rezise the images automatic and then I imported it in flash and after that exported it in flash to a quicktime file.

Ryan G. said...

Hey Mitch. Great go at the Bosko animation. I think its got great movement. I also think its a little slow. You have 38 drawings in your pencil test. In the original, Bosko waves his arms 3 times.. It looks like a cycle with 12 drawings. So.. I guess what im saying is make him go through one cycle in 12 drawings (shot on 2's), and I think that will get the timing down to the original. Well keep up the animating, you have some other really great stuff here! Later

Mitch Leeuwe said...

THNKS Ryan,

I used 12fps and now grade it up to 24fps. I used that cycle you mentiont.
The timing is now better I only didn't draw enough frames to cover the end and you now see my mistake even more (see the jump between 34 & 12).

I need to work on that. I need to check more when I am drawing, so the overall whil be better.

Matt Greenwood said...

Hey, thanks for the comment!
I definitely have that problem where the character ends up bigger than he was. Who'd have thought it'd be so tough controlling these simplistic forms.

Yours is looking great!

Ryan G. said...

Hey Mitch! Your 2nd version is such a great improvement! I dont know if you drew out the keyframes, or just animated straight ahead, but drawing out your keyframes first and then inbetweening them will help keep the proportions consistent(if you're having trouble with proportions getting bigger.) As far as using paper or computer for pencil tests go, just use what is faster, and for a final version, maybe scan your drawings into a software program. Keep up the goodness bro!

Mitch Leeuwe said...

Thnx :)

I didn't draw any new frames for the second try.

Yeah I animate straight ahead. Pose to pose seems diffucult for me, but im going to try that one time.

I am now making a whole new attempt, just a couple more frames and I can digitalize that, I think the propotions in that version whil be alot better. But scanning al frames on my scanner while take alooooottttt of time...

Animating cost so many timeeeeeee. But it's alot of fun :)

Maybe I whill use a digital animating program to make the next animation, altough I like to draw with just a pencil.

Ryan G. said...

I just downloaded that clip and really analyzed it Mitch. It looks like there are more than 12 frames per cycle. I just sort of counted while his arms were swinging and it ended up being 3 seconds. You have all the right drawings it looks like, the first one was just a little slow. Im gunna give it a try here soon.. later bro.

Mitch Leeuwe said...

I made a new one, I am upoading that one right now.

Hmm I'm going to check that cycle.
I use flash to make the .mov, sometimes it doesn't work right (darn flash). I need to use a better programm for that.

Thnks for checking!