Character Performance

Once you get a basic grip on Disney's animation principles you can then start to think about animating the performance of a character. Got to show him/her thinking about the actions before they do them otherwise it won't be believable as a character performance. I had to create a 10-20 second performance based around a character at a bus stop. Here it is:

I didn't think I was being ambitous but every time I drew breakdowns and inbetweens I kept having to increase the timing so that the pacing was good. As a result there is still a lot I can add to this piece but in the 2 weeks we had, this was all I could manage.

Attitude Walk Week 2

Second attempt, I decided to go crazy.
I started with the basic parts of the character: the body, legs and head because everything else is secondary action (So is the head but I prefer to animate that at the same time as the body)

What I had inadvertently done was made the stretchty legs change in volume as the character moves. I was aware I was distorting the figure but was not thinking about the volume of the character until somebody pointed it out to me.

If I was going to take this further I would introduce some arms, eyes, nose and maybe some fox-ears (all with their own follow through actions.

Distorting the figure during the animation achieves a really nice elastic, flexible feel to the character (but I wouldn't want everything to feel like that).

Attitude Walk Week 1

A walk with attitude: leading with the chest, feet & knees swinging outwards and a double bounce between each step results in a bobbling swagger fella.

Walk Cycle

The walk cycle inafamously hard, but actually pretty easy when it's an emotionless walk from the side on.

I exaggerated the distance the arms swing out too much. And as a result the arm feels like it is snapping forward. Other than that, I am pretty happy with the results.

Train Your Brain (Competition)

Train Your Brain is a competition run by The Art Department (http://theartdepartment.org/) and for the DeviantArt community, that I am not an overly zealous fan of (but that's another story). I've decided to enter a film for the animation category because the prize looks pretty damn good (Private tour around Pixar Studios - for two =O ).

This has sparked my creativity and I've come up with what I think is a decent idea. While I've had nothing to do in the studio I was storyboarding this. I won't explain the whole premise of what's happening because that should be pretty self explanatory, which I think it is. :)
 

Not only do I have about 2 weeks to make a whole minutes worth of animation, I've given myself the pleasurable challenge of doing most of it in first person. I really want to be creative and experimental with how I put this animation together, particularly with the transitions and the crazy effects at the end.

The name is subject to changes.

Here's a link to the page if you want to check it out for yourself:
http://ayame-kenoshi.deviantart.com/art/Train-Your-Brain-Contest-336449766#animation