Principles of Animation /Project Dev - Initial animation experiments

Now that you all know about me, my work, my aspirations, and what I am working towards this blog post shall be discussing the project I am currently developing. This project is titled  'Principles of animation' and is designed to introduce me to these principles, outlined by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas, aswell as provide me the oppitunity to create animation experiments in responce to ideas, planning and principles I wish to explore to develop personal growth 


The process that I followed for this project was as follows:

1. Create a storyboard outlining a concept I wish to explore, which is clearly depicted within the board
2. With my materials of choice (Weather pencil, pen, digital or other) I take my time in drawing out each frame of animation paying attention to frame relationship to manipulate the impression given.
3. Once the animation has been created I review the experiment outlining pros, cons, and anything I have learnt about the principles I experimented with. 
4. Finally, I reflect on this and create an action plan for my next animation study invoking personal growth through practice.

With my goals, methods and aspirations outlined, I shall now be working through and highlighting the experiments that I developed as well as making comment on the production itself.

Test 1 - Rolling ball
The first experiment that I was keen to experiment with was the idea of a rolling ball with a face. This face would be happy at its journeys top and gradually gets sadder as it tramples its own face. The simplicity and charm of this animation is what drew me to the idea once I had considered it. I felt that it was a great place to start my animation practice due to simple but promising opportunity to explore process, method and refinement.

Storyboard
When desiring to create animation accurately there are two key methods of approach to get the most potential out of the image sequence: pose to pose and straight ahead. Each method has its own pros and cons depending on the task at hand. Pose to pose is better suited to a more precise approach such as a walk cycle which scales in complexity requiring more structure in design. Whereas something like a flickering fire cannot be planned and appears more natural when using straight ahead as its method. 

With these facts in mind I made the decision to use a straight-ahead approach to create a more natural rolling of the ball. Whilst moving the face across the ball in the story board phase I made sure to note that the face must travel in an arch due to the angled perspective that I was keen with utilising. I planned the animation sequence to be 12 frames long where the 12th frame was the first frame in the animation cycle to enable an accurate looping effect.

Animation test

Below shows an animated Gif of the final experiment rough completed. I believed the experiment to be successful due to the conveyed intentions been received well. Everyone I asked believed that the animation represented a ball rolling. I did however pic fault in certain aspects of the animation which I seeked to analysis and plan against it.

The ball did not appear to roll once the face had left the screen, instead it just appeared that there was a bizare vibrating circle. To remedy this effect and increase the effect regarding immersion and accurate conveyence. I added a few small dots on his back, enough to notice them moving across. This enabled the viewer to understand that the ball was still rolling. 

The action plan I created for the production of my next expeirment was to explore the opposing method of animation approach 'pose to pose'. This will allow me the opportunity to explore and understand the other side of animation production and experience the pros and cons of this method.

Test 2 - walk cycle 

The second experiment that I planned to create was a walk cycle animation following poses outlined in richard williams book 'The Animators survival kit'. This book is renowned in the industry as the best guide for effective and accurate animation production teaching. This fact in mind I utilised and read the pages that discussed walk cycle production and made note of his tips and tricks when moving into my planning stage.

Initial storyboard

The process of using pose to pose follows a different approach than straight ahead does. For example the process is largely based around the concept of key frames and inbetween frames. Key frames in is simpliest explination are the frames that explain the minimal amount of poses required to accuratly and consistently convey an action to an audience. For example there are keyframe four poses needed for one stride of a walk to be percieved by the human brain and 8 poses looped for a full walk motion. Within these key poses it becomes more difficult for an audience to understand the attempted action of portrayal. 

Outlined in Richard Williams book the four poses explained have been titled: 

• Contact - When one foot is arched and bending and the other is stretched out and just making contact with the floor
• Recoil - When the previous foot lays flat on the floor and the other foot begins to raise up from the ground
• Passing - The weight of the foot is heald directly on the one side now. The other foot is raised and passes over towards the front.
• Hight point - The Raising foot is at its highest and begins to journey towards making its next contact.

The cycle repeats counteracting from left and right making 8 full frames, 2 sets of four. Below is the storyboard I created outling this visually for me to understand.

Pixilation Walk Cycle experiment

Pixilation is animation by using a human as the model. The process is similer to stop motion animation but with a change in model. Using my storybaord as reference me and a collegue in our classroom create an animation experiment to better understand the way in which the human form represents the forms Richard and I have outlined. My collegue lay on the floor to make it easier to capture the poses.

The video above showcases the walk cycle once all the poses had been aniamted togeather as a moving image sequence. The results speak for themselves. As stated before these key poses accuratly represent the mimal amount of information in a walk cycle needed to convey intention.

Frame by frame investigation

Taking the frames from the previous video I went about rotoscoping the frames as a further method of investigating the pose and relationship between frames for educational purposes. I feel that this process allowed me to focus and iterate on exactly how the bodys form and shape was postioned.

I feel that these experiments has enabled me a grander understanding in how a walk cycle works aswell as the effectivness of pose to pose animation production. When creating my next animations in the future I am keen to expeirment with a looser concept to explore how frame relationship, pacing and speed can be manipualted to invoke different impressions.


Thank you for taking the time to read and keen up with my work