Minor - 2D Animation Test

After discussing with Alan that I was worried about not getting the hand drawn look in my animation using toon shaders, I thought it would be good to try a few things out to see what looks/ works best. I’m actually really happy with how it looks! It definitely has a more hand drawn quality to it that I can’t seem to translate onto my 3D model right now. I will continue to research into toon shaders, as well as trying to find any plug ins that will help me translate the character into 3D. If I’m still not happy with the results of that, I’ll focus more on 2D animation for my main character, but that’s more of a plan B right now. This test was extremely useful to me as I will be incorporating 2D into my animation anyway for illustrated effects.

Rigging Techniques - Object Exchange

In this tutorial I learned how to animate an object being passed from one hand to another using locators and constraints. This was a really useful tutorial for me to do as I'll need this a lot in my final project.

5 Minute MooM Pose - Week 3

Rigging Techniques - No Flip Pole Vector

Rigging Techniques - Curve Driven Squash and Stretch

Life Drawing Session

Today in life drawing we focused on the main principles of traditional drawing. we warmed up by drawing whatever we could of the structure in front of us, and then after 2 minutes, move on to the canvas to the right of us. This resulted in a collaborative piece that lots of people from the class had worked on.

Collaborative Piece

Then we were given fifteen minutes to sketch the structure in front of us. focusing on the shapes and lines within the objects. I chose to use charcoal for all my pieces so I could create thick lines.

15 Minutes Focusing on Line

For our next drawing, we focused the negative space in and around the structure. I used charcoal so I could create a bold silhouette.

10 Minutes Focusing on Negative Space

We then focused on shadow and form, I had to try to show structure and definition without drawing in too much detail, and try to show definition through shadows and light. I drew this on procreate on my iPad. I was going to use colour, which is why I chose to draw on my iPad, but then I ended up drawing in a similar style to my traditional drawings.

10 Minute Focusing on Shadow and Form

For the last drawing I focused on depth. I broke the structure into three different planes and drew each plane with a different line weight. For the part of the structure closer to me, I used thicker lines. and made the line lighter the further back parts of the structure were. I used charcoal for my final.

15 Minutes Focusing on Depth

Rigging Techniques - Conditional Squash & Stretch

For this tutorial, we learned how to use squash and stretch techniques, like we did with the mushroom tutorial, but we also learned how to make this conditional. This means that when you stretch the leg and arm outwards, the mesh will stretch, but when you move the arm and leg inwards, the mesh bends at the joints and doesn't squash/stretch.

Rigging Techniques - Basic Squash, Stretch and Volume Preservation

Today we learned the basics of squash and stretch and how to apply that to a character rig. We were given a model of a mushroom to experiment with.

Normal Sized Mushroom

Stretched Mushroom

Squashed Mushroom

Five Minute MooM Speed Pose - Week 1

Today we were given five minutes to pose MooM into a pose of our choice. This is the pose I chose to try and replicate.

This is what I managed to achieve in five minutes. I thought it looked okay until I had a proper look at MooM from different angles and discovered that I had accidentally broken his neck. 

So now he's been sent to the MooM graveyard, although I have now resurrected him and fixed his neck and tweaked his pose a little to make the pose look more natural.