I am trying Photoshop*

Walk cycle

This week we have been introduced to the walk cycle by our new teacher Alberto Campos. We get to work on the famous Pink Panther. After studying its modelsheet during the week-end, here is what came from our 3 days of animation. Our assignment was to make a normal walk cycle without any attitude.

Aisling / Mickey

Week 45 - week 46

After we worked on planning our last animation starring Mickey Mouse casting a spell, our next task was to in-between our scene. To achieve this, our teacher Rebecca Bang Sørensen gave us the key-poses of a scene from the movie "The Secret of Kells" which we had to in-between in order to train ourselves before focusing on Mickey's scene. 

Back to Mickey with this new dimension of drawing these very clean in-between frames I realized how important touched-up key-drawings are in the view of the character design and of a good reading of the movement. I noticed a lot of incoherences in my animation but the aim was for me to understand what were my mistakes. So, more than filling the blanks I let between my key-poses, I spent most of the week to clean these keys in order to check and keep the feeling of a fluent action. I will not say I succeeded entirely but I am very happy to have been able to keep the design of Mickey while making him move how I wanted. I think I reached some of the fluidity I expected in his actions but I know I have still a lot to do. Animation is a long process and the more I travel inside of it, the clearer I see its keys.

Drawing for Animation 2/2

 These two last weeks we were taught Drawing for Animation by Frederik Villumsen and Rebecca Bang Sorensen. We have finally been really introduced into the animation workflow and our assignment was the following : we had to create a 6-seconds-footage  with the character of Mickey in the Sorcercer's Apprentice in which we had to tell this story : 

“Mickey has put on the Sorcerer’s magical hat and is conjuring his most powerful spell! The result is not what Micket expected.”

The result looks still a little clumsy and unfinished but what I got from this module was more that I expected : for the first time with our animation basics in mind we were able to depict precisely a personal idea in animation. I went from this crazy picture of Mickey casting his spell through a silly ritual dance to this final result. What a joy when you realise that this is possible. We are about to begin another step in the animation process which is the inbetweening. It will fill in all the blanks and static frames you can see and we will I hope get a fluent and smooth final picture. I'll conclude by : IT HAS BEEN THE FIRST REAL SELF TRANSCENDENCE. 

Moreover I posted some of my notebook pages in which I doodled teachers, classmates, illustrations... and also was writing my everyday expectations and reflexions about our organisation and workflow.