Unit 33 Task 1. Priniciples of Animation. Andrew Foden

5 of the traditional principles of animation.

Exaggeration
This principle is used to make actions much more noticeable and recognisable by using very emphasised gestures
and motions normally associated with it. Sometimes this is used to show someone sneaking around by emphasising
the big, careful steps they're taking to make it very ovious they're sneaking round.

Squash and Stretch
This principle is where an object or a character's body is squashed or stretched, but must still retain it's original mass.
A common use is in slapstick cartoons such as Tom & Jerry.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85LiBylqECw&feature=related
In this video, the black cat has it's hands squashed and stretched by the window that tom shut.

Follow Through
This principle says that things never come to a stop immediately - they accelerate and decelerate over time.
In this clip, the road runner doesn't just stop, it carries on moving, skidding along, as it tries to stop.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJJW7EF5aVk&feature=related

Weight
This principle governs the perception of weight. Heavy things should fall faster than light things, and impacts
from heavy objects will be bigger than those with smaller weights along with a louder impact. This is
demonstrated in this video when the giant sits down and the trees and the floor shakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbRNDdZKmRo&feature=related

Curved Motion
Most things in nature move in arc motions, such as body parts orbiting their joints and projectiles following an
arched flight. This will be seen when a ball is thrown up.

This one's a WWII American G.I. having a rubbish day marching in the rain, looking miserable. He's hunched over a bit, walking slowly and heavy footed steps because he's tired.




Here I've got a Victorian scientist in his big steam powered metal walking machine, moving the legs by pushing and pulling levers. He could well be an evil Victorian villain or something.

The picture on the left was a little sketch and the one on the right was a proper drawing of it.

Walks like and insect with 3 contact points at all times - leaning over to the side with 1 foot on the floor - with big heavy, clunky steps and big strides.

If I was to make him evil, I could stick big, crazy claw hands on the front or something.




This one is a very happy man walking through the rain with an umbrella, probably with just a basic walk. However, I could make him a bit less happy and make him power walk to get out of the rain.

I will probably redo this one in pencil so that it looks as good as the other 2.

I have chosen the victorian walking machine for my walk cycle, however, I have made some changes to the initial design in order to make it easier to animate.



This is the basic shape it will now take. As you can see, it now only has 4 legs instead of the original 6 legs, which should make it easier for me to animate. The legs will be 2 sets of human walk cycles, with the front set of legs and the back set of legs inverted to each other. This is a change from the original idea of an insect walk cycle.

Details such as the driver, smoke trail, riveted panels and boots will be added in once it is fully animated.

I was having trouble with doing the walk cycle without reference, so I have made a walk cycle using sketchup for reference and to check that the walk cycle is possible and believable.



The machine appears to drop in one of the scenes, which I will have to fix when I draw up the proper walk cycle. I'm not quite sure about it, so I may change the walk cycle to make it look better.

some really good development here!

i do like the idea of the victorian walking machine u are doing aswell, its a different idea and its looking good up to now.

foden youve done it again like you always use to in art back in skool lol
as sean said really good development , you just need to tamper with legs abit to make it look better

btw lol at the last character he looks like a valet lol

haha, yeah, I needed 3 characters so he's just a filler. xD



So, I decided that the first walk cycle was bit dodgy, so I redesigned the whole thing again having learnt a few things from the first animation.



I altered the feet from the first animation and changed the double 2 leg walk cycle in favour of a true 4 legged walk cycle.

I added pistons on all of the joints that I felt needed them, to add a little realism to the design.

Large pistons were put into the top section of the back legs which would compress for the pass phases in order to gain more height from the ground, as with the altered proportions of the robot's legs, it was important to lift the foot on the pass to make sure that it didn't look as though it was digging through the ground. I also added steam being pushed out of the pistons as they compressed.

I also made sure there was more curved motion in the way the body moved.

I drew it on lined paper, so I made sure that between every frame, the feet in contact with the floor always moved 2 lines back. This is how I got the illusion of motion down on the first time.

I took photos of my pictures for my first animation, so the quality isn't great, but it at least let me know that the walk cycle worked. I cropped the full size down to this:



I fine lined this in lesson and scanned them in so that I had a better quality set of images to work with. I cropped them all down and made an animation with the new images.



The problem with this was it was uncoloured, so I couldn't distinguish the legs in the foreground from the background. I put them through photoshop and coloured in the legs in the background. This didn't turn out amazing, because the background legs seem to come forward more than the foreground legs, but once I have coloured the front legs, this shouldn't be a problem. I've made a fast version and a small version.

Fast:


Slower:


That's all for now :)

Hi Andrew,

The walk cycle is vastly improving. I would go with the slower walk, think back to the principles of animation and how weight and size is transfered really try to convey the sheer size and bulk of this machine

Yeah thats what i've done with mine, i like the new legs, is the little victorian guy still gonna be in it?

Okay, that sounds like a decent idea, I think I might make it break the ground when it steps on it too; and yeah, I'm definitely keeping the victorian guy, he's the best bit xD

Looking really good. Especially the alternate legs.

It would also be cool if there was some changing expression on the face of the guy driving the thing.

love the character development, great drawings, great shading
keep it up

doing this in flash will produce a much smoother animation, it looks amazing though ^^

Looking smoother each time, can't wait to see it finnished.

looks awsome smoke is cool

I love the smell of napalm in the mornin'

That GI is really good

I'm in the process of making it victorian again.

Everything is modular so I don't have to colour in every frame in over and over again.

I tried to make the foreground legs look different to the background legs in order to make it easier to follow once it is animated.







this is the first frame :)

Looks amazing tbh, love the fact u have the man in the seat now aswell. The man just completes the whole thing lmao!

Cant wait to see what it looks like animated!

thanks sean :) I like the man too haha. I've just finished the frames and I'm about to try and animate them. Haven't done the smoke or background yet though. I'll do those if I have the time, which I should. :)

It's turned out rubbish lol. The last frame makes it do a huge dip and the back toes look silly. Ah well, I'll just have fix them. Tell me if you see anything else wrong with it.

I dunno how to host flash file things on here, so here's the gif.

It looks good Andy, its a steam powered buggy. Its not supposed to be steady

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-WdWbHYsFo

Wow, amazing. I don't see anything wrong with it, as ozan said, its not supposed to be steady (:

Yeh i agree, the unsteadyness is meant to be there because its a big machine and its made by a victorian person haha!

Looks amazing tbh though.

thanks you three :)



I have added smoke to it, because it's a steam engine thing and it wouldn't look right without it. :P

one of your images isn't centred correctly, just as it places it back front leg down the whole thing takes a jerk backwards, was ok in the one before you added the smoke, other than that it looks amazing.