In essence, this animation course has taught me much about digital animation and I have no qualms about the fact that I will continue to do as such, hopefully to learn more in order to create more complex, natural and smooth animations, albeit the fact that I’ll probably not be using the TAB but rather FLASH or other easier animation software that might be up on the Net.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
A Twist of Fate / Final Group Project
10. Group Project – Jacky
This was the major project of our attachment, and one of the modes of assessments critical for our grading as well. We were put into groups, and my group consisted of Melissa, Melvin, and myself. Mr. Ahmad then explained to us the basic frame work of a short animation like the ones he had been showing us in class as well as the other requirements for the project.
The requirements are as follows:
- Short film with a little more complicated story line then just stomping/walking
o Concept of storyboarding and model sheets
o 45-80 secs
- Act 1
o Introduce the characters and setting
o Open with establishment shot (of scene and character)
o Character can be doing something (eg: walking, drinking tea)
- Act 2
o Character encounters conflict/obstacle.
o Something that causes the character to change what he's doing
- Act 3
o Resolution
o Does the conflict get resolved?
o How is it resolved?
Initially, we thought of quite a few plots to base our clip on; however those were quickly discarded as they were either too simplistic or too complicated. Finally, we settled on a storyline where a boy watches a super hero cartoon and starts to experiment with chemicals in his lab, when suddenly his concoction explodes and afterwards he turns bald, but discover that he has superpowers – the power of flight/levitation and superhuman strength.
He then begins to lust for money, and using his superpowers, goes to rob the National Bank. The police come after him, but they react a little too late, he flies off into the air with the moneybags. However, as the famous proverb goes ‘the good will always triumph over evil’, and he meets his unfortunate end when he is happily gloating over his success and does not look where he is headed, consequently flying into the flight path of an airplane and getting sucked into its engine turbine.
We planned out the rough storyline, which has been reproduced and included behind this journal as well, as well as the rough storyboard. After finalizing our storyboards and plot, I started working on crafting our character, which we named ‘Jacky’. A few ruffs of certain key scenes in the storyboard plus model sheets and action poses of Jacky (before and after the explosion) have also been included, in addition to a second character that I had initially created but one which we had decided not to use.
Other sketches like a ruff of the character’s walk cycle have also been added in, before I started to transfer and touch up Jacky on the TAB software. Meanwhile, Melvin and Melissa started working on the backgrounds of each scene, while I drew out the different poses of Jacky and added them into each scene after they were done. The most complicated and tedious thing about the whole process was actually putting the entire clip together, since we realised that they keys we used to position certain backdrops were not locked onto the frames and we had no way of doing so as well, hence we had to manually shift them every time we moved a frame or level of animation.
Another issue was the arrangement of frames. While arranging the backdrops, we had forgotten to add in extra clean frames so that the animation would be smooth flowing, hence creating more trouble for ourselves when we wanted to add in more frames, having to shift all 16 or 17 levels one by one and then repositioning the keys and running though the animation over and over to make sure that we had gotten the placing of each key right.
Yet another complication to the Jacky project was that I could not always reproduce the exact same face for Jacky, and I think that the changes in his facial features were quite prominent in the clip. You see, I am more of a still picture cartoonist. I may have a slight flair for drawing stills, but when it comes to reproducing the same face or picture over and over, therein lays my weakness. No matter how much I try to redraw Jacky’s face or a certain body posture of his, it comes out different each time, which frustrated me to no end, since consistency of the character was one of the basic principles of animation, be it digital or traditional, two dimensional or three dimensional.
Nevertheless, we managed to complete the clip even though we had some problems with the exporting, and then we submitted it to Mr. Ahmad before finally washing our hands off of the TAB software. I think that over the last three weeks, most of us had countless complaints and bones to pick with the software, which we felt was quite a pain to animate on as compared to FLASH(for those of us who had tried our hand at FLASH animations anyway).
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Walk cycle + Character + Multiplane effect
9. Multiplane Camera
I had already used this effect in my previous animation coined ‘Animal Cruelty’, but at the time I did not know that it was termed as such. I had used the tool to move the bus across the screen and the nymph as well. In the lesson where Mr. Ahmad touched on this tool, he showed us a clip of how traditional animators from Disney invented such a tool to create the effect of the background moving in a certain direction.
Cartoonists first drew the different layers of grounds on paper, before artists transfer these drawings onto glass sheets and colour them in as well. These planes of glass are then mounted on a contraption that had rotating handles to move the different layers (up to seven layers), and then shot under a vertical and moveable camera, hence creating a three dimensional effect due to an illusion of depth by having the layers of artwork moving at different speeds – the further away from the camera, the slower the speed. The multiplane effect is otherwise known as a parallax process.
Our subsequent task after mastering this effect was to put our character with its stationary walk cycle in, so that combined with the multiplane effect, it would give viewers an illusion that our character was actually walking across the screen. However, I experienced some troubles. Everytime I attempted to open the file that I had saved of my walk cycle, my tablet would hang, and even crash, countless times. Frustrated, I decided to redraw the entire walk cycle with a new character. After that, everything went quite smoothly and I managed to complete the multiplane with no further disruptions.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Animal Cruelty / Stomping
8. Stomping
Once done with the walk cycle and the basics of picking up an item, we moved on to ‘stomping’. For me, stomping was much easier to manage than the walk cycle, especially after all the ruffs’ that I had drawn; I could compare and roughly estimate how high the character’s knee should be lifted. The only issue with the character was the positioning of the motion arc and how far back the character should lean and compress so as to create a stomping effect, to include some impact when the foot stomps down without drawing any impact lines.
We were then told that we were required to create another short ‘storyline’ out of the stomping character. The plot I crafted for this animation I called ‘Animal Cruelty’ was simple – the character was waiting at the bus stop, and got bored. The bus came and passed, but it was not the one he was waiting for, and impatiently he started whistling and tapping his feet. Meanwhile, a nymph runs out from the right side of the scene, and the character shows signs of shock, before raising his foot to stomp on the nymph and in the process killing it.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Walk Cycle / Walking Chibi
6. Walk Cycle
During class, we started on the next exercise, which was a ‘walk cycle’, one where the character walks on the spot. We were to design our own characters, as long as it was not a stick person and have arms and legs of flesh, so as to raise the standards of our animation. However, in class, we first started out with drawing stick figures, just to get the basics right and for Mr. Ahmad to check and verify that we were on the right track, before we were given green light to go ahead with the homework assignment.
I created my character along the lines of what Japanese animators/artists would call ‘chibi’. A rough translation of chibi would mean ‘short person’, or ‘small child’. In my case, I initially created a stunted character. Afterwards, I realised that it was difficult to animate my character because of his short legs, and lengthened them. In other words, what was initially a chibi character turned out to be a manga character instead, since I had to lengthen his legs for easier animating.
The walk cycle done with the character was not as easy as the stick figure one we started out with; there was the concept of volume and positioning of limbs and joints to consider. We had to estimate the rough angle, height and how far out the knee cap should go, as well as how high it should be raised for the walk cycle to look natural. It took me quite a number of tries before I managed to get a satisfactory set of ‘ruffs’ (rough sketches), and many more touch-ups before I produced a believable walk cycle.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Bouncing Ball Basic Exercise
3. Rolling/Bouncing Ball
In the first week, we were given two basic exercises for practice on giving an object a natural feel to it when using animation by our external mentor Mr. Ahmad during class, better known as the ‘rolling ball exercise’, and the ‘bouncing ball exercise’. These two seemingly easy to accomplish animations were not as simple as we thought. The two exercises also taught us a few basic rules in 2D animation, which in fact also applies to all other kinds of animation. These rules are:
- Squash and Stretch
- Acceleration and Deceleration
- Variation of height of a falling object
- The slightly different trajectories for the bounces of a ball
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Rolling Ball Basic Exercise
3. Rolling/Bouncing Ball
In the first week, we were given two basic exercises for practice on giving an object a natural feel to it when using animation by our external mentor Mr. Ahmad during class, better known as the ‘rolling ball exercise’, and the ‘bouncing ball exercise’. These two seemingly easy to accomplish animations were not as simple as we thought. The two exercises also taught us a few basic rules in 2D animation, which in fact also applies to all other kinds of animation. These rules are:
- Squash and Stretch
- Acceleration and Deceleration
- Variation of height of a falling object
- The slightly different trajectories for the bounces of a ball
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Jump Cycle / Box Cartoon
4. Box Cartoon
He also assigned us another simple task as homework, which was to make a rectangular shape/box jump over a break in the ground, better yet known amongst us as the ‘box cartoon’. Mr. Ahmad showed us his work as an example, and gave us free rein to do any kind of box we wished, as long as it jumped across a break in the ground. However, he did remind us to keep it simple, since we were only just starting out and some of us were slightly ambitious.
I ended up drawing a whole film/cartoon strip, where the box ran towards a river and jumped across it, and while it was jumping across, a piranha jumped up and tried to take a bite out of it, but failed. After which, the box jumped up and down in glee, before turning to walk forward, not looking at the ground and in the process, tripping over a pebble and falling flat on its ‘face’; the scene ending with a ‘SPLAT’ bubble splashed across the screen.
Mr. Ahmad mentioned that it was not a bad idea, though my animation was sometimes too jerky, and in other times, too smooth. In other words, there were issues with the timing of my animation such as the rate of number of frames per second, in addition to being able to judge the number of in-between frames needed for each key frame.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
TJ School Badge + Road Run simple Logo Animation Ad.
In addition, as one of the three Sports Captains of the 16th Delta House Committee, I decided to use the school badge to create something of relevance to my position. One of my commitments was the 2009 Annual Road Run, and I attempted to make a simple logo animation from the TJ school badge to advertise it, unfortunately I did not get to use it as an ad for the new J1 students to join Road Run since I deemed it unsatisfactory and simplistic.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Temasek School Badge Logo Animation
The other assignment, creating the School badge, was simpler, the shapes were basic plus the color tones were also easy to achieve. I used the line drawing tool to first create the stem of the ‘mushroom’ shaped ‘T’ then used the editing tools to pull out the straight line to form the curved edges. Finally, all I had to do was fill in the colours of the school badge. Mission accomplished!
/reflections of -theKNEES.
Temasek Academy Logo Animation
2. TA Logo & School Badge
We were also assigned two simple tasks by our teacher-mentor Mr. Heng, to recreate/draw the Temasek Academy Logo and the School Badge using the TAB software. The rest of my first day was spent trying to get the right proportions and drawing, erasing and redrawing the TA logo.
The tough part of the TA Logo was getting the right shade of green for the bottom part, which unfortunately I still have not achieved, since I modeled the logo after the one on the TA polo shirt, which is stitched on with glossy thread.
/reflections of -theKNEES.
1. Introduction to the TAB 3.0
After the morning briefing by Mrs. Loke and the various teachers in charge, I first collected the payment for the files while Mr. Heng collected the cheques. After which, two of the guys (Melvin and Justin), went down to the stage to collect the files for the people in our attachment. Mr. Heng, our tutor-mentor, then brought us to the art room, where he showed us a few of the better WOW files that he had compiled from the previous batches.
As the external vendor, Mr. Ahmad from Singapore Polytechnic could not make it down to college for the first day, he emailed us with instructions. In the email, we were told to download the software and familiarize ourselves with it. The programme we were going to learn to use for the next three weeks was called ‘the TAB 3.0 Pro’, and though it seemed simple enough to use, in actual fact, it was not.
It took me two hours to go through the user’s guide, and even then, being new to the software, I was still a little clueless, as I’m more of a hands-on person. After that, again it took me another two hours playing around with the software at home before I could get the basics of it, and also, on the next day (Tuesday), a little help from Rachel, a fellow classmate, in answering my question as to how to add another level for the colour palette.
/reflections of -theKNEES.