Animation Mentor: week 7

Un ejercicio un poco más complicado: combinar todo lo anterior para crear vida en una pelotita con cola. Esta pelotita ha de cumplir todos los principios básicos vistos hasta ahora, ha de haber overlap en la cola, ha de haber squash y stretch y, en fin, todo un conjunto de cosas que hacen de este el ejercicio más difícil hasta el momento.

A slightly more complicated exercise: to combine all the previous stuff to create life in a small ball with a tail. This ball needs to follow all the basics principles we have seen so far, there should be overlap in the tail, squash and stretch and, well, a bunch of things that make this exercise the most difficult so far.

Animation Mentor: week 4

La cuarta semana de Animation Mentor nos tocó profundizar en el tema del timing y el spacing que ya habíamos visto con la primera pelota botando. En esta nueva actividad, comparamos cómo se mueve una bola ligera y una bola pesada, en mi caso una bola de playa de estas que no pesan nada y una bola de bolos. Es muy interesante intentar averiguar cómo funciona el timing para cada una de ellas: los botes de la pelota pesada son muy rápidos mientras que los de la ligera son leeentos (esto significa que tienen timing diferente), y la distancia entre los "dibujos" (o frames) de la ligera es casi siempre la misma con pequeñas variaciones, mientras que para la pesada la diferencia es considerable.

Aquí os pongo mi planificación:

The fourth week in Animation Mentor we had to go deeper into timing and spacing, which we had already studied when we did the bouncing ball. In this new assignment, we compared how a light ball and a heavy one move, in my case a beach ball and a bowling ball. It is very interesting try to figure out how timing works for both of them: the bounces of the heavy ball are very fast while the bounces of the light ball are slooow (which means they have different timing), and the distance between "drawings" (or frames) in the light one is very even, while for the heavy one is quite big.

Here is my planning:

Y aquí mi animación:

And here is my animation:

Y aquí la revisión que hice cuando mi mentora, Ruth Daly, me dijo que la pelota ligera se veía aún muy pesada al final de cada bote. Aquel día no lo veía claro, pero ahora, cuatro semanas después, me parece evidentísimo.

And here is the revision I did when my mentor, Ruth Daly, told me that my light ball was looking too heavy at the end of each bounce. That day I couldn´t see it properly, but now, four weeks later, it is so evident!

La revisión tampoco me convence, ahora veo la pelota demasiaaado ligera. Supongo que un término medio estaría mejor, pero bueno, seguiremos trabajando. Al menos sí que ahora parece más ligera, ¿o no? :)

Por cierto, no os cortéis de comentar y criticar lo que queráis. Es posible que no sepáis de animación (o sí), pero de pelotas que botan sabéis lo mismo que yo, y eso es lo que cuenta. El sólo hecho de decir: "yo esa pelota no me la creo" es probablemente una de las mejores críticas que se pueden recibir. Así que ánimo con vuestras aportaciones y a ver si aprendo algo nuevo gracias a vosotros también. ;)

The revision doesn´t look very convincing to me either, now I see the light ball tooooo light. I guess something inbetween the original and the revision would be better, so we will keep on working. At least, now it looks lighter, doesn´t it?

By the way, do not hesitate to comment and critique as much as you like. It is possible that you don´t know anything about animation (or maybe yes), but about bouncing balls you know the same as me, and that is the main thing. The comment: "That movement is not believable" is probably one of the best critiques I as an animator can receive. So feel free to comment and let's see if I learn something new with you. ;)

Animation Mentor: week 3

En la segunda semana de Animation Mentor ya empezamos a animar. Empezamos con la pelota botando. Primero la planificación:

The second week in Animation Mentor we already started animating. We began with the bouncing ball. First the planning:











Y luego la animación:

And then the animation:


La pelota botando es una práctica básica y estupenda para aprender a medir el tiempo en animación (se le llama timing): ¿cuánto tiempo pasa entre botes? ¿Tardan todos los botes lo mismo? ¿De qué forma pierde energía la pelota? ¿ Cuántos botes da antes de detenerse?

Y también para aprender a distribuir el espacio (spacing) que hay entre los "dibujos" para hacer que la pelota vaya más rápida o más lenta, dependiendo de si está subiendo, bajando o está en la cresta del bote.

Como estas son las principales características de una animación, en ellas nos centramos en nuestra primera animación del curso.

También tuvimos que hacer una pose de nuestro amigo Stu. Pero es una de las que puse en el post anterior, así que os dejo que intentéis adivinar cuál. Una pista: teníamos que expresar entusiasmo. :D

The bouncing ball is a basic and great exercise to learn how to measure the timing in animation: how long does it take to go from one contact position to another? Does it take the same length for every bounce? How does the ball loose energy? How many bounces does the ball do before stopping?

And also to learn the spacing between "drawings" to make the ball speed up or slow down, depending of if it is going up, down or at the top of the bounce.

As these two are the main characteristics in an animation, we focused on them in this our first animation of the course.

We also had to do another pose for our friend Stu. But it is one of the ones I showed in the previous post, so I will let you guess which one. A clue: we had to express excitement. :D

Trying to get the correct timing

Here you can see again another bouncing balls. As I said, they force me to use lots of animation principles, so they are a wonderful exercise. Next bouncing balls probably will be alive, will have a tail and... yeah, they will present different variations, to keep on learning. That´s the point of this all. :)

I am getting there! :D

More bouncing balls

When you are animating a bouncing ball, it seems that the only principle you are dealing with is "Squash and Stretch". It is the most obvious, isn´t it? However, as far as I know, you are dealing with:

- Timing, the most important principle for me. Very hard to be good at timing. With balls you are practising it aaaall the time.
- Spacing. It´s not a principle itself (although it is similar to easy in and easy out), but it is the second most important thing in animation. Animating bouncing balls you can see clearly how the spacing works.
- Exageration. Do the balls deform like that in reality?
- Anticipation. Not in purpose, but you are doing it. You can see that the ball squashes before going again into the air. Well, that is not really anticipation, but can be useful to understand it, because the effect is quite similar.

I cannot thing of anything else, unless until the ball has its own tail. Coming soon. :D

Kisses.

Animating

And, of course, I have to practise animation from the basics... I know that this is rubbish, but the idea is to improve bit by bit. :)