Extended Production: Rough Animation Market Scene Part 2

Notes:

Market Scene 5 Kart Persp2 and Persp1

+ Using inspiration from The Animators Survival Kit really aided me with this walk cycle. I wanted the Merchant to have wider strides than Cy's run cycle at the beginning of the animation, with bouncier steps to work with the clothing and shoes that the character design would obtain to work with the rest of the characters; big shoes, loose clothing for secondary animation. The first text had small strides with the movement being too fast, I needed to add more frames and double them to make the movement slower and smoother.

+ After applying these edits I was happy with the speed and size of stride for the walk however I had neglected to add the kart with the cycle, so the cycle so far may no work with the kart. I quickly added an extreme rough kart movement, so that I could animate the arms in correspondence to the height of the kart, with the merchant pushing the kart. I wanted the kart to be animated in After Effects with the ease of the transform keys which would make it easier to rotate the wheels and the main body of the kart. I had experience from animating karts, from the responsive module in second year with the proper corn brief. I found animating in After Effects saved so much time as it meant that I didn't have to edit the original video layer animation that Alex, my collaboration partner for the brief, I could easily animate over the top, and blending the movement with a gradient or blending modes.

+ The rough kart was quite wobbly with the lack of consideration of the lines, I only wanted to focus on the Merchants movement, however I was quite pleased with the speed and timing of the animation, the only possible problem is how far he moves. I would need to move the whole animation more to the left of the frame, otherwise the movement of the arms and the strides worked successfully with the movement of the kart.

Market Scene 4 Running and Turning

+ This scene was extremely difficult, it took me awhile to get the perspective of Cy's body correct. it was mainly the arms in which I had the most challenges with. I used my self as reference for quite abit of the sequence, especially with the turn of the head, I didn't want the head to turn too much as it would look as if he has dislocated his neck; I wanted the movement to look realistic.

+ After getting the turn correct with the proportions of the arms and back, I started the clean lines. I then hit another problem, the proportion of the hands. In my character designs I purposely made the hands and feet bigger as it worked with my illustrative style and helped to bring a western approach to my work; this helped to make the designs suit my target market, young audience.

+ In order to solve this problem I used my pinterest mood boards as reference and myself as well. I mainly used a small mirror that I keep next to my workspace, to help draw expressions, and took photography; I had to use the transform tool to alter the sizes of the hands at first as I drew the hands too big for the design and had to scale the hands down to work with the turnaround, this way the hands would slightly get bigger as the hands get closer to the camera.  Overall I was really happy with my animation. The scene became smoother with the addition of the hair, clothing and expression movement which I felt worked successfully with the atmosphere and running action. Additionally I changed the framing of the animation in comparison to the original storyboards as I moved the camera to a full medium shot and emphasised Cy's movement more by making him turn more.