Re-take Cubie

This time for our loverly little animated cubies we have to make them look like their having a double take (looking at an object then looking away then looking back again) the most common short film that shows this is pixars lamps! i think i counted at least 3....well anyhow i decided that i was going to try make my cubie as basic as possible, because i think i over crowded my last cubie with to many moving parts and not concentrating on the actual shock which i was aiming for, so i tried to follow the idea of hertzfeldt were he only really has one part of the object moving for instance billy's balloon were the only thing that is moving is the rattle.
so at the beginning i only had my cubie scratching his back and nothing els then only the head moved and so on.
I also wanted to practise using the same frame for instance the scratching of the back, and then turning of the head were id just  re use the last frames backwards....all i can say is its very confuzzling at times haha,
my idea of my cubies double take is that they look over their shoulder not really taking much notice then looking away then to move round again but not so much in a shocked manner but in a way that its meant to be 'wow thats not usually there' or just 'oh'..hehe ^_^
to be honest i think this is maybe my best cubie iv done, im starting to get the hang of it and im feeling a bit more relaxed. positive thinking always the way forward =]

3D bouncing balls.

My 3D bouncing balls..hmm, it was intresting im generally rubbish on computor stuff for i was never really taught it in depth at school so using maya is a whole new thing really, but its all good because theres other people who have never done it before, plus everyone is extremly helpfull! =]

Our assignment was to creat a bouncing revolving ball that had character to it!, with squash and stretch AND we had to create 2. one were it would bounce on the spot and the other to bounce whiles moving along.

i found this ok! hard at times and easish but again help was always at hand. i think the easiest was probably the none moving bouncy ball because it was all on one area and pretty standard, the next one however was a lil bit more tricky becasue theres a lot more thought in were it should bounce aswell as making sure the squash and stretch is up to standard, whiles! giving it character. I thought this was okies my only problem was the fact that on the second bounce i think it gets a bit awkward and i only just realised that i compltly forgot to rotate the ball so huge apologies for that! >.< i wasnt as satisfied with what i had completed but i made the ball bounce and move so at least i got something fairly right! =D....practising!

Emotional cubie.

The next project we had to create for 2D was to make our cubies show emotion, but not through facial expression but through body posture and movement!..exciting stuff =]

I had loads of ideas like everyone else, but in the end i started to see if i could create a cubie (the new name for my lil man figure) who acted fairly bored then heard something that shocked him but once looking round saw it as nothing really and shrugged it off.....yerrr.
when plotting out the thumbnails (i will put my thumbnails up soon for this project and the previous one but i dont have a scanner at the present time so you shall have to just wait a tad bit) i found it hard to pinpoint exactly what i wanted him to do begininng start and end but in the end i decided to start off with him admiring whats on his hands being pretty bored, then the middle part would be him in a sort of stretch from the sound (probably a thud or a loud noise which generally makes you jump a lil. then finally the un-satisfied pose were he tries to act cool about it but did get slightly shocked and is trying to shrug it off.....i did think about having him bend over slightly in the kind of pose were your trying to stop your heart from racing from the shock and catch a quick breather, but for some reason i decided not to =s but next time!
i think my final piece went a bit too quick i did try and make it move a bit slower but it seemed a bit too static! =s, but i feel fairly content with my final piece, i think i could have slowed down and emphasised the shock a bit more...but i feel it came across even if it was very minor =]

Jumping man

Our next assignment was to creat a very basic man jumping from A to B (he was to be drawn with the basic shapes of a box body and circle head, and lines as arm...no legs lol) at first i conly created 11 slides but it went by far too quickly and didnt really show the anticipation we were meant to concentrate on.

I ended up with about 18 slides which i hope showed the anticipation!

I generally was really looking forward to this animation and it was fun creating the final piece! however i dont think i did as well as i could have done with the take off and landing, so i might try it again later in my free time =]

the other animation was the football, when drawing it out something did not seem right at all, but thankfully a second year student helped me out and told me that at the begining the ball always starts off with a arch unless it is dropped vertically. after being told this i understood how to draw it out a lot better, however again i think i may have squashed the football a bit too much once it hit the ground and looks a lot more like a 'cartoon' ball but yet again it was my first time ever animating and im pretty proud of what i made and cant wait to learn how to do more =p

Bouncing football and bowling ball.

For our first 2D lesson we were told to Animate a bouncing football and a bowling ball.

At first i was pretty nervous about doing it because id never really done it before but was glad to hear that other people were in the same boat as me.

the first one i did was the bowling ball, when i was drawing this out i think i may have thought about it a bit too much for when i finished i ended up with about 37 frames and when put all together it looked a bit like a bubble floating down and nothing like a heavy object, so i decided to take out....well quite a few frames and ended up with about 12 frames. the ball still doesnt look heavy enough i think but i shall learn from my mistakes ^_^