Paper Stop Motion

In class Today I'm working on a stop motion project. We'll be working with construction paper and pins to create animatable puppets. I'll be using mine to create a quirky 10-second animation of a vicious teddy bear biting someone's head off.

To achieve this effect, I'm going to need to swap out the bear's head about 10-14 times to get it to grow and shrink (construction paper is not as malleable as clay). It's much easier to maintain proportions using this medium, but a little harder to get fluid motions, as it's restricted to what the puppet can do.

box lifting in progress

Now, after all that thought about weight in animation, it comes time to put it into practise in one of the most direct ways possible. I am now to construct a figure lifting (or pushing) a heavy box. As usual, making the key poses first proves very helpful, so getting that done first is priority. I find that timing here, in particular, is vital. Where should the character speed up? Where should he get stuck? How long? how fast will he rise? After the keys are done, I'll do some experimenting. to this purpose, I've constructed a very simple character.

Beginning study of weight

I wouldn't quite say that weight is often an important consideration within the practise of animation, but that it should always be on the animator's mind. It pervades every step of the animation process as it is what really lends that sense of believability to any animation.

 I have had to factor in weight before as part of other animation projects without even realizing, but now I will begin to look more deeply into its succesful execution. One of my first projects in this vein will be a speed project involving a simple character lifting/pushing an object. But realistic weight is not confined to interactions with heavy objects. It can and should be applied to anything that is animated, from characters to inanimate objects to the environments thereof.

Box perspective

I find myself a good way into the process of making my hopping box in perspective. Having begun by drawing out my grid and "tracks" which my box will follow (though not on the ground),

 I proceeded to map out the jump's arc for the front and back bottom edges. I used these to map out each frame of the jump. I found, in the first test, that it lacked ease-in and out, so I added that in a bit more for the second test. Ahead is the addition of squash and stretch et. al.

Run cycle: completion

As I approach the final stages of my run cycle, I'm seeing more and more how careful planning pays off. My original legs and torso, though well thought out, have a few quirks. the top of the shoulders flops back and forth in a somewhat awkrward fashion, but it's nothing I can't work with. The three-dimensionality, however, is looking better and it looks more like a proper three-quarter view. The final step that I am currently tackling is the floppy bit. I'm going to have to choose between something that flows behind the character, like this hair:

or something more rigid that follows the motion of the figure, like an antenna.

Run cycle: execution

My third blog post sees the completion of my run cycle's first pencil test. It has been quite an eye-opening experience to make the transition from theoretical study of the run cycle to the actual execution thereof. To start with, I found how the key poses radically affect the feeling and energy of the final outcome. To start with key poses makes life easier, but to start with the RIGHT key poses is what makes the work look so much better. I had to play around with them for quite some time before I found some that I felt did the job. After that, a bit of inbetweening and a little tweaking were all that was necessary. Here's the test, it's a bit of a saggy jog:

Gearing up for run cycle

This week, I began to sink my teeth into the intricacies of the run cycle. I have performed a walk cycle in the past (a rather energetic one at that), so I figured it wouldn't be so terribly different. It turns out, there are several marked differences, as well as a different overall feel. So, I'm going to outline a few of the things that stand out to me as important about the run cycle.

For starters, and as Muybridge proved with horses, a character that is running will have all (both, in the case of humans) its feet off of the ground at some point during the cycle. You could think of a humanoid run cycle as a series of leaps and bounds through the air. This gives a more frantic, energetic feel to the motion as opposed to the walk cycle, in which the character is never airborne. This guy is at the point in the air just before landing:

Another thing, the faster the character runs, the further forward he or she will lean. The above businessman, while also being restricted by his suit, probably isn't running all that fast. Someone who is really blasting off like this, however,

will have a much more dramatic tilt to the torso. This guy seems like he's just about to launch off the ground, he's leaning forward so far. This steep an angle is only really found in a full-on sprint, however, so this was a bit of an extreme example.