Second Life

                                              

I have taken a mini "break" away from my animation project to expand my knowledge and present a different animation for our Second Life Media Arts Festival. I did not stray too far from what I am working on, so it won't be anything to spectacular. 

There are four ways living creatures are mobile; 2 legs, 4 legs, fins, or wings. My animation study has provided me the opportunity to focus on 2 of the ways that I am most accustomed to- 2 and 4 legs. My character animation is the 2 legs, and my Second Life animation is going to be 4 legs. Through my Google searches, book reading, and video watching, I have noticed many beginners create either a dog or horse running animation. I found it would be in my best interest to do the same. So, I found an image from Google of the sequence of a horse running and I turned it into a very short animation. 

Using those 12 poses, I created a 2 second video of it running. This very minor video was created using 24 frames and took me a couple of days to achieve just the skeleton of the animation, even with using a pre-made drawing. I could not find any tutorials or readings, yet, on how to successfully make a background appear as it is moving/changing as the character runs, but I attempted this action with the knowledge I have. I am presently working on the basic coloring job of the frames. If I have time, I will try and add more detail to the horse. 

See you at the festival! 

What I have been learning....

You never really know how much work is involved in something until you do it yourself. Most individuals are aware that animation is no easy undertaking, but do you really know how challenging it is? After reading The Animator’s Survival Kit, I now know.

To break down what I have come to learn and understand, here is a simplistic explanation:

1)      There are teams for every area:

a.       Every single character has a separate team

b.      The background

c.       Lighting/shadowing

d.      Details

e.      Coloring

f.        Special effects

1)      You work in steps to create actions:

a.       Do one thing at a time

b.      Plan out

c.       Lay out the big drawings- the storytelling drawings- these are called the keys.

d.      Put in any other important drawings that have to be there- these are known as the extremes.

e.      Use the keys and extremes as guides for things and places we want to aim at.

f.        Play out the moves to check for accuracy.

g.       Add in breakdown positions

h.      Add/remove/change and play out again- repeat as needed.

i.         Details come last- hair, clothes, quirks of the character, etc.

Visually these steps are broken down to look like this:

Sketch Run trial

For this attempt, I used the timeline animation sequence that Photoshop offers. I spent some time, with the aid of a Youtube video and googling tutorials, on figuring out how to make this happen. At first I was overwhelmed, but once I starting my trial it all started to make sense. Once I became comfortable with what I had established, I played around a little bit between the frame and timeline animation. Of coarse I started my endeavors off with the more difficult of the two. Frame animation is much easier to manage and place the pose. I don't regret starting with timeline animation because I proved to myself that I can do the challenge and eventually go into 3D animation.  

While I was playing around with the timeline animation, I accidentally made the background I picked appear to have the sun go down. I have been trying to render it into a video to post, but I think the thing I enabled does not cross over into a video render. I will work on figuring out how to share with you this cool affect.

   *The background I will be using for the animations here on out are not a creation of my own. I googled and found an appropriate setting for my character. I do not have the time to render up one of my own for this.