George Quelch - VFX

This weeks animation principle was very similar to the 3D work I did in the first week and similar to the first animation principle I did. It was a bouncing ball with a tail and a small head, similar to a squirrel. Squirrel Youtube I'm much more pleased with this short animation than my other principles, I put the time in to add a shadow and a very basic amount of shading to the character but I think it really improves the look. I also spent much more time checking the size of the character to do my best to make sure he had a constant weight through out the sequence. The output video however is quite dark, this was a problem with not enough lighting when I was shooting the frames.

This is an update on the Bouncing Ball animation. I animated him jumping up a spiral staircase and over 2 gaps, finally getting squished. I tried to focus lots on the movement on the tail and giving the end of the tail delay so it swished behind the ball quite nicely. I spent a lot of time in the Dope sheet moving frames around to tweak the animation. I still don't think its showing enough personality, the ball is just bouncing through the scene, I would like to make him more of a quirky character who shows some emotion.

This is the walk cycle I animated using the same character as the straight ahead walk, the process was similar, I tried a slightly different walk style this time but nothing to extreme. I have tried to do walk cycles before but they were not as convincing as this one. Knowing where to move the character up and down really helps to add weight to a walk. Walk Cycle Youtube

This is my first time using a fully rigged character in Maya. I'm finding that fundamentally Blender and Maya are very similar and transferring over to Maya is easier than expected. This is another simple animation, before this session I had dismissed using FK rigs and always converted characters into IK. Now I am seeing how animation can be more fluid when using FK and will be using it more often in future. The main aim of the session was to learn how to swap rigs manually between FK and IK setups. When the character pushes the box his hands convert from FK to IK to make sure that when he is doing the pushing action his hands to not go through the box and the action is easier to animate. I had a lot of difficulty with changing the time of the movements after the change between IK and FK had been put in. I need to work on getting into the habit of the layered approach to animation in which I put down all the basic movement and timing first, then going back over and...

The first 3D session this week revolved around walk animations, including cycles and straight ahead animation. This was the first walk we did, using the straight ahead technique. I really enjoyed going through and adding squash and stretch to the character and changing small things to really give weight to the movement and the steps. Next I think I will try some crazier walks, followed by some jumping animation. My main aim will be to have him show more emotion. Straight Ahead Walk Youtube   Straight Ahead Walk 2 Youtube

This was the 2nd 3D ball related task we had to complete. I found this really interesting, I had never animated delay in parts of a rig and seen it change the outcome so dramatically. I am getting much faster at navigating around Mayas interface and using the dope sheet to my advantage. Swinging Tail Youtube Although this rig was very simple it really taught the fundamentals for delayed movements in 3D animation. By bumping up all the keyframes on the tip of the tail so they were slightly later than the other parts of the tail created a real feeling that the tail was following the movement of the ball, and that it wasn't just one solid lifeless object.

All of this work comes from my second after effects session which I again thoroughly enjoyed, I am really seeing the potential for using after effects as animation software. I am also very much looking forward to using it for visual effects, so far it has been very fun software to learn. This final video shows the 3D or 2.5D side of After Effects, i have always loved the 2.5D style of animation and will definitely by using it for personal projects in the near future.

This week my animation principle task was another flash assignment. We had to animate a man lifting a heavy object. I found this task quite fun to do, I messed around a bit with the brief by deciding to turn my character into the hulk at the end, but I think I will revisit the task later to do a more realistic animation. In future I am aiming to add more detail into my characters so the animation as a whole looks more interesting, however I know this will add the the amount of time it takes to finish a task if I continue to work at my current pace.

This is my second Animation for Animation principles. We were given a first and last frame (1 and 11) and had to do inbetweens for frame 3, 5, 7 and 9. There is a problem on frame 3 in that the thumb looks broken and is not bent properly, this is a problem with the drawing. Timing wise I think frames 5 to 11 work much better, the drawings seem to far apart for frames 1 to 5. After I finished the main drawing I went back and added small amounts of shading to the hand and around the glove, this improved the look, I think I will go back over the drawings and redo frame 3 to polish off the animation. Hand Turn Youtube

This is my first flash animation, a simple jumping cube with arms and a head. I made the character jump over a small stone, I planned out the jump in an arc first then began by adding key poses to work from. After I added keyframes for the poses I began to add inbetweens. I found keeping the characters volume constant quite difficult, I spent lots of time going back over frames to improve them. The character is still to "wiggily" I think this is because the changes between frames is to dramatic, I plan to experiment fixing this by adding more inbetweens or tweaking the distances between existing frames. Jumping Man Youtube

I took these after my first life drawing session. Life drawing was difficult to get used to at first but I found it much easier by the end of the 3 hour session. I think my drawings improved over the duration of the session. I think the white chalk exercise was the most successful and was the best drawing I produced however I wasn't happy with the head. The aim of the exercise was to capture light falling on the model instead of trying to simply draw the figure. These are my very first drawings, they were all drawn in between 2-3 minutes. My main aim to focus on for the next session is really looking at the shape of the model to make it as accurate as possible. I found drawing with chalk very much helped my ability to draw the smooth lines and shapes needed for life drawing, I think the session was far more successful using chalk than if it was done with a pencil. The image below shows my negative space drawing. We were to draw o...

This is one of the bigger scenes I've created. I worked with a  friend to produce this scene for a song he was working on at the time as part of  his music course. I created the whole scene from scratch, first adding the  ground and sculpting it into the mountain I had pictured. I then added the snow  coverage, the trees, the falling snow and the lake. I also took the opportunity to improve my lighting skills by working on a much larger landscape scene than I had done before. These are my drawings for the main character in this animation. I like using  drawing the roughly plan out ideas in my head and to remember ideas for later,  but most of my work lies on the 3D design side of creating content.

I thoroughly enjoyed my first session using Adobe After Effects. The quality of the animation isn't very good, however I learnt a lot about using the interface and basic use of After Effects for animation purposes. I am looking forward to developing in After Effects and using it for future animation.

I have now attempted the bouncing ball exercise in both hand drawn 2D and digital 3D. I enjoyed the 3D side, using Autodesk Maya, more than the hand drawn attempt; however I did like using traditional methods of the peg board and light box to produce the 2D animation. I think the 3D animation is better, although they are both very simple, although I have already had experience in doing digital animation so I found the process easier and more natural to do. 3D Ball Youtube 2D Ball Youtube

This was part of the overall 2HoursPassed project, one of the  main locations in the world I was creating.  Inspiration came from several medieval buildings I had scene, some in person and some through internet research. I also looked at some buildings from video games that had a similar style.   I started once again with some digital drawings just to   plan out my idea, once I had my final design I went into blender and began the  modelling process. This was my first project that involved using a hair  simulation, which is how I created the hay on the roof. It was good fun  changing the settings to capture that look I was going for. I took the project as far as building furniture to populate the  inside of the scene before I decided to move onto newer projects. This was one  of my most useful undertakings as I learnt many new modelling and texturing  skills in working on the materials for the buildin...

Competition Entr y I worked on this project over the course of a month; it was for   an online competition in which we had to create an entry which followed the Art Deco Theme. I chose to create this car from scratch; all of the work was done in blender. I stated out by looking for inspiration from old cars from the era between 1920's and the 1940's. The first step towards creating the project was to draw a design I liked and thought I would be able to transfer into a 3D space. I did several drawings of slightly different design before I settled on a final idea to take forward. I'm very happy with how the project came out in final render. I have noticed that there was not enough separation between the metal pieces of the body like you would see on a real car. I was pleased with the design and overall look of the  car. Competition Entry Other Entries