Animation 102 Evaluation

Our task during this module was to help improve our animation skills by observing different types of actions, translating them by using resources such as bar sheets and SyncSketch and creating the animations by referencing back on the translations. The main challenge I had with this is to make the animations as accurate and fluid as possible, whilst maintaining a simplistic style and cutting time wherever I could.

My working method was quite different compared to a lot of other people in class, as it seemed that most people attempted these animations using Maya with the Buckid rig, however with my previous attempts using Maya and the rig I knew that it would take me a lot more time to finish each animation hence why I decided to do these animations in 2D instead. I definitely think that this was the best idea as not only was I getting work done a lot quicker but I was also achieving really great results as 2D was a style I was a lot more passionate for. I think animating in 2D also made translating a lot easier as I could draw each translation from SyncSketch instead of attempting to get a rig in the same pose.

To go into detail in my working method a little more, my main process was getting video footage of myself doing certain actions in relation to the task. This included things like sitting down, walking, sneaking and lifting objects up. After I got the video footage I would then e-mail the videos to myself so I could download them on my PC and upload the videos to SyncSketch where I could then move on to the translation stage. During the translation stage I would first find out each extreme point and note down what frames they were on. Next I would find the breakdown point between the two extremes and then find the in-betweens between the breakdowns and the extremes. I would also draw around my reference just so I could get an idea for what shapes I would use for when I would animate it. Once I finished translating the references I would then move into Toon Boom and have it open on one monitor whilst I had SyncSketch on the other.

I hadn't actually used Toon Boom until I started working on this module so I ended up looking at a few tutorials which gave a breakdown in how Toon Boom is used and how to get the most out of it without complicating things too much. I personally found this tutorial by Jesse J. Jones to be incredibly helpful and would advise anyone who wants to learn Toon Boom to watch it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MI65MRdKfIY

Once I learnt everything I needed to know I got started by looking at each extreme and drew them out one-by-one. Next I would fill in the breakdown poses followed by the in-betweens. This method also known as 'pose-to-pose' was the main working method I used to approach this ta

sk as it simplified each pose and made each animation look a lot cleaner than if I were to use the 'straight ahead' working method instead.

I think the main difficulty I had with this task was that a lot of the references I had weren't exactly the best, for example: in the sitting down pose it was hard to reference myself sitting down as the arm of the couch was covering my body. To overcome this I ended up just improvising the pose and seeing what worked best. Another time where this issue came in place was during my walking cycle as the table in the living room was blocking the view of where my feet were placed. To overcome this issue I ended up using an image reference to make sure I nailed the foot placements properly and ended up using the reference I had for the top half of my body instead.

Things that went well during this project would be my confidence and clear improvement on 2D animation during this task as when I started I was very unsure about everything even after watching the tutorials. I did manage to get an animation done however which led to my animations becoming a lot more polished as time went on. I think my lifting animation would be something I'm the most proud of as I had a clear structure on how I wanted to approach the animation and it ended up being one of the quickest pieces I finished due to this confidence.

One thing that didn't necessarily go as planned was when Toon Boom crashed and I ended up losing about 30 minutes of work. Luckily it didn't take too long to catch back up to where I was, however at the time this was quite frustrating and taught me to save my work as much as possible as these things happen a lot more commonly than you'd think.

I think the key things I've learnt over this task was how important the 'observe, translate, animate' working method was as I would look at my reference constantly trying to analyse where my arms and legs are placed during a frame and I can't imagine how someone would create an animation without this in mind. It definitely is something i'm going to keep using in the future not only to get better animation results but to also save time knowing I have the confidence on what I'm drawing.

If I had more time with this project I would definitely try and get better references which had a better exaggeration of each action. The references I used I definitely wouldn't classify as professional, however I think with a good enough setup I would love to put the effort in a bit more and get some clearer videos of the actions.