Responsive - LoopDeLoop

Loop De Loop is a monthly animation competition based around a looping 10 second video. Im going to try to finish a few of these if I'm able. I will update this as I go Along.

I figured out what to do with the loop de loop animation. The word for February is Tumble. I made a character in my sketchbook that I'm going to end up using. Its a fat cat. I want him to swat at a fish, causing him to roll foreword and back into sitting position. Heres some drawings of him.

I want this cat to have some really good secondary motion, so I have to make sure I animate it properly. I mocked up a short storyboard for it. Since it's only 10 seconds long I don't really need to animate much, but what I do animate I have to animate it as well as possible.

Over the course of the past two weeks I've completed my Loop De Loop animation. I used Photoshop to separately draw the cat, the fish toy, and the background, and then I put all of it together onto an After Effects file. Then I exported it to Premiere Pro, and used Adobe Audition to put together a basic sound file for the animation.  At first I used a recording of Mel Brooks doing a yelling cat impression, but after a few people told me it was too jarring I opted to use a thumping sound as the cat tumbles foreword.

Heres the video:

Lip Sync Induction

Yesterday we were given a tutorial about how to lip sync audio to lips and expressions. He gave us a set of simplified mouth formations and told us to sync up a set of audio that we can choose. He told us it would be extra points for making it rude. I wanted to do something that would be notoriously difficult, so I went with a metal song by Nekrogoblikon. Its called Prince of the Land of Stench. Its based on a line from Labyrinth, the 80's movie with David Bowie in it.

This is what it ended up becoming.

Animation Production Pt.1

I started working on the production of the animation today. I've been tasked with making scenes one and three as well as the outro to the animation. I started with scene one since we've got some cutouts of trees. The first part is a parallax shot going across a forest. Callum asked for the trees to sway slightly in the wind so I'll work on that the next chance I get. Other than that both my instructor and teammates have said it looks good.

Animation Research Pt.4 - Kurzgesagt

Another Person my classmates told me to look at was Kurzgesagt, a youtube animator. His style is heavily reliant on the use of graphics and smooth animations. Here is his youtube channel. He doesn't seem to be using any paper at all in his animations, they seem to be entirely digital. My partners might want me to think more in the terms of techniques though, so in terms of that his stuff is very fluid and i guess thats the type of animation my classmates want me to do.

Animation Pre-Production Pt.3

Callum and Joe have produced some Cutouts that are going to be used in the animating process.

They all generally look something like this with a few different designs in between. Callum wanted me to make them move in the wind using some method so I'm looking into how I can do that. They're planning to make more cutouts for the different scenes, since its not all going to be trees. I'm looking foreword to see how the other cutouts will look.

Animation Research Pt.3 - Maude White

Joe linked me to an artist that works with different kinds of paper. Her name is Maude White.

Her art consists of very delicate hand cut paper sculptures of various different natural things. Since we're going to be using paper cutting in our animation It's important to research these kinds of artists so it can give us insight into how they work and what kinds of methods they use. As far as I can tell she uses her hands to cut these. However, Joe and Callum expressed interest in using a laser cutter for this process to make it go by faster. I hope that quality control is important to them, since I won't be involved in the Pre-Production Stages of this project.

Animation Post-Production Pt.3

Its been a few weeks and I've had no response from my London friend, so that's gone out the window by now. My other friend said hes been having trouble finding a piano to work on but hes gotten a general idea down for how he wants it though so there's progress at least. Other than that there hasn't been much to do regarding post production.

Animation Research Pt.2

Callum linked me to this video about Syria to help me get a better idea of what he wants our animation to look like

The animation is about how Syria got into the situation its in Today in an animation format. He told me he wants the animation to look like its made out of paper and that him and Joe will be scanning in cutouts of images for the animation. I find the video fascinating in the way its animated. All of it seems to be going through a dirty filter, which I think is what makes it look like its on paper. I want to see what the difference is between using real and fake paper in this type of animation.

Responsive - Gold Panda International Art Contest

For this brief, I'm going to be making 4 illustrations of Son Wukong, the main character from Journey to the West. Each one is going to be in a distinct style.


Or it was going to be. Until I messed up and didn't finish all 4 pieces before the 31st. Which was the deadline. I had a lot of trouble motivating myself to come into school to work on it and I didn't have a tablet at home. By the end of the second week of the self induced study time i finally went in and started working on it. Ive had trouble getting into the workflow after getting back from winter break. Im going to need to push myself harder so that I can make up the work time I've wiled away.
Heres the images I did finish, and the sketches of the other two I was supposed to.