WEEK 11: Animation Direction 2 -- Welcome back Luke Mistruzzi

Luke hard at work making amazingly smooth animation 

Once again this week we have the expert assistance of Luke Mistruzzi.  He's planning to show you the ropes of stop-motion walk cycles.  If it's anything like his super-smooth animated wave from last week (despite having to use my badly-made broken puppet!)  I know it'll be fascinating.

It's time to get shooting! We have great resources now including 3 cuts of Dragonframe. I sent out an email about sign-up procedures with a link to our sign-up sheet. You should be able to use 515 whether I'm there or not. Ask Magda about signing up to work in the room.

We'll go over equipment booking in more detail in class and hopefully get to my timing exercise I've been dying to do for 3 weeks!  Always a busy class with you guys...


Milestone 5: Shooting and editing
Assigned: 22/03/12
Due: 05/04/12 In class, FTP
% of final grade: 20%

Finish shooting all your raw footage and piece it together. You should be all ready for compositing at the end of this milestone. This will be your first rough cut of your entire project, not the finished piece.
If you have some gaps (a scene that needs to be reshot, or a major change) you can include a storyboard panel in its place. One way to edit your work together is to cut it in, shot by shot, to your animatic.  That way you can always have a work-in-progress version of your whole film.

Please upload your work to the FTP with a clear file structure that includes the names of everyone
involved, the milestone, the iteration, and a movie file format compatible with QT. This includes: .mov, .mp4, .m4v, AVI. Not acceptable: .FLV, WMV. Test your file in QT to be sure it will open.

tdonovan_milestone5_001.avi
tdonovan_hhoudini_milestone5_013.mp3
tdonovan_hhoudini_dcopperfield_milestone5_303.mov

Rubric:
Exemplary: All shots completed with good lighting, focus, and composition.
Excellent: Almost all shots completed with mostly good lighting, focus, and composition.
Acceptable: Most shots completed with only minor technical problems.
Not Acceptable: Fewer than half the shots completed or many shot complete but having major technical problems.


Good luck!

WEEK 11: Character Acting 2: Quadrupeds, continued

Continuing this week with quadrupeds..

Part of this class will be a work period so I can help you guys work on your animation.

I also have a lot of video reference for you of horses and animating horses in video games and movies.

We'll compare some horse animation from some popular video games like Red Dead Redemption, Shadow of the Colossus, and Skyrim and see where the horse physics is really working .. or not.  

Epic! Lord of the Rings called for hundreds of horses. Some shots were too dangerous to use 100% real horses.

Special FX included digitally animated horses and integration using massive
blue screens.

They even used large-scale horse mo-cap.

WEEK 11: Modeling and Animation II -

Flour Sack escapes, continued..

Remember the personality-filled rug from Disney's Alladin? Or is that a carpet?

This will be partly an in-class work period so I can help you work out the staging and timing for your flour sack piece. I'll also be showing you some more tips and tricks for giving your flour sack weight & personality, both in the drawing and the timing. 

And I have more 'toons for you: an incredible film by Ryan Woodward called "Thought of You" as well as the 'making of' that shows his expert use of the very tools you're using to animate the humble Flour Sack

.

Ryan Woodward's amazing digitally hand-drawn "Thought of You"

WEEK 10: Animation Direction 2 -- Guest lecturer, Luke Mistruzzi

Luke Mistruzzi, Creative Director / Animator at Powerline Films and former Cuppa Coffee stop-motion animator is returning to give us some advice about shooting our stop-motion animation.

Check out Powerline's stop-motion intro for "Growing Good Food Ideas" for SustainOntario.

WEEK 10: Character Acting 2: Quadrupeds with Guest Speaker, Cathy Feraday

Welcome back to GBC guest lecturer Cathy Feraday Miller to give us some more advice about animating 4-legged walks.

Cathy began her career at Dreamworks as a classical animator, working on the features The Prince of Egypt and The Road to El Dorado. Switching to 3D animation in 1999, Cathy has worked for various feature and game companies in San Francisco and Toronto, and has taught 3D animation at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco and at Max The Mutt Animation School in Toronto. A Toronto resident since 2009, Cathy is now working with her husband Tim as Art Director and co-founder for their own independent game studio, Rocket 5 Studios.

WEEK 10: Modeling and Animation II, continued...

Assignment 4: Flour Sack Escapes!
Assigned: 14/03/12
Due: 28/04/12
% of final grade: 20%

Animate a short 2D scene in Flash starring the Flour Sack from the Disney model sheet. The Flour Sack is in the process of escaping something of your choice -- is it prison? a monster? the SS?  No need to give us the whole back story, just a little snippet of the action. Give the flour sack one simple object to interact with -- examples:

• a manhole
• a wall (to hide behind, to jump over, to sneak along, to squeeze under)
• a rope
• a pole
• a tightrope
• a ladder

The piece should be between 8-15 seconds long.  Optional - draw a very low-contrast, simple BG that doesn't distract from the main action. It could just be a grid for the floor to show perspective or the silhouette of a building.

Give your flour sack an opportunity to show all the animation principles you've learned. Include holds and moving holds. You may use cycles but try not to overuse them.

Try to keep the volumes consistent and use timing, spacing, and solid drawing to keep the four sack looking heavy in both his movements and posing.

Rubric:
Exemplary: Strong apparent weight, snappy timing and fluid motion with a strong grasp of all animation principles including secondary/overlapping action.

Excellent: Apparent weight and almost entirely fluid motion with a good grasp of nearly all animation principles including a good attempt at secondary action.

Acceptable: Mostly apparent weight. Motion is mostly fluid with minor errors or missing animation principles. Some attempt at secondary action.

Not Acceptable: Not convincingly heavy or not fluid with quite a few glitches or missing animation principles. no apparent secondary action.

Equal weight will be given to:
Weight, Timing, Fluidity, Overlapping Actions/Secondary Motion

Please submit files by FTP.
Please hand in 2 files, your video file and your Flash file.
You can hand in videos in any standard format except .wmv.
Ex: .mov, .avi, .mp4,
Naming convention:
tdonovan_floursack_000.avi (or tdonovan_floursack_000.mov or tdonovan_floursack_000.mp4)
tdonovan_floursack_000.fla

Please watch your naming conventions. No caps, extra characters or spaces. Feel free to number the files up to 999 as you like. It will help differentiate the files should you need to resubmit.

WEEK 10: Modeling and Animation II: Special Guest Bruce Simpson

Monday, March 12, 6:00 - 7:30 pm in the Octagon  please welcome our special guest, award-winning indie animator & director Bruce Simpson.  Bruce will be showing us his work including hand-drawn Flash animation and talking about his eclectic career in TV, films, games and commercials. 

Bruce is very open to answering questions too! :o)

Check out Bruce's website to get an idea of how prolific & creative he is:

http://www.brucesimpson.tv/achievements.htm

This talk is part of the DESN1119 course. Others are welcome to come. 

For my class, the other half of your class will take place on
Wednesday, March 14, 9:30 - 11:00 in your regular classroom, 503. Please bring tablets and/or styluses (or "styli"?) Practice drawing those heavy flour sacks..

WEEK 9: Animation Direction 2 -- Milestone 3 Critique: Completed Puppets & Sets

Welcome back!
I'm so looking forward to seeing your completed puppets and sets.  Please document all your work digitally so I have a record for marking.  With the huge variety of media and styles we'll have a lot to talk about in terms of next steps for lighting and shooting.  I have a lot of information for you about timing for stop-motion animation to get you thinking about how to proceed.

Milestone 4: Lighting tests
*(Animatic may be shot at this stage)
Assigned: 08/03/12
Due: 19/03/12  via FTP

% of final grade: 10%

Shoot a series of production stills to test all your lighting set ups. Shoot at least one per scene.  Submit high-res, 720p images (1280 x 720). The style of lighting is appropriate for your mood and subject and is as professional-looking as possible, i.e., no unintentional colour-casts, completely black shadows, blown-out highlights, shadows of off-screen items like your head or the lighting rigs. Images should be in clear focus.  Edit the images if necessary to show your final desired output if you plan to use any special AfterEffects treatments.

Naming convention:

tdonovan_stopmo_sc1_000.jpg

Rubric:
Exemplary: Images for all scenes very well lit and composed images with creative flair and professionalism.
Excellent: Images for most scenes well lit and composed images with some creativity and professionalism.
Acceptable: Images for some scenes fairly well lit and composed with only a few minor errors.

Not Acceptable: Images missing for most scenes or badly lit or composed with some major errors.

WEEK 9: Character Acting 2: Quadrupeds

Welcome back!

Building on your detailed study of bipedal locomotion, we're progressing to a whole new level with quadrupeds. Some of you did some pretty in-depth analysis of 4-legged walks last term for Assignment 3. You might even be able to use or build on the hand-drawn posing you already did for this assignment.  

I'll share a ton of reference material to help get you started -- info from books, lectures, animation, and live action.
Click here for a link to some helpful reference. 

We'll crack open a couple of free 3D rigs - you can try the free rig from the Digital Tutors course "Animating Quadrupeds in Maya", or try using Koko -- a cartoony dog -- or Rhett -- a realistic horse - from Creative Crash (you need to create an account to download them):

* Rhett the Clydesdale is currently down for updates! Boo...
http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/character-rigs/c/rhett-the-clydesdale

Click here for the Rhett rig with a tail.

http://www.creativecrash.com/maya/downloads/scripts-plugins/character/c/koko

Assignment 4: Quadruped Walk
Assigned: 06/03/12
Due: 26/03/12
% of final grade: 20%
Animate a seamless, looping quadruped walk cycle. It should look good from any angle. Show it in a turntable or from multiple views. The walk is the essential part of this assignment. For extra credit you can transition into another gait (trot, canter, gallop). You could also try adding some variation to the walk, for example a head movement or navigating over an obstacle.

Use a pre-built quadruped rig of your choice.

Rubric:

Exemplary: Strong apparent weight, snappy timing and fluid motion with a strong grasp of all animation principles including secondary/overlapping action on details like the ears and tail.

Excellent: Apparent weight and almost entirely fluid motion with a good grasp of nearly all animation principles including a good attempt at secondary action.

Acceptable: Mostly apparent weight. Motion is mostly fluid with minor errors or missing animation principles. Some attempt at secondary action.

Not Acceptable: Not convincingly heavy or not fluid with quite a few glitches or missing animation principles. no apparent secondary action.

Equal weight will be given to:
Weight, Timing, Fluidity, Overlapping Actions/Secondary Motion

Please submit files by FTP.
Please hand in 2 files, your playblast and your maya file.
You can hand in videos in any standard format except .wmv.
Ex: .mov, .avi, .mp4,
Naming convention:
tdonovan_horse_000.ma
tdonovan_horse_000.avi

Include any necessary referenced files. Please watch your naming conventions. No caps, extra characters or spaces. Feel free to number the files up to 999 as you like. It will help differentiate the files should you need to resubmit.

WEEK 9: Modeling and Animation II: 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 exercise. 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.

First we'll try some flip-book animation. 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. For example:

Sad
Confident
Wasted
Shocked/bamboozled 


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