As of writing this, I have finally completed the idle animation project. For this project, we had to create an idle animation for an original character. The finished product depicts a turkey, named Turkey, casually looking from side to side, twitching his beak, raising a sword, and sharpening it. It includes a character and a scene from a short story I have been working on for a while which is titled “Turkey’s Odd-o-see.” The “Odd-o-see” is strange to a point where it can be described as psychedelic, which, in my opinion, would make it a perfect candidate for a video game.
Before I created the animation, I had to create the background. For the background, I used a scene from the book where Turkey was in the Arizona Desert. I put it into Adobe Animate and then began actually making the animation. I started out with him looking around. This, along with the the twitch of the beak and the raising of the sword was fairly simple. It took awhile for me to get the second wing, which holds the rock used to sharpen the sword, to raise properly. Unlike the first wing, the second wing needed to change shape slightly as it moved up. I originally tried to draw two different wings and put a tween between them. Unfortunately it didn’t work, and I was forced to do it differently. Instead of drawing separate wings, I used two versions of the same wing, though one had been stretched. I added another wing in between the first and last to make sure it stayed on the right path. In the end, it looked pretty good. I used frame by frame animation to create the sparks that come off the sword as he sharpens it. One of the most important things about idle animations is how they add depth to the character and help to illustrate their personality. Turkey himself is a fairly complex character. He is eccentric, wealthy, highly intelligent, and rather odd to the outward viewer, but, to himself, and to any associates, perfectly logical. I think I did a good job reflecting this in my animation. As he is himself, the animation can seem a little strange at first- it’s a turkey casually sharpening his sword. Still, his movements are crisp and casual- not at all wild or crazy. This shows how he knows himself to be perfectly normal. In the end, I enjoyed this project. I think I learned a lot about the process that goes into showing the personality of a character through their movements.
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Though I’m a bit behind on my final project, we are supposed to have finished animation now. Animation has been a very interesting unit. At times it has been frustrating (see my previous post for more information on that) and tedious. Still, I have enjoyed it. I always liked the finished product, and I mostly felt like all the hard work was worth it.
The first animation we did was the ball animation. In it, a ball simply bounced on the ground. Still, it took forever, as we animated it traditionally. What I mean by that is every frame was done individually. This process was extremely tedious, and took a long time. Still, I was very happy with the end result. I didn’t mind that my attempt at squash and stretch ended up making a ball that looked like jelly. The hard work I put into it made the result much more enjoyable than it would have been if it was easy to make. The second animation we did was a motion graphic. I enjoyed learning how to make motion graphics, but didn’t really put as much effort into it. It took no time compared to the ball animation. When I finished it, I didn’t feel as satisfied. This wasn’t only because it didn’t look particularly good, but it was also because I hadn’t put the same amount of time and effort as I did for the ball animation. The third animation was the infamous monster animation. I already addressed my frustrations with this in my last post. The animation was made in Adobe Animate. As I said before, I found the program to be very frustrating. There were a lot of ways in which I could make mistakes. It took a long time to finish, but when I did, I was pretty satisfied with the result. Though I’m not sure if I will pursue animation much further than I already have, I have learned a lot from it. One of the most important things I’ve learned is patience. I think that, after animation, I will appreciate projects that take less time more. In the end, I’m happy we spent this time working with animation.
In these past weeks we have been working with Adobe Animate. In that time I created the monster gif you can see above from a tutorial. I do not consider Animate to be one of my favorite programs. I encountered many frustrating problems when using it. The first was my trouble in creating shapes. The monster we were making was not made up of any common shapes, which forced me to use the pen tool. I quickly found the pen tool in Animate operated differently from the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator. The pen tool in Animate had a tendency to to create more angular shapes. This did not compliment the organic look of the monster. The pen tool also had a tendency to count lines as separate even if they were connected. Still, the pen tool wasn’t responsible for the most time consuming problems. That honour goes to the way the program operated. When I say that I don’t mean the interface or how it was organized. I didn’t really have any trouble getting used to it or figuring out how it worked. The problems arose when I made mistakes. In other programs I have used, like Photoshop and Illustrator, mistakes can be easily remedied if they happen. I cannot say the same for illustrate. There were a lot of opportunities to mess up, and when I did, it would often be a while until I noticed it. Thus, I would usually be forced to go back several steps to fix it. Luckily, I never had to restart, but I did lose a large amount of time. Most of the time I could see what I had done, but other times it seemed like the program had a mind of its own. I remember one of the eyebrows began jittering about for seemingly no reason. This forced me to do the eyebrows all over again to fix it.
In the end, my first experience with Animate was rather frustrating. Still, I ended up with a good result, and I hope to get more familiar with this program.
Idle animations have always interested me. I remember an afternoon spent discussing with a friend what the idle animations of people we knew would be if they were characters in a video game. When thinking of idle animations in games I have played, only one game comes to mind. It was this game that sparked the discussion I mentioned at the beginning of this post—Lego Dimensions. Lego Dimensions was a game that brought together many different worlds, including Batman, Lord of the Rings, Doctor Who, Back to the Future, Ghostbusters, Beetlejuice and the Lego Movie. All the characters had multiple different idle animations. They would also say different things depending on which characters were present. I loved these idle animations and sayings because most, if not all of them, were references to things in the movies or shows the characters were from. The Batman from the Lego Batman Movie would take out a guitar at times, as he played a guitar in the movie. Betelgeuse would spin his head around, which, unsurprisingly, he does in the movie. One of the more interesting characters for idle animations was the the Doctor from Doctor who. While there are currently 13 Doctors, at the time, there were only twelve. Therefore, within one character, there were twelve, and each had, not only their own way of standing, their own weapons, their own phrases, but their own idle animations. Unfortunately, I don’t remember all of them, but I do remember some. The Twelfth Doctor would occasionally take out a blackboard and write on it. The Tenth Doctor would, at times, put on 3-D glasses, or build some gadget. The idle animations were extremely important in lending a different personality to each Doctor, and beyond that, each character.
Couture, Joel. “What Makes a Great Idle Animation? Devs Share Their Favorites.” Gamasutra: The Art & Business of Making Games, UBM, 21 May 2018, gamasutra.com/view/news/318163/What_makes_a_great_idle_animation_Devs_share_their_favorites.php. Animation is a very interesting and complex art form. It requires an immense amount of work. I have had experience with animation in the past, but said experience was mostly limited to stop motion.
Stop motion animation has interested me for as long as I can remember. Several films I like utilize stop motion, whether they be animated or live action. There are many types of stop motion animation, the most popular of which may be claymation. Many of the stop motion films I like utilize complex puppets. Like any form of animation, it is extremely complicated and requires a lot of work. Unlike live action films, every scene, every shot, and every movement must be carefully pre-planned. Depending on what materials are being used, character building may end up being difficult. If the animation uses sets, they can end up being extremely complex and time-consuming to build. Lighting is extremely important. The actual shooting process involves taking pictures and slowly moving the characters, which is tedious work. Hours of work often results in only seconds of footage. While we haven’t been working with animation in DDA yet, we have acquired some skills that might help with animating. One thing that might be useful is knowledge of the production cycle, particularly pre-production phases, as planning is especially important in animation. Another is knowledge of composition and design. Photoshop and Illustrator could be used to create stills which in turn could be used to create animation. Thus, I am a little prepared for what is to come. In the end, though it will require a lot of work, I look forward to working with animation.
Maison, Jordan. “Stop Motion: A Step by Step Guide.” Videomaker, Videomaker, 3 May 2018, www.videomaker.com/article/f4/18027-stop-motion-a-step-by-step-guide. “What Is Stop Motion - Why Are Stop Motion Animation Movies so Popular..?” IKITMovie Stop Motion, IKITSystems Limited, 2018, www.ikitmovie.com/what-is-stop-motion/. |
AuthorI'm interested in film and animation. The views and opinions expressed in this blog are solely those of the author and do not represent those of Durham School of the Arts or Durham Public Schools.
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