Character & Narrative: Week Nine: 20th - 26th November 2017

Shot 19. The 360 spin. This shot is at the major dramatic climax of the animation, which is very important. It is the most complex shot we are doing, as to why it is my only focus for this week.

I created a 3D reference using Moom in maya since this shot would have been too complex to attempt without some form of reference like this. The camera movement is the main point of this shot so it was very important that I got this correct. 

I imported this into Photoshop and started roughly sketching over the top to change some proportions (like the head). I only did this every 8 frames so that I could save time and then just do inbetweens later. This still took a long time however and even with the reference, it still proved difficult to continually understand the way he was turning, hence I fell behind schedule and was still working on sketches after Sunday.

Character & Narrative: Week Eight: 13th - 19th November 2017

This week was Manchester Animation Festival so I specifically scheduled in less work for all three of us, knowing that we wouldn't be getting much done. Therefore, I had one shot to complete this week, a rather simple one, where the camera only zooms out from the gnome and he doesn't actually move all that much. I only got to work on this on the friday, but I finished the sketches and linework for the two main keyframes. It was hard to get the angle looking right with this shot because of how high the angle is. When inbetweens come, it will slow and smooth this motion a bit, and it can then be duplicated and flipped to make him look back to the beginning.

I feel like I am slightly behind after this week but really when I think about it, I am still on track, since we specifically scheduled just keyframes to be done in these weeks, and because I did the inbetweens for the first few shots, we are actually ahead. I am anxious about this next week however, because I have the 360 rotation shot to do. I have to finish my Maya reference using the Moom model to help me keep the angle consistent. 

Study Task: Strike a Pose

I tried to chose 5 poses that were rather varied in pose potential. I chose:

• Fear
• Awe
• Tiredness
• Pride
• Cruelty

I really enjoyed playing with the moom figure and it was much easier to control than I expected and therefore didn't take as long to do as anticipated. 

From using Moom in this task, we have decided to use this to aid us in creating our 360 spin shot. I plan to use moom as reference to draw over. 

Character & Narrative: Week Seven: 6th - 12th November 2017

This week I had to get shot 4 and 11 keyframes done. Surprisingly enough, I found shot 11 the harder of the two since it is a much more close up shot, meaning I have to be much more precise with my lines to keep it consistent in details. I spent a lot of time sketching this shot to make sure I got the facial expressions right so that they would clearly illustrate what the gnome is really feeling. I did use reference footage to get the basic idea, but I exaggerated and changed details quite a bit from it. This shot is left with many more inbetweens to be done to smooth his motion.

Shot 4 wasn't as hard as I expected it to be. I filmed reference footage of me slowing to a stop and synced that up to the shot. I drew my keyframes based on the contact frames of the video but changing the angle slightly to get it to work with the background. From here I ended up doing most of the inbetweens at the same time since I was getting carried away with this shot. I'm really happy with this shot imparticularly and I am excited to see it finished with all inbetweens done. 

Character & Narrative: Week Six: 30th October - 5th November 2017

This week I had two shots to animate. I think that having the schedule is really helping me plan and see what I should be doing, and will easily tell me when I am running behind on our plan. 

I finished the first shot very fast as it was only a foot with rather simple movement. This was a good one to start with to get me back into the mood of animating. Since it was such a simple shot I decided to do the inbetweens at the same time. 

My second shot was shot 3. This took much longer since it was a more action based shot, with full body running. Not only that, but it was from the front and from a low angle, making it even harder to draw. I took reference video of me running to try to understand the difficult angle however my first sketches looked very off. He looked as if he was more hopping from side to side than running. 

I asked for feedback from multiple sources and then changed a few key things. I redrew the arms on every frame to make it swing much more. This really helped sell the weight of him pulling himself along. I made his body twist a bit more with these more drastic arm movements. I then also changed the feet so that for 1 frame of the cycle, the under sole can be seen. These changes really did so much to fix this shot. After I had drawn over these sketches with the linework and done the inbetweens, I then added the subtle squash and stretch in the bounce of his steps by resizing the frame. 

I am really happy with the result of this shot especially because it was really frustrating me when it was not working.