Michael our tutor had shared this video and I found it very interesting and appropriate. Miyazaki is my favourite animator and through his passion and zeal for life he creates breath-taking animations. I agree with Miyazki’s view on artifical intelligence creating animations, theres no life nor any point. Wouldn’t animators lose jobs if this were to take over in the future? Link to original page here.
Category: Research
PechaKucha Research
Researching what the definition of Pecha Kucha, was simple enough. The hard part will be finding strong content to show and having something interesting to say.
This website ‘PechaKucha.org‘ had everything we needed to know, including great examples of Pecha kucha’s relating to art and pointers on how to keep things clean and precise etc. The format is also simple, 20 slides lasting 20 seconds each, set an automatic timer for between each slide and your good to go!
This is a good example below, although the sound quality is poor the spoken content is compelling.
Ub Iwerks – Research
For our pecha kucha presentation my group was given Ub Iwerks…what a man.
Ub Iwerks was a man of innovation who is often overlooked and forgotten when it comes to Walt Disney’s success. Iwerks is responisble for the use of the ‘squash and stretch’ technique used in animation, he was also a genius inventor; being the first to develop the sodium vapor process which allows live action and animation to be seen simulatenously.
The sodium vapor technique was used extesively in Mary Poppins (images above) and later in other classics such as, Song of the South, Petes Dragon, Bedknobs and Broomsticks.
“The Hand Behind the Mouse” is a book written by Iwerks granddaughter, Leslie Iwerks. It details some of his personal life but the main focus is on his work as an animator and inventor. Most information we had gathered from documentaries can be found in this book which led us to believe the documentation research might have mainly been taken from this source.
Above presents Iwerks animation which holds the title of being the first animated cartoon with both sound and colour. Iwerks had produced this piece whilst running his own ‘Iwerks’ studio.
A list of his inventions have been published above in the same book, (cited below).
Due to his influence on the aniamtion industry, much homage has been paid to his name.
In ‘The Simpsons’ episode named ‘The day the violence died’, Ub Iwerks story is portrayed through the character of a ‘bum’ who was origianlly the main creator of Itchy the mouse. From the still above you can decipher your own take on their view of the happenings between Disney and Iwerks.
Above is an image of the character Doctor UB’x which DC Comics created in honour of Iwerks in 1986.
Iwerks, L. and Kenworthy, J. (2001). The hand behind the mouse. 1st ed. New York: Disney Editions.
Bouncing Balls – Reference for Maya
I had purchased this Cartoon Animation book off amazon and it has got good content in it! It’s quite old fashioned, but the older techniques are still used today, even if todays style has changed. One page had a little about the bouncing ball, it was useful seeing how they brought this movement to their characters.
We have been given the task to animate a tennis, bowling and rubber ball in Maya. Some quick reference videos found online displayed below.
Graph of bouncing ball
Link to page where I found this graph. Mystery of the bouncing ball. It backed up the little sketchy graphs I had drawn whilst watching reference videos. The time between each bounce gradually gets faster whilst the height halves. Pretty simple, but I ain’t good at maths. 😛
Drawing the Human Figure – Research
I have been researching into how to correctly measure human proportions as it is something I struggle with when drawing from imagination. I have some images below which I have taken from a great tutorial page on the subject. Here is a link to the page : Drawing Human Figures in CorrectProportions
Best thing I have found related to the subject online. It brings in a lot of what Michael has been showing us in class; especially the topics on perspective.
This image below is taken from an amazing book named ‘Figure Drawing For All It’s Worth’ by Andrew Loomis (first published 1943) This is very clear, precise teaching in relation to drawing the figure in perspective, something a lot of beginning artists can struggle with; especially me!
There is also a free online PDF file available here, for anyone wanting to take a look at the whole book. 🙂 Enjoy!
Drawing the Human Figure: Getting the Proportions Right : Heres another link to a useful article I found in relation to drawing the human proportions correctly; simple and precise.
The Vitruvian Man – Leonardo Da Vinci
“This Leonardo Da Vinci drawing is accompanied by notes that give a series of ideal measurements for the human body, based on the Roman architect Vitruvius works. For example:
- The length of the outspread arms is equal to the height of a man, hence the square that surrounds the figure.
- The length of the hand is one-tenth of the height of a man.” – excerpt from ‘Drawing the Human Figure: Getting the Proportions Right’ (Link can be found above)
Animatic Research
I feel a successful animatic should have fluid movement between scenes, as in one scene leads nicely to the next; whilst making sense. The viewer needs to understand what is going on or else there is no point. I think 30 seconds or even less is enough time to provoke a reaction/emotion from the viewer, this is something I would be aiming for in an animatic.
A tutorial video I have found below, was helpful.
The band Gorillaz have some good animatics that have been produced for their music videos. These animatics are perfectly timed and present clear ideas/storylines. This is something I feel can be achieved even within the space of 30 secs. The video won’t allow for embedding so here is a link. 🙂
Hellman’s have an advert out which kind of combines 2D and 3D animatic approaches. This is the best video I could find online .
Animatic Ideas
The concept of the world : invading race, poach these beautiful/strange sea creatures for their mechanical parts/luminescent skins/pearls/jewels etc… This race have built underwater bases for themselves which are contained within a dome. A lot of creative ideas can come from this.
For our animatic I had an idea of timing it to the sound of a heartbeat. In terms of timing I thought it might be nice to play about with the amount of frames shown per second. At the beginning it could be time to 1 frame a second and once the action kicks off it would then speed up along with the heartbeat and relax again near the end.
Heartbeat soundtrack below.
I found this game trailer video which went along to the ticking of a clock, similar to what i had been thinking of.
After some discussion with Lydia we came up with a solid concept for the 30secs, she also liked the idea of having it play to a heartbeat but also wanted some music. I have started to roughly sketch the beginning out in Adobe Flash, keeping in mind how many seconds can be used for the initial build up- the action- the end.
