Character Interaction Videos

 

Video footage of character interaction exercises, mostly performing tasks that require at least 2 characters.

dog animation

Cat and Dog Locomotion

A sequence of images depicting the movement of cats and dogs frame by frame.

Cat and Dog videos

I took some quick video footage of cat and dogs on my mobile phone, I'm happy that the dog video shows the dog's movement quite clearly, however the cat was quite awkward to film.

Gif animation - Bird flight cycle

Using the prior bird flight cycle drawings as reference, I composed my own quick flight cycle as a looped GIF animation. I wanted the bird to follow the flight patterns aswell, despite it being jerky, I'm happy with the wing movement - with refinement and better software I could create a smoother cycle.

Museum

 

At the Museum I observed a range of creatures - I could observe how birds and animals from all over the world vary vastly in size and anatomy in order to be suited to their environments - even animals that are closely related had slight differences due to their different habitats. No quadruped or bird is likely to move in the same fashion - I.e sloth compared to a cat. I also explored animals that fly other than birds, such as insects and bats. I looked at animal skeletons to better understand their anatomy.

Bird flight patterns

 

Looking at general flight patterns of birds and then observing how the type of bird will effect it's methods of flight and how it's wing span and shape is designed for certain effects. E.g. Seagulls have a wide wing span to allow them to glide long distances with minimal wing movement, whereas the Robin  flies short distances but has to take off and land quickly as to avoid being preyed upon.

Research videos

Silly music aside, I found these videos useful for my research into animal walk cycles and wing motion.

Web reference

I found an excellent website with video footage of various actions for animators to refer to - most importantly I found an entire section devoted to the motion of animals.    http://www.referencereference.com/

Basic animal walk cycle - quadruped

 

Sketches of various animals in motion and how they differ, followed by an example of animal walk cycles from "The animators survival kit".

Slow Motion Magpie

As it was fairly difficult to observe actions in real time, I slowed down a video I took of a magpie taking off, so that I could observe key points more easily.

Flight Video 3

seagulls taking off and landing in water

Flight video 2

video of seagull in flight

motion studies - Flight video 1

I filmed various birds during take off, landing and flight - although this proved difficult it allowed me to see the differences in flight style depending on wing span, size and breed.  

Take off, short flight and landing of a pigeon.

Maya push Final

Push pose sketches

Push Reference

Similarly to the Pull exercise, I decided to get some reference photos of people pushing.

Maya - Push 1st attempt

My first attempt at Maya - I was quite happy with the posing, but some of the movements and angles looked quite unnatural - as well as the character floating/sliding at some stages.

Pull 3

Research

Film reference

I decided that I needed to film the action to accurately animate it - film allows me to see the the movement and strain between poses.

Second test - Pull

After using reference I attempted the stop-motion exercise again - I'm happier with the composition (though the lighting is off in some frames and the camera moves slightly) and character performance in this effort, however, the rock appears to wobble too much when the character is pulling, ruining the illusion of inertia. Also, I found the leg work particularly difficult at the end of the piece and could refine it more - I think it's apparent that I became inpatient at the end at rushed the rock out of frame, which ruined the illisuion of inertia.

Reference photos

Some photos of me and Alice pulling a scarf to use as reference - I tried to make sure the poses were quite strong and exaggerated so I could easily translate them into my animations.  

First test- Pull stopmotion

This is my first attempt at depicting the puppet pulling the rock - I'm happy with the leg movement, and I think the rock does appear to have inertia - however I think there could be more in the timing and character performance.  The camera is also a little high - the composition could be improved upon.

Initial drawings - Pull

Here are some initial quick drawings of a character pulling - I wanted to depict strong poses which portrayed the weight within the rock as well as the effort from the character. I then created a rough story board.