Walking progress

Finished my first walk cycle. Decided to put him walking through a park... then decided to make it night time and spooky... It's fair to say it doesn't really look like he cares... perhaps he needs a bit more personality.

So I decided to make him look a bit more scared, after all it's pretty dark out there. (Still having problems with the playblasts... I guess it doesn't really matter though, at least the final render looks okay.)

Posing exercise

We've been given the task to create three poses that convey different expressions.

I've chosen:

I Think It's dead...
What's under there?

Waiting to start.

 

Learning how to walk

Learning the layered method of doing walk cycles. It's... different, just feels a bit weird going one limb at a time rather than pose to pose. Though it has it's benefits, by focusing on just the foot then the hips etc. you can make sure you're getting good arcs of motion and it's easier to spot where the mistakes happen.

Here's the progress of my very first walk cycle!

Don't really know why it's gone black and white and skewed, I guess it was the codec used to record the playblast... Though it wasn't like that before I uploaded it.

Bitey of Brackenwood

One of the best flash animations I've seen has to be that of Bitey of Brackenwood.

Created by Adam Phillips (Aka chluaid on youtube) Originally done using Adobe flash though he later moves to ToonBoom animate pro for his animation ventures, he's also made some handy tutorials which ToonBoom themselves have praised.

Bitey of Brackenwood is a series that follows a very fast, very contentious dashkin called Bitey. His character is incredibly entertaining, his humor is very simple yet funny, and it's not hard to see how he can get into all the trouble he does. Although you can't help but think of this guy as a jerk, you do begin to empathise with him through the series.

As the series goes on you can see the quality improve, (as with most flash series I suppose) The animation becomes less jerky at points where he's included a few more inbetweens, yet keeps the snappy motion that goes so well with Bitey.

http://bitey.com/category/animation/brackenwood/

Sketches

More Sketches to post up. I've got a bit of a back log due to most of the work being put up a while after it's done. What can I say, I'm not quite a blogger at heart. Also I'm trying to keep to a consistent Wednesday and Friday update routine, eventually there will be an update every Wednesday and Friday! ... Well, that's the plan at least...

So yeah here are some more sketches from coffee shops! It's always a bit hit and miss when drawing in the mornings, sometimes you can but usually you just can't! I'm not much of a morning person and sometimes keeping my eyes open long enough to draw can be the trickiest bit!


 

Ball animation re-inflation instigation!

So I seem to have neglected my work on the ball exercise, thought I'd add a little update. More to follow soon, I hope to have this finished and done with in the near future!

Here's a play blast of the latest progress, not a lot has been done on the face of it, still need to add the rotation and squash and stretch. But the rough timing is there, the rest should come together easily enough.

Live sketches

So me and a couple of friends have started to regularly meet on Saturdays whilst doing a Bible study called Uncover! We're going to coffee shops and chatting, and while we're there we're taking the opportunity to sketch those in and around the shop, and anyone who may be walking past slowly enough to put onto paper!

Along with the coffee shop drawings, I managed to take advantage of an unusually sunny Middlesbrough afternoon and draw some people in the park.

I'm not sure what the most challenging part is, trying to put down on paper a well proportioned realistic pose, or to do so without them realizing you're drawing them!