Beak Sync Animation - Super Scary Hat

I was originally going to animate Mac a character I made last year. But drawing feather fingers were proving to be difficult for me. I settled with a penguin (named Pod) after imagining the character talking to fancily dressed penguins about his silly hat. Parts of Mac is still in his design though.

The voice clip is from Team Fortress 2 of the character Scout.



This animation was something I was very comfortable in doing. I decided to go for a little more broad and cartoony approach to the acting and animation with a little bit more squash/stretch. The previous two audio sync animations were more on the "realistic" side to the animation, so I wanted to do less of that. I could have pushed it more but I'm satisfied with how it turned out. I was a lot more loose in animating this one and it turned out pretty fun to do! And I was so worried about animating a beak but it wasn't as bad as I thought. 

Final Digital Painting

For our final digital painting we could have painted anything we wanted in any style. I took a previous composition that we used for a layout assignment and created this using the pen tool. I like how it turned out! I might give this way of digital painting a go more often as it's more design-oriented.

Muzzle Sync Animation - In A Box

Probably one of the best animations I've done. It's not as rough, clean enough to clean up, I like the poses, the acting, mouth sync and more. Obviously there are still flaws to it that even I'd like to fix, but I like it a lot.

The dialogue is from Bioshock of the character Peach Wilkins.

Enjoy!



This animation is the one that made me understand how to properly animate to dialogue, which was essentially holding a pose and gesturing it to feel alive. That seemed like the hardest part but thinking about how the character would normally act beyond this sequence helped. With the dialogue having a stutter, I figured he was the twitchy type constantly moving a little erratically.
The stutter I had a feeling I would have fun with but was actually difficult. I attempted the animation staggering technique which is animating forward and then mixing up the frames, that didn't get the result I wanted which was an offset slight back and forth movement of the head and arm. I did straightforward instead and managed to get what I wanted.

Roughs:

Some character design sketches. First thing I thought of when I listened to the voice was a sleazy rat, so I went with it. 

These are thumbnails I did on photoshop of the key poses. 

3D Animation

I noticed I didn't upload any 3D animations we did last semester. So here's 2 that I like lol. I haven't touched 3D animation since last semester but I'll be practicing it this summer and hopefully getting better! This summer is portfolio, portfolio, portfolio.

Quadruped walk:

I like the beginning and walk but the settling at the end could use more work.

Sequence:

This rig was pretty difficult to work with. I might go back and fix this one and make it better.

***

Overall I like 3D animation and playing around in it is so much fun. Pretty different in approach to 2D and I'm still trying to figure out a good workflow to it. I enjoy the puppeteering aspect of it and working in a 3D environment is enjoyable. The most difficult part is making sure everything is moving constantly even just by a tiny bit and keeping track of what you're moving. There's probably an easy way to keep track but I'll figure that out soon as I keep toying with 3D. I really want to get better at it!

Human Sync - Third Place

We had to animate a human lip sync so I chose one of my favourite voice acted piece which is of Gaige from Borderlands 2 and her promotional echo logs. The snippet that I used is taken from the third one from a series of four.

I had a lot of fun doing this animation as it was my first character lip sync. It went through a few changes such as her originally rocking back and forth for one part ("...third place!"). After spending a lot of time in the mirror figuring out how to animate it and having difficulty with weight shifts and perspective, I opted out of that pose and came up with a simpler and better gesture that conveyed her showing off her third place ribbon.

The poses are a bit stiff at the beginning and there are things that I wish I could have still done but due to time constraints I was unable to. Overall I think it's still a pretty good animation for my first time animating to dialogue.

Designing her was a bit hard as well, I imagined a small girl filled with such rage would be quite humorous. I also wanted to stray away from typical children designs so I made her head rectangular and gave her a huge cranium because of her intellect. I like her design and I'll probably draw her and refine it for myself.

I also started a workflow I found that made it easier for myself when animating. I first started out by thumbnailing/drawing the poses on Photoshop, importing them into ToonBoom, timing them there and then redraw with necessary changes.

So here are my key poses blocked out in photoshop:

Chad Axelrod and Scops

For character design we had to design two anthropomorphic characters, one with a beak and the other a muzzle. I was pretty happy we got back to doing anthropomorphic designs! Not that there's anything wrong with human characters, which I definitely got better at due to having to do it multiple times. It's just I get to play with a lot more shapes!

Chad Axelrod

The coolest gecko in town

He's slick, he's got style, and most of all he's cool. Chad gets all the ladies (or so he thinks) by showing off everything he's got. He isn't someone you should mess around with, he's gotten into many fights (with his parents), can down 10 pints (of water) and is part of the SIGMA PI fraternity (sole member). He thinks he's the hottest thing in town, when in reality he really isn't.

Scops

Scops is a lethargic owl who loves sleeping in. If Scops isn't sleeping, he's dozing off no matter when and where. 

Roughs

I needed a typical frat boy douche name and "Chad" was one of the top options along with others like, "Steve", "Tyler", and "Drake". The name "Chad Axelrod" came from a classmate of mine, Vlad O, who said he knew of a guy with that exact name. I thought it was perfect. Luckily he suggested it moments before handing it in.

I really liked the pose on the right a lot but he had no prop, so I had to figure out some way to add one which ended up being the sunglasses.

I really like the design I did for Chad, I wanted to make a character with very minimal straight or edgy lines like I usually do. I thought that some reptile character would be appropriate for such an idea since they're very "smooth" in the way they move. So Chad was entirely based on the idea of "smooth moves" which applied to his cocky personality. I designed his hands so they too were extremely flow-y by making them long.

Scops was based on my experience in this program. As the semester goes on, the lack of sleep due to the insane workload leaves me tired and finding myself sleeping or taking naps in the studio. I'm definitely not the only one as my fellow classmate is known to have the ability to fall asleep in any location at any time at school. 

"I'll Do It" Leica

After multiple attempts at uploading this assignment on various websites, I finally did it. The video was taken down and muted on one website, the file was too big on the other, the pages with the boards were also too big for Blogger and Tumblr. So after multiple attempts and delays I finally managed to take time and re-export all the files and finally figured out a way to upload it somewhere. 

Here's my second storyboard assignment from last semester that required us to make a story stemming from the conflict "I'll Do It". My teacher loved the idea and absolutely enjoyed the story and leica reel which I was extremely happy about! The leica even made it onto the TVs in the hallways! WOO!

Anyway enjoy the show:

Concept Work

Here are the beat boards I did for the assignment. I couldn't think of an idea when we were given "I'll Do It" and the only one I could think of was of ghosts taking turns scaring a couple away from their new home. The original beats involved a regular couple moving in to their new home with each ghosts' attempts at scaring only helping their move in day. The two gags I had in mind made it into the final but in a different context. The first was the possessions of boxes and furniture flying overhead only to land in the correct place (desks, couches and picture frames fall in place) and the other was blood oozing from the walls only to be used to paint the walls. Same gags different context.

It wasn't until I pitched the idea that my teacher, Nancy Beiman, who said to make them into artists instead and the ruckus they cause creates art they appreciate. I thought it was genius and it was then that I enjoyed working with the story, I honestly was not too fond with it at first. 

Original character line up with a regular old couple.

The penultimate line up. I ended up cutting the wife as she didn't contribute anything more to the story it was difficult figuring out when Arthur or Lily should appear when composing shots. It caused too much hassle and removing her made things much more easier. 

***

Overall I enjoyed this assignment a lot the more I worked on it and the more feedback I got. I even struggled with an ending with the final boards at first and a simple switch of two boards during a pitch gave me such a perfect ending. It originally had the ghosts just get angry being unable to scare him and my teacher moved a panel (page 11 panel 4) which made you interpret it instead as the ghosts not understanding the art. I then edited it so that it was in an art gallery afterwards and it made me so happy to finally have an ending.

Pitching was also fun! Especially with an idea of your own. Half way through my final pitch I actually got used it and started to enjoy it. It felt fun and really, not thinking about how to pitch it and just telling what it is made the whole thing easy.

Making the leica reel was also a blast. I had trouble picking from the bunch of music my teacher provided for a scratch track. Luckily during the day we were to work on it in class I found Alpine Pastures very last minute and tried it out. It fit so perfectly with the timing of certain moments in the story and my teacher loved the contrast between the cheerful music and horror elements which perfectly sums up the tone of my story.

It was a fun experience coming up with a story, pitching it, getting it critiqued and fixed. The whole mantra of "What If?" in creating a story is something extremely helpful. Seeing a mediocre idea evolve into something I enjoyed was exciting. 

It may not be the best story and storyboards you'll ever come across (layouts ugh, I'm so sorry), but I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed making it.