Concept work i created over summer

MY ROAD: This is a quick sketch i did on illustrator  of my road and iv got to say im pretty impressed just because of the simplicity and the thin and thick lines really work, im glad i kept it in black white and grey because i think something this simple can easily get overdone  so just like the drawing itself i decided to keep the colour basic!

OLD MAN PSYCHO: 

If im completely honest, i have no idea what was going through my mind when i sketched these out, but i think there's definitely a good character there somewhere  but the reason i like these is because its just proof that all those life drawing lessons have paid off and im thinking more about the line of action and the essence of the pose.

USING PHOTOSHOP:

So this is the final result of my images photoshopped, i think they turned out really well, again i only really chose block colours because i wanted to keep thinks bold and usually when you do all sought of little detail i find it takes the focus off of the actual main part of the image! i felt id make it a sought of 3-piece board which is what you can see at the bottom, just to show diversity to be honest the last one with the wings i wasn't too keen on but i liked the idea behind it so i put it up!

IM BAACK

Hey guys its been a long summer, and apologies for the lack of posting on this blog but IM BACK!!
and although its seems i have done nothing over summer i have some interesting concept art to upload and show you i have also buried my nose in a few books over summer, pretty brain rattling stuff for a man who only ever really reads graphic novels but hey!

The first book i read was the ever popular "The illusion of life" by two of the original 9 animators of disney "9 old men" "Ollie Johnson and Frank Thomas" and after completing this book i finally understand why character animators really do go on about it, and it doesnt give you any tips or tricks to iprove your animation but it helps you in a sense by changing the way you think about the characters you design, it teaches you to truly care about the character you are creating and questioning why he/she does this and why it does that, and above all and possibly most importantly i found this book to be really inspiring. So i am going to have to go with all the other +1000000000000000000000 character animators out there and recommend this book to anyone who wishes  to gain some tips into the physiological side of character animation.



The second book i read was from "Eric Luhta" and its called "how to cheat maya" i found the book in places to be helpful, but most of it was just not that well explained, but towards the end it shows you some useful stuff on poses and lip syncing which would've been great if id've read the book 5 months ago but its still useful to know, another great thing about this book though is you get a fantastic rig called the goon! however i found that it was unnecessary to make the rig incomplete because Im hardly a whizz at maya infact i'm still trying to work out what is exactly wrong but in the meantime practising on Moom!

Life Drawing Part 2

FINAL WALKCYCLE

This is my final walk cycle, i think its pretty good interms of character however i wouldve liked to have got the timing right as in instead of running smoothly there could be a pause achange of timing etc

LIFE DRAWING TECHNIQUES: AT GREENWICH PARK

TRIP TO THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY

LIFE DRAWING TECHNIQUES:

LIFE DRAWING TECHNIQUES: DRAWING FROM MEMORY

This was a tricky but potentially useful technique where you study your model for say 30 seconds and then afterwards look away and try and draw, this will come in handy when people are walking and you want to do quick sketches

LIFE DRAWING TECHNIQUES:LEFT HANDED SKETCHES

For this exercise i swapped my hand over and used my left hand i think its a great technique as your wrist is a lot looser, giving you such strong curves and marks shown above.

My favourite walk in terms of charicteristics

I love this scene because there is so much characteristic's in just 2 minutes Uncle waldo has such a great drunken walk, and Disney have portrayed a drunken character so well in this movie, the way he walks back and forth the way his legs swing right round when he takes a step, but my favourite part of this scene is when the two female geese are shown walking away, the way the hips move and sway to the goofy music is just humerous and clever!

First ever Barry walk

this is my first experiment with Barry, the whole purpose of this test was to get a feel for Barry, and to just get the general basics down before i do anything to crazy...like in the 2-D walk cycles the best thing to do for me is to start off as simple as possible. i also experimented with the genius that is the auto key tool...which is absolutely fantastic!

Introducing barry

This is Barry, barry will be the model i will be using to animate my 3-D walk cycles, i was asked to experiment with other models if i could but some of the models i had attempted to use(on creativecrash.com) had the rigging on them all messed up, and so this for me is the safer option . Barry is just a simple model with only the very basic skeleton he has handles on his arms,hips,neck, head, shoulders and legs, there's is no finger movements and only one ear can move, but nevertheless this is a great model to use for the basics.

Final Perspective walk

this is my final perspective walk, i couldnt be more pleased with the way things went on this cycle i think its a good example of a traditional cartoon style confident walk!

A drunk guy, very interesting walk cycle haha!

LOOKING AT LIVE ACTION

although looking at other animated walk cycles is good it is also handy to look at live action sequences, one of the best films for walk cycles that i checked out was "the wizard of oz" this is because the film has such a great contrast of characters, the tinman, such a rigid rusty character with very little movement, the lion, a contradiction to the rest of his species he walks with a cower and is always cautious, scarecrow, walks fluently but in some cases off balance because he is made of straw and lastly dorothy walks elegantly and like most young women. unfortunately i couldnt find a better clip of the movie on youtube that i wanted but i found some descent ones nonetheless

click here. for another good walk cycle from the wizard of oz

I uploaded this video from youtube because i think its a good example as too how such subtle things like the turning of the feet, have to be done just right, if its coming at the camera its gotta be bigger and vice versa, all though it would seem so elementary to make such an obvious mistake i was surprised at how hard it was to get such things correct, walk cycles require a hell of a lot of concentration and although a simple stick figure looks easy it really isn't .

My first walk in Perspective

I had done several perspective walks to begin with without using the graph, i had found it EXTREMELY tricky to get all the dimensions right, the only one i managed to finish and look good was the one below (without grid) i felt i needed to carry this one on because i thought it had potential in the fact that it has a lot of character.

PERSPECTIVE WALKS

when researching for my perspective walk i had stumbled across another persons blog which i found to be interesting he shows us how to create a perspective grid through toon boom and as that is what i am using i found this to be a very interesting tool. click here to view.

I was also shown at class another great method, which can be found in "the animators survival kit" and it looks a little something like the diagram i drew below:

ZOMBIE WALK

This is one of my final attempts of a profile walk i like it a lot although thinking about it now a lot more could be added, his back foot could drag and the walk should probably be a bit slower other than that i think its a fun walk and im pleased with it. below is a diagram of the key positions

the diagram is fairly simple but its a method that i know for a fact will work, below is my final result.

I found this on youtube, i really like this walk cycle because it gives the character alot of cockyness and confidence, his arms are brought upright and theres alot of bounce in his steps!!

animated walk cycle done by Allassandra Sorrentino

This was taken from beauty and the beast and although it is not realy a walk cycle theres alot of character in just a few frames, i put this up because i found it inspiring to my project.

Adding a characteristic to my walks

the main thing that defines a person is most probably his/her walk so there are many things to think about in a walk which will in turn define your character, he/she could be:

• lazy
• fat
• thin
• a baby
• an old man
• butch
• wimpy
• elegance
• beauty
• sexy/seductive
• etc. the list could go on forever!

so for this i have chosen a rather stereotypical character with some good weight a SUMO WRESTLER!!
i tried to portray how uncomfortable it must be for a sumo wrestler to walk and think about how much movement his legs are doing the most important thing to consider is weight.
first i am going to plan out my frames like so (most people like to just do key positions,i feel alot more comfortable roughly sketching out all the positions it takes longer but its how i choose to work at the moment atleast until i feel more comfortable with the process)

Eadward Muybridge "Humans In Motion"

These pictures are taken from Eadward Muybridge's "Humans in motion" book a fantastic book for researching walks and i am also curious about checking out his other book "Animals in Motion". Muybridge uses a fast aperture to insure he gets all positions of a walk cycle.

This is my first walk i focused on the key poses and didnt want to concentrate to much on other complicated features such as arms etc, it moves fluently although the back heel randomly kicks in and out at one point

Midnight Cowboy "hey im walkin here"

This is the basics of a work, including passing positions down positions,up positions. This is an overall guidline of my first walk cycle test just to get the basics right. (pages taken from Richard Williams' "Animators Survival Kit"