APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly Development

Overlaying finished foregrounds and backgrounds

This is an example of the development process, the fox is the most attractive element in the picture and then the background is second, the timing of the animation allows the audience to view the background detail because of the pacing while the movement of the fox focuses there attention to the main animated parts.  

This character as a basic cartoon fox creates more interest because the style seems friendly and the final part is more unexpected, this is a common trend in other anti-fur campaign awareness adverts, to create a false sense of security then suddenly become dark and scary.





The first part of the development, once the outlines had been drawn and animated successfully, was to colour the main character in his simple sectioned bold colours.

Overlaying the coloured character with the foreground and background environmental drawings was the most challenging part of the animation because of how the fox would interact with them, this was done with the enhancing shots of the fox's face in the cage, which created a more close up and trapped feeling with the cage bars in-between. 

The cage was the only section of the environment the fox interacted with but this cage was also a vantage point for the fox to view the surrounding environment, setting the scene for the audience by switching to the fox's first person view and realising the contents of the background.

Adding the foreground first, taking previously used drawings so that the next scene had similar elements and maintained the same features.

Adding the final parts to the animation was refining and completing the background with shading, tonnage in the drawings, and combining drawings for a more affective backdrop for close up on the character. 

APPLIED ANIMATION
Final animation Evaluation

 

Evaluation

This animation is based through the experiences of a fox who is captured and transported from his natural inhabit into a warehouse alongside other captured animals, this is a short experience of what the fur trade is like as a furry animal.

I feel that as a group we have successfully conveyed the anti-fur awareness message through our three sections of combined animation.

The first scene is the best because it sets up the audience in a nice comforting cartoon intro, the colours are a nice mellow opacity and the sounds are calm rustling of the forest floor as the fox runs and jumps across the scene. This type of scenario was best suited towards one of our group and her fox style design is also well suited for this part.

There is constant change around the fox in the second part, having been literally thrown into the warehouse, he is starting to realise where he is, looking around confused, trying to find himself in this loud world. This pacing and character trait is something that I think works really well, given this is a serious anti-fur campaign animation describing the vulnerability of animals and how they are subject to this treatment in my part.

The animation progresses to become more dark and figurative in the final part, exposing the dreadful outcome of the fur trade and the conditions that these animals are held captive, realizing that this animation is a cartoon representation of real animals in torment and that the animals have a disturbing fate serving in the fur trade.

Evaluating my preparatory work 

We researched our individual parts and all the stuff that related, the fox and the hound, animated film was a large inspiration on fox characteristics and design. Other anti-fur advertisements videos helped with the plot of our animation and how to approach the subject of suffering animals, also fur trade advertisements and fur coats. I feel that as a group we had done sufficient research and produced good ideas that had strong relevance to the overarching assignment topic.

We have experimented and developed our ideas as a group well, by producing first the research then sharing and experimental concept art of the characters and environments. We discussed how certain aspects worked really well, like how this short animated story is based on a fox and his experience, first hand of the fur industry.

Our work changed through the project as we tried different ideas and approaches on the subject of the fur industry, using our research and decided against using voice recordings like some awareness campaigns, and instead use dramatic typography at the end. 

Most of all, I have developed my group work skills and learnt to produce good ideas, techniques and opinions to suggest to the group but most of all listen to other teammates and their input.

I feel that we have explored all aspects of our studies for this project and overall I am happy with the overall process of production for this assignment, the research could have been extended more on perhaps but personally, but we had all the necessary resourced material, so I am glad with how it turned out.

APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly Presentation Final stages


 


This animation is almost finished, it was only the last part that needed some more editing because of some missing backgrounds. 

The backgrounds are very detailed compared to the animatic because we planned on creating more texture and detail so that the fox would standout more and the environments seemed more dramatic and immersive for the audience. The drawings and outlines also create a cartoony style but also a dramatic boldness that makes the animation seem more real and serious with a kind of grimy feeling around the caged animals and the warehouse they are in. 
The end scene uses less outlining so the colour and texture becomes stronger but most of all the darkness in tonnage and shading, the fox has deep texture on his naked body as this scary fantasy section creeps in, for a more graphic ending that conveys the seriousness of the anti-fur campaign and the message it carries.

APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly Animatic

Combining all our storyboarded images into an animatic, I then added sound affects on Premier Pro:

I used websites like Freesound.com to download audio files and drop them into the project box, it took a while to find the free audio that best suited the section of animation but I feel that I did a good job of editing the sounds together, applying mostly fade in and out with the pen tool and amplifying the sound levels for certain loud or noisy sections.


 


This animatic is probably the strongest part in the project in terms of effectiveness for preparing the group for the next stage of animating, this is because the audio helped sync up sections together and set the scenes for animating perfectly.

APPLIED ANIMATION
Weekly Development

Using the brush tool on photoshop, I can edit the presets and create brushes for different drawings in my animation and for use on a graphics tablet. 

First of all I created a complete draft animation based from my storyboard exactly because is was a reference layer underneath my drawings. I traced over the images for each section of the animation and I think that really helped with the staging of the animation because the animatic had all the timings, how many seconds between each part of camera transitions. This helped the animation structuring and layout, after that it was only a matter of refining the drafted drawings on a new layer and colouring the sections.

I encouraged the rest of my group to use this structuring method because I feel that it saved time animating and maintaining the overall layout, the storyboard motion lines or arrows also helped prep me for the process ahead to animate sections.

Using various brush presets for drawing, refining, and most of all colouring are accessed from the option menu by right-clicking with the brush tool, this offers me great ways of refining the drawing and create sketchy bold outlines that I feel helps represent the fox character based in this animation. The jagged outline shows fur and helps create texture because the colouring is only segments part of the fox in bold without and texture. 

As a group we decided that all the texture should be in the background and in the surrounding environment the fox is based in, because the fox is the main focus in the animation so we wanted a nice red coat that could standout against the dark, textured and detailed background and foreground. 

APPLIED ANIMATION
Maya Animation


Pendulum swing:

Animating my pendulum using the playback toolbar and Rotating my it from left to right, it automatically creates a keyframe on the timeline and by pressing the 's' key on the keyboard, this locks the attributes. Then I advance along the timeline to a new frame and rotate the pendulum, pressing the 's' key again to create key the rotation.

These guide lines around the centre pivot allow me to rotate the main object pressing 'e' and shift- 'e' to key rotation, but I only want an arc of movement to be animated so I key frame all the positions along the timeline. The motion between each keyframe has an attribute that auto keyframes which generates frames of motion, speed and translation depending on the spacing of the individual set keyframes on the timeline.

Bouncing balls:

Applying the same process from the pendulum swing animation, I need to move the balls according how I want them to bounce. Setting the keyframes far apart for fast movement and close together on the timeline for paced movement. The auto key attribute will anime frames in-between for a fluent animation. 

This process of arranging the keyframes apart or closer is based from the previous traditional techniques of animating, I am learning that the principles of animation are always present in all types of animated motion. 

Segmented pendulum:

Similar to the pendulum swing animation, animating a segmented pendulum, I made the pendulum swing around the centre pivot, by selecting the components, adjusting the position of the objects and setting keyframes. The segments automatically moved every time I made an adjustment, they had set paths for rotating like they were following a set path or maybe the components reacted with each other when moved. 

Creating a overlapping motion like the rotating axis was shifting the motion of all the components along a path. This meant that they would move at the same speed, but the ball at the bottom of the pendulum would hang with a delay than the smaller balls further up, creating a more realistic pendulum swing movement.

APPLIED ANIMATION
Simple Object Model

The object is a simple tea cup with lighting and coloured textures.

This is the process that I used to design my coffee cup:

First I create a cylinder, then select the upper and lower circular faces and delete them, using the edge option, I selected the circular edge at the top by holding 'shift' and and double clicking the side. Then I Extruded the edge inward towards the centre and repeat this extrusion downward into cup and in-line with the bottom hole. Then I close the bottom of the cup by selecting the outer edges and using the 'fill hole' option in mesh tools.

Once the edges have been extruded, using the edge loop tool, select the outer side of the cup and create two groups of lines at the top and bottom of the cup, this creates faces that can be selected for the bridge tool.

The bridge tool brings up a box of options which I selected, reset settings, and then clicked bridge. This essentially extrudes the face across to the other face in an outward bridge. 

Now the rough body of the cup is complete. Move the points of the handle to get a more desirable shape. Pick your object and select Mesh and in the drop-down menus select, Smooth to smooth the polygon shape.

Create a light source  by selecting the particle object you want to light. Using Attribute Editor, I set the Particle Render Type to Streak and clicked the Add Attributes For Current Render button, then edited the colour and lighting.

APPLIED ANIMATION
Maya truck 

1: Keep On Truckin' - follow and complete the truck tutorial guide in order to begin to develop your understanding of the tools, the processes and the workflow in a 3D modelling and animation software package.

During this exercise I learned about certain tools but most importantly how to find and apply them, special tools have more required uses like for example the 'bridge tool', which is mostly used to link two faces with an arc of extruded shape, but other tools are meant for structuring the chosen shape and are easily accessible through the mouse right-click options. 

I have also learnt about how to approach certain tasks for modelling objects and the process of building a model and using techniques for more affecting designing for simple shapes. For example, some polygons have more modelling options than others, cubes can be constructed more easily into circular or rounded shapes using the lined edges and faces, rather than the sphere polygon because of the structuring and face layout. Key commands and shortcuts are becoming easier to learn with practice and enable many things like duplication, there's also the grouping of objects, like the mating system of CAD software which i'm familiar with but using the outliner option I feel is easier with grouping. 

I have practiced the techniques of designing basic shapes like the truck and cup, so i will find it easy to construct similar shapes in the future, duplicating and grouping with basic layout. One thing I struggled with was the scaling, moving and aligning of shapes together along certain axis, because I wasn't sure about all the key commands and options of the, z, y and x axises and how to secure the axis and keep shapes aligned together. I used the tutorial to select the outer lined grid and keys to structure the axis better.