Submitting work via FTP

All assignments for my classes should be submitted digitally via FTP. You'll need to install a free FTP program like Filezilla or FireFTP.

I'll email you the login info and we'll go over it in class.

Our directory is publicFTP/Tara and the subfolder for your course. Example:

Inside the course folder:

(1) I'll create a folder for each of your assignments.
(ex: assignment 1, assignment 2)

(2) Inside the assignment folder please create one folder with your first initial, last name.
(ex: tdonovan)

(3) Inside each subfolder, put your named files.
(ex: tdonovan_walk_cycle_001.ma, tdonovan_hydrant_uvs.png)

Feel free to leave me a note as a .TXT file. Word Files are too slow to launch.  Always send me an email regarding any verbal agreement for extensions or modifications to the assignment.

Please be careful with the files in this shared directory. If you accidentally delete someone else's file please let them and me know asap so it can be restored. Always have backups saved in more than one secure location (ex, a portable hard drive as well as saved on a backed-up computer as well as sent to yourself via email or DropBox.)

If you're unfamiliar with using FTP programs and/or you have trouble, please ask for help from the peer tutors. It only takes 5 failed password attempts in 5 minutes to lock yourself out of the server. At school, that means the whole school's IP.  Stop after 2 failed attempts and check all the info again. 99% of the FTP problems students have had in the past resulted from typos.

Files can take several minutes or longer to upload especially if the server is busy. Please allow time for uploading and don't wait 'til the last minute to send your files.

If you encounter a big problem, such as our server crashing, please send me a screen grab confirming the error and I'll issue extensions to the whole class.  

Assignments cannot be handed in via any other means but FTP  without special permission.
Please do not email me your videos or other large files as attachments.
I'll explain other options as needed.

Bloom's Taxonomy

Bloom was an educational theorist, Taxonomy just means classifying. This hierarchy of learning objectives is common to all post-secondary institutions. In a nutshell, it means your job is to move as quickly as possible from absorbing new information to using it creatively.

The highest form of any skill is art.

EXAM TIME!! DESN1119-C, 2D Animation Principles

This exam is now closed. Your marks will be available shortly.

_____________________________________

Welcome to your Final Exam.

You may use any reference material to complete this exam but it should be entirely your own work. Please guess if you're not sure. No marks will be deducted for wrong answers.

You are welcome to add images to help explain your answer. Upload your drawing or images through Blogger, your DropBox Public folder or an online photo album (Picasa, Flikr, Photobucket...) and include the link in your answer.

The form can only be submitted once. You may want to construct your answers outside the form and paste them in.

If you have any questions, let me know: tDonovan@georgebrown.ca

This exam is due FRIDAY, APRIL 22 at midnight.
Good luck! :o)

Click here to go to the exam:

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dDRPNGN3WWpsTUh6U2NnOHdUWXZfa2c6MQ

WEEK 14: WIP Critique and Work period

We'll continue our discussion about 2D walks and  have a look at how everyone's work is going so far.
You will have some time to work in class on the final assignment
which is due April 22nd.

What else is happening April 22nd... hmm... oh ya!  YOUR FINAL EXAM IS DUE!!
This will be written remotely -- there are no classes at the school on that holiday Friday.
I will send you a link to the exam and post it here on Monday.

It's been an absolute pleasure working with you all. Have a great summer and I hope to see you back here next term!

See ya!!

WEEK 13: Pitch Critique & Walk Cycle basics

Pitch critique --
We'll have a look at everyone's ideas and suggest ways to simplify or enhance the scenes.

nothing is as weird as reality

Importing video to Flash: there's more than one way to do this. I've found image sequences work best.  Use QT, Premiere or another program to create an image sequence and load it into Flash.  We'll practice this in class.


Next .. Walk Cycles:
The walk cycle is a tricky but basic part of every animation curriculum.  You're going to learn the nuts-and-bolts of bipedal locomotion, and try to apply them to your character. (There's also walk cycle info in the posts for DESN 2022.)

We'll get a start on our walk cycles in class and also have a look at some beautiful 2D reference from some of the masters of animation who really pushed the medium to the limit.

Pencil Test Depot
http://www.penciltestdepot.com/

Living Lines Library
http://livlily.blogspot.com/

Walk Cycle Depot
http://walk-cycle-depot.blogspot.com/


Homework: 
Continue to work on your final project and finish up the walk cycle for your character.  Don't use tweening or symbols -- draw all the frames (at 12 fps) and see what tricks you can use to keep things consistent. If your character is not bipedal, come up with a creative way to show locomotion, demonstrating gravity's effects as a traditional walk would.

WEEK 12: Character Design Critique, Planning the Final Project

We'll have a look at everyone's final designs and make some suggestions. 

It's time for your final assignment!

Your mission is to create a little world of Flash-animated characters in a live-action environment.  You have a lot of creative freedom with this assignment. You can work by yourself or as a small group. 
It can be linework or colour, it can be serious, cartoony, depressing, or rude. This is a chance to let your creativity shine. Your character needs to be able to move around and ideally walk around.

We'll do some brainstorming in class so you can get started. For inspiration we'll be looking at a brilliantly whacko piece of Flash animation from the video "Animals
 by Minilogue.  Anything goes in Flash -- have some fun with it.

Final Assignment:
Due April 22nd:
In small groups or individually, create and animate a walking character on top of a locked live action background plate.

Homework:
Due April 8th
Create a pitch for your idea.  Your pitch should include a description of your scenario, as well as drawings to show how your work will all fit with your live action plate.

If you don't have an original idea, you can use one of these:

• Busking for bugs
• Everybody in the salad
• 5" UFO
• Leaps tall buildings in a single bound
• Other uses for the toilet
• Badly disguised
• Things on my foot
• Urban Emissions

WEEK 11: 2D Animation Using Flash, Intro to Character Design

This week we're really getting into the nitty-gritty of frame-by-frame animation techniques using Flash.

For inspiration, we'll be looking at some work created using this method. We'll discuss the animation principles most applicable to creating 2D animation: exaggeration, solid drawing, and appeal. We'll start some simple animation cycles using the bouncing ball and our trusted flour sack.

Simplicity is a necessity with this labour-intensive medium. We'll have a look at one of the most popular examples of hand-drawn Flash animation -- Simon's cat.  The creator, Simon Tofield, created his first Flash cartoon to teach himself Flash. 

We'll also start thinking about the final assignment for the year -- a 2D/live action integration project.

We'll discuss character design techniques -- finding a style using at all kinds of media including what's in your fridge..

Bring your tablets! Be ready to draw...

Homework:  Design a character for the final project. Have a printout of it ready to hang on the wall.
Three words of advice:

1. Keep. 
2. It. 
3. Simple!

If you're stuck check out these simple characters for inspiration:
Powerpuff Girls
Kirby
"Mr Men" and "Little Miss"
Super Meat Boy
Zero
Rex the Runt
Erky Perky
Ilo Milo
Patapon
Picachu
Moomin
Totoro, Soot (and other Ghibli/Miyazaki cartoons)
Stick Figures
Pikmin
Bone
Mole sisters
Sandra Boynton
Pocoyo
Breadwig.com
Teen Girl Squad (Homestarrunner)

WEEK 10: Intro to 2D Animation Techniques

3D is an orderly world of objects that never change volume, graph editors that keep track of the motion, and automatically-generated inbetweens. It's time to leave the cozy, predictable world of 3D and embrace the friendly chaos of 2D animation.

2D animation, also called traditional or hand-drawn animation, is drawn frame-by-frame with pencil & paper or digital drawing tools.  You will have to put all your knowledge of timing and spacing to good use by planning and imagining how you want the final result to look while striving to keep volumes consistent.

"Robot Elephant" - hero of "(notes on) biology". Also my hero.

We'll start with a simple bouncing ball flip-book excercise.  Try as many different weights and styles as you can using the knowledge you gained from your 3D bouncing balls. If this is really easy for you, branch out to something more complex. Flip-books are one of the few things in this world that are FAST, CHEAP, and GOOD -- see how insanely fun these can be to create watching this awesome flipbook tribute film:
"(notes on) biology"


 We'll move on to the world-famous half-filled Flour Sack.  We'll study some tricks for drawing 3-dimensionally and test our skills by creating drawings of the flour sack in 4 distinct moods.  Bring these next time: 

• Sad
• Confident 
• Wasted
• Shocked/bamboozled

Reminder: Please BRING YOUR TABLETS to all classes for the rest of the term.

CASO invites you to hear Rango's TD Doug Sutton, on Thursday, March 31st: Reserve your seat today!

 Thursday, March 31st, 12 pm - 1:30 pm 

at the Scotiabank Theatre at John & Richmond. 

$10 including a brown-bag lunch

(you get the GBC deep-discount - regular price: $40!).  

"Rango: A Lizard's Journey of Self Discovery and a 

VFX Company's Journey into Feature Animation" 

presented by Doug Sutton, Rango's Technical Director.

Doug Sutton's other credits include Star Wars I, II, III and the Transformers movies.

If you haven't yet seen Rango I urge you not to miss this extravaganza of eye-popping visual effects and superbly detailed character animation.  It's ILM's first animated feature.

Everyone is welcome but CASO would like to know how many to expect.

PLEASE SIGN UP HERE:
https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dHd2ZWpxZHUtNWVLdUwxLVh4VjdYX0E6MA

WEEK 9: 'Field Trip' Friday, March 11th, 12 pm - 1:30 pm CASO presents Paul Griffin_Animation 2.0 "The Next Level" on March 11th! Reserve your seat today!

Hey, everybody -

Hope you had a great break and aren't as sick as I am right now!

There's a very cool event happening Friday and with Jean-Paul's permission I've decided to make it a "Field Trip". For the DESN1119C class, this means this event IS your class, so you are expected to be there unless you can't afford it.
For the DESN2022A class, I realize you may have another class at this time. Please let me know so I can contact your teachers to find out what they think.  I would definitely like you to be there.

CASO (Computer Animation Studios of Ontario) has invited all of you to to a lunchtime talk:

"Animation 2.0 "The Next Level" with Paul Griffin.

You may not have heard of Paul Griffin, but you've definitely seen his work.  His credits include:
Animation Supervisor :
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter video game, cinematic sequences,  Benjamin Button, The Mummy, Pan's Labyrinth, King Kong, Fantastic Four, Mr & Mrs Smith
Lead Animator:
Star Wars, Ep I & II - ILM
Animator:
Lord of the Rings: Return of the King - Weta

WEEK 7: Midterm Exam

This exam is now closed.

If you were away for the exam, please contact me to arrange a make-up time.

tDonovan@georgebrown.ca

Week 6: Action analysis, continued

Time to polish up those assignments -- they're due next class.  We'll work on them a bit in class today.
Next week: MIDTERM EXAM!  BoooooOOOoooo ...
If there's anything you're in doubt about, now's the time to speak up!

Homework:

• Finish polishing your Action Analysis assignments.  Have the final product and your live action reference posted for MONDAY, Feb 28th.
• Get ready for next week's midterm! Guess what it's about? the 12 Principles of Animation!  It will be based on everything you've learned so far.  Review the work you've done going back to day 1.  This will be a practical test so be sure you understand the tools such as the graph editor, setting and moving keys, adding secondary action, and working from live action reference.

This week we'll have a look at some animation from films that borrowed (without stealing) from live action reference.  We'll see how they added snap, weight, and energy to the animation using exaggeration, contrast, and little tricks like overshoot and settle.

Week 5: Action analysis -- working from live action reference

After a few weeks of studying mechanics, we're digging deeper into action analysis using live action reference.

The next level of applying the Principles of Animation is the most elusive: adding personality to our characters. Staging, solid posing and appeal will come into play even more in this last 3D animation assignment for this course.

We'll be taking a couple of weeks to find, analyze and animate a short live action clip of your choice or creation.

Homework: 

• Find a live action clip no longer than 10 seconds. Download it using 'Save Vid' or another downloading tool (see sidebar links).  Analyze it frame by frame looking for keys, breakdowns, arcs, timing, and any other noteworthy details that make the clip interesting to you.  Take notes on paper or draw over stills.
• Begin animating the clip using the Luxo, the Ball, and any other primitives you need to sell this piece. 
• Zero marks are given for modeling, lighting, or texturing. This is entirely an animation assignment. 
• Start posting your work-in-progress.

Week 4: Luxo Jump, continued

  "Secret of Nimh" by Don Bluth, master of secondary action

We've covered a lot of the Principles of Animation so far, but there's still a lot to cover in terms of secondary & overlapping action.  The Luxo character has only its head and base to drag and settle, so it's important to use them well to show gravity's effects.

Creating Image Planes From Video Reference

Thanks to both my classes for shooting some fantastic video reference in class!!

Click here to see one of you as a lamp.

It's relatively easy to bring this footage into your animation files. You can easily follow the frame-by-frame reference, ie, rotoscope, but you'll quickly see that with just a little exaggeration you can make your animation even better, heavier, and snappier than the live action footage.

While I've worked on many projects that used live action reference, this was my first experiment animating directly over live action footage in my viewport. I spent about 5 minutes on this test & I simply could not believe how easy and quick it was to get the keys down & tweak it to bring out the emphasis I wanted.

So from now on, I'll be expecting even GREATER animation from all of you, hehe..

Check out the video to see how I turned one of you into a lamp...

Here are the instructions on how to view an image sequence in your viewport:

Duplicating Balls in 3dsMax

If you'd like to have more than one ball in your Max scene, it's relatively easy. 

First, I recommend you FREEZE the GEO on the ball first so you don't get double transformations if you start moving the ctrls while the geo is selected.  Make sure you have NO transformation, squash, or translations on your ball before you copy it, or the new ball will inherit all that information..

Week 3: Luxo Jr - the short that launched Pixar

Click here to watch "Luxo Jr" from 1986

The Luxo lamp is for 3D what the famous flour sack has been for generations of 2D animators -- a tool for perfecting & demonstrating a mastery of the 12 Principles of Animation. As you watch this famous short, bear in mind the primitive tools the artists were working with at the time.  This is a remarkable first film for what was then a fledgling industry, which has grown into the multi-faceted world of CG movies, shorts, and games we know today.

Balls... continued: Adjusting timing in 3dsMax

Click to view avi of ball before timing adjustment

I've had a few questions about the bouncing ball so here are some details that may help you.

The timing of the ball is dependent on two things: the number of frames per bounce, and the spacing of the ball's position on each frame.

The weight of the ball is conveyed by how fast and how high it bounces, as well as how quickly it seems to rebound off the floor.

Previewing Animation in 3dsMax

Well, well, well...

Click to view larger

Switching from Max 2010 to 2011, I had trouble finding "Preview" in the usual spot.
Turns out, they've moved it! Again!
It used to be in Render, then Animate, now in TOOLS... hmm..

Previewing Animation in Maya

Click to view image larger

In Maya, animation previews are called "PLAYBLASTS"
Go to:
Window > Playblast >

Or: