Thank you to my mentor Ben Ridgway

View his art blog at benridgway.com

Ben was a fantastic mentor. He guided me through all of the most basic and most foundational animation principles such as timing, key frames, weight balance, and much more ever since the first day of meeting him. He was supportive of my work and he encouraged me to use my own creativity and go outside of my comfort zone with this project, and provided great help when I needed it. On the other hand, he is an amazing artist, animator and film-maker who creates beautiful films and artwork in his spare time when he's not teaching students at San Francisco State. His style of art will definitely have an influence on my future artwork.

Last time meeting with Ben and final animation reel

I met with Ben today to discuss and view my animated short. He said it looked good, just to eventually clean up the lines sometime. It would also be good, he says, to increase the time before the person reacts to what's in front of him. It seems that when he looks up, he reacts too soon. Although, he liked it and said I did a good job.

I also composed and edited a final animation portfolio to show Ben. This final reel composes of all of the work I had done with him these past two months. All the way starting with the ball bounce, leaf drop, walk cycle, baseball pitch, run cycle, and my animated short.

Ben said I got a lot of work done and it looks great when it is composed into this final portfolio. Since this is the last time I met with Ben today, we talked about quite a few things. I especially thanked him for the time he put in for my project and everything he has helped me with learning about this topic. He also signed my final Mentor Evaluation paper.

Note: This Animation Portfolio is unfinished as of 12/10/2013

Short: Unfinished

My finished animated short for now. I have not gotten much time to finish cleaning up the drawings or making some in betweens, but this is definitely good enough for now. I can always fix it up before time for my presentation.

Some thoughts about this short:
I feel pretty good about this animated short. It definitely incorporates the principles that I have learned with Ben; squash and stretch, run cycle, anticipation, and a walk cycle. The only thing is that I finally integrated some sort of style into this one which is what I'm most happy with. I also felt I did well with the anticipation and his reaction. The run cycle looked pretty smooth as well, as it was shot in ones.

You may also see that I played around with a little music and sound effects in this short, to make it a little more cinematic.

One problem I had with this short was the character-walk and the run cycle. For both, it was a little weird to actually have the character walk from point A to B. I also made the person walk as if they were a "cool-guy" in which I had to reference myself.

Time logged for this session: 6.0 Hours
Total time logged: 51.75 Hours

Short: 2nd Half Key-Frame Process

Produced the key frames from when he lands back onto the ground and begins running. He is running in place, and will run out fast to the right as an anticipation in the end.

Short: First Half Key-Frame Process

Finished the first half of the keyframes process for my animated short.

You can see there's a little bit of a character walk, as the person is walking like a "cool-guy" which I put to add some style and character. He begins to look up, and is shocked by something he sees ahead of him. You can definitely see the use of squash and stretch, as well as anticipation in this moment. I squash his body when he anticipates the scream, and stretch him as he flies up into the air.

One of the tricky aspects of this walk cycle was the movement of the shoulders/arms. The arms didn't move too much, but it was difficult to comprehend the angles of the elbows as he took each step.

I will work more tonight to turn his body around and have him run back in fear. Instead of regularly having him run backwards, I think I will urn his body in mid air with him running in place for awhile, and then zoom off out of the screen.

Time logged for this session: 3.0 Hours
Total time logged: 45.75 Hours

Short film ideas

Storyline:
My short film will be based on anticipation. I will have a guy casually walking into the screen looking down at his feet. Once he looks up, he sees something that shocks him and he runs away.
Principles:
The main animation principles that will take place in this short are anticipation and squash and stretch, and staging & exaggeration as well.
Concept Art:
For the stylistic aspects of this short, my character will be inspired by the cover of Hip-Hop Artist Nujabes' album, "Impression"

At the moment that my character looks up and sees something shocking, the animation style will be inspired by the a scene in the Looney Tunes short film, "The Flying Hare"

Met with Ben today to discuss my animated-short

Today I met with Ben at his office to discuss my animated short. He said it was alright and that some things were confusing to him and that it can use a lot of revising. I realized that my short-film didn't exactly have any "life" to it as it does not portray many well done animation principles. My short film frustrated me and I'm pretty sure I bit off much more than I can chew. For example, my perspectives were weird, my timing was off, and there was hardly any squash and stretch or anticipation of any sort. The tiptoe also does not look like it was done very well.

This led us to the point where we will create a new short-film. Ben suggested me to do something much shorter and simpler, one that shows the animation principles more than a detailed storyline. It will be good if I just come up with a small scene with an anticipation. A small short that's done very well is much better and rewarding than a longer film that was not executed well.

Ben also suggested that since I have the basic animation principles set in stone, that I should start coming up with my own style of art in my animations. This is very true, the fact that my clips have had almost no unique style to them whatsoever has bothered me. One of the greatest factors in animation is the artist's sense of style, which is something I am lacking. It seems that I was too caught up with the motion and getting it to look good and realistic that I had not paid enough attention to create the "magic" in the animation.

When I left Ben's office, I felt really good and refreshed. This short has been bothering me and I knew it wasn't going very well, and it feels really good to be refreshed in my mind. I will have to come up with new ideas for this short.

Ben will be going on Winter Break soon, so the next Tuesday will be the last time I meet with him, which should conclude my physical project. I will do all of the work I possibly can to finish this animated short by the time I see Ben next week.

Time logged for this session: 0.5 Hours
Total Time Logged: 41.75 Hours

Animating the first scene of the short-film

This first scene composes of Jim looking at the camera, coming out of the ceiling with a rope and tip toeing to the treasure chest.

This was my first try at this scene.

As you can see, I experimented with a background, to save time from drawing that chest through every frame. What I did was I drew the background with tracing paper and animated on regular paper. When I scanned each frame, I scanned it with the tracing paper under the actual paper, to layer them on each other in the frame.

There were a couple things I noticed in this. When Jim looks at the camera up front, theres absolutely no easing. So I needed to fix the timing.

Theres nothing much wrong with when he comes off the ceiling.

The tiptoe sequence was generally easy except for when he turns toward the chest. However, I noticed that since the chest is at a short distance, a fast-tiptoe sequence may be better.

My second try at going about this scene

I fixed the timing of when Jim looks at the camera to make it look smoother

I also converted the sequence into a fast-tiptoe sequence. It was pretty weird, and I may need to revise it as he looks like as spider and his body isnt moving up and down.

I am also going to want to add more in-betweens when he gets off of the rope. It's a little too fast.

I also added some parts where Jim is looking around to make sure he's safe, to add a bit more character.

Time Logged for this session: 7.0 Hours
Total Time Logged: 41.25 Hours