Bouncing Ball

Here are several bouncing  ball animations that include: the ping-pong ball, beach ball and the bowling ball. 

Ping-Pong Ball

On the bar sheet, I drew quite a lot of bounces there, because ping-pong featured on weightless and bouncy. Therefore, it wouldn't stop easily. 

The ping-pong ball did not bounce well in the video. The ball seemed floated in the air and the arc seemed very weird too. I could lightly draw a guide line on the table first, in order to create a perfect bounce curve.  

Bowling Ball 

Bowling Ball featured on heavy and large. Therefore I only drew one bounce on the bar sheet.

However, there is some difference between the bar sheet and actual animation. I did three bounces and on the third bounce, the ball seemed to snap for a moment. I think it perhaps because I accidently deleted few frames. 

Beach Ball

This is my most satisfied bouncing ball animation- Beach Ball. I think it's bounced really well.  As you see the arc, timing and spacing all been arranged perfectly. The only pity thing is that the ball has jumped out of the scene, which is not allowed. If I have more time, I would adjust it and make the ball bounces within the camera scene.  

Maya exercise_ Spaceship

Here is the spaceship Maya exercise that I've done whiles ago, but forget to record on the blog.

Overall, I am quite pleased with spaceship exercise. I found it's easier to animate in the Maya with instructions, I can always follow it step by step and complete successfully. 

However, without instruction or tutorial, I would struggle with start point. For example, the block interaction I did last time. I was very struggling on how to make block trace behind, how to manage to incorporate the emotions to block and so on.  

As an animator, I will watch more Maya tutorials and do more practices on the Lyda.com. I will make sure I familiar with most of the basic tools and be able to animate the character in the future.

Ballon Bouncing

I did the balloon bouncing animation again and it's slightly better than last time. 

The good thing is that the penny looks lighter and slower, which felt like a proper balloon. Last time, my balloon stop motion animation looks floated and unnatural. 

However, I still have to improve because it bounced like a beach ball. It would be better if I change the arc or direction of the balloon. 

Here is the Maya bouncing ball. There are several things I can improve. Firstly, The ball does not bounce around, it only stays on one point.  Secondly, it bounced too quick when the ball comes to the end. Logically, the ball should slow down because of energy losing. At last, I noticed that it did not stop naturally, there should add one more bounces before it stops. 

Redo Pendulum

This is the third time to redo the pendulum animation. There are some improvements that I can see from the video. The good thing is that the block finally have weight, it slowly dropped down, then quickly swingged to the other side and repeated it again.

However, there are some moments that seemed stiff. It's because of  the lack of the control. The block seems been hold for too long when they approached the highest point, then slowly dropped down, which resulted in unreal movement. 

At last, I'm not happy with the ending swing part. It's too quick and  rushy. For better result, I should have added more frames to make it slower and clear. 

This is the video of me worked extremely hard in the stop motion room. 

Aniticipation

The images above are my  Anticipation bar sheets. My first attempt was wrong so I did it again. On the first bar sheet the graphic line just constantly moved forward without any changes. However in my stop motion the block literally speed up and slow down. Therefore, the first anticipation bar sheet does not make sense at all. The reason to cause it was I did not really understand the bar sheet. I though it just the direction of the block, so I drew a straight line. Now, I had a better understanding of bar sheet because of  the graphic editor in the Maya. It really helped me a lot that once you animated the block, there will be a graphic line to explain how the motion works. 

The main problem about this anticipation animation is the stage. The block started from very left but stopped on the center of the table which is uneven. Additionally, when the block going to stop, it should have leaned forward whilst moving, in order to show the expected movement.  

To improve it, I will measure the distance with the rule next time. I believe the block would work better once the starting point and end point is been figured. 

Slow in and Slow out

Bar sheet 

This is the bar sheet for slow in and slow out. When I reviewed my bar sheet, I found a mistake which was I didn't draw the constant speed between and slow in and slow out. When a block slowly moved in the scene, it should have speeding up gradually and then slow down, but I did not draw that. It suggested that I did not fully understand the bar sheet at that time, but I felt proud of myself as now I have the capability to identify the problem and being able to correct it.  

Slow in and Slow out Stop Animation

This Slow in and Slow out animation.

This time I found it's slightly easier because it's based on the A to B animation and I already had few experience on the camera and settings. 

The good thing about this animation is that it looks smooth and details. However, the distance seemed a bit short. Additionally, there are not enough slow in frame, which seems that it speed up suddenly. 

It would be much better if I put more timing at the beginning.

I could also reduce the space at the beginning, this would create a slow motion for block.

If it happened again,  I would spend more time on bar sheet to figure out the timing and spacing.  

Week 7 Review of Block Interaction and Ball Weight

The things I've learned today that include:

• Pro-type something e.g. bar sheet, storyboard... before going to computer or stop motion room.
• be prepared, be organised.
• Observe, translate, animate

Reviews of Block Interaction 

Block Interaction 1

I realised that my animation was too quick which causes it  lost performance. Timing was a big problem because the animation is only around 5 seconds, the blocks moved too fast during the performing, it would be better if I hold the block for few seconds to show the performances. In next exercise, I will put more thoughts in timing, do not be afraid of holding blocks, play with the spacing and distance to make animation better. 

Block Interaction 2

This is my second interaction exercise. I learned the lesson from last experience and slow the block down by repeating each frame three times. I intended to redo the animation frame by frame, however after I collected the camera, I just released there's no tripod left. I was really annoyed about this because we supposed to have 6 tripods (as 6 cameras and 6 rooms) but there are only 5 tripods and all of them were been used. Therefore, the only thing I could do was to repeat the frames in order to slow down the motion. After I change the timing, the performance can be seen clearly, but it did not perform smoothly as it's done by repeating frames.  The plan nerve catches up the changes. From this experience, I had gained the awareness of equipment preparation and avoid of book camera at the rush time. 

I had no clue how to animate three blocks at the same time. Block interaction is different to another exercise, which needed more than one object to achieve the interaction. This required accurate timing and the good understanding of Maya. Fortunately, after spent almost one hour and a half, I finally made it. Although it's not perfect, but I'm pleased with its completion. 

Ball Weight 

Ball weight is the essential element in the animation.

The task we've been given today is to produce four stop-motion animation and one Maya animation for the following selections:

• Ballon (featured on light and the wind)
• Ping-pong ball (featured on small, bouncy and light)
• Beach Ball (featured on large, soft and light)
• Bowling ball(featured on large, heavy and hard)
• Ball of clay (featured on small, hard and solid)

Use circular disk or 2p coins to represent the balls bouncing across the screen. Apply the principle of Squash and Stretch in Maya animation. 

Timing and Spacing

Timing = Speed+Tempo

More Frames + Less Change = Slow Motion

Big Space + Less Frames + More Change = Fast Motion

Notebook Record 

This is a Beach ball bouncing video. It did not bounce great but I can still observe the motion of the ball. From the video, we can see that beach ball is light, soft and bouncy but because of its volume, it did not bounce much. 

Week 6 Review of Pendulum & Block Interaction

• More control on block as it wiggly a lot
• Constantly speed makes it looks weightless. The block seems does not have energy to swing. The advice for me is to speed up when it drops and just keep working on it. 
• A better suggestion is to create a gate for the pendulum, this  means that we can draw a curve on the paper and use it to guide block's movement, the more practice we do, the more experiences we learn. There's nothing wrong to complete the exercise with guidance as long as it won't appear at the final submit work.   
• Use the Maya exercise as the guide for Stop motion Animation. Look at the graphic curve in the Maya to help me with understanding of  timing and bar sheet. 

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Block Interaction

The aim of project is to test your creatives and storytelling, try not to use props because it will defeat the purpose of the task. 

Story:

A group of little ducks swim on the pool with duck mom. Suddenly, the last duck has been attracted by something and he went over, he lost his group and was panicked for whiles. He turned around and looking for his team, unfortunately he could not find them and swim to the completely different direction.   

Storyboard 

Barsheet

Pendulum Exercise

On week 5, I did the pendulum exercise. To figure out the timing and arc, I designed to start with  the pendulum in Maya first. 

 I felt that doing pendulum on Maya wasn't hard however I stuck on the tangent for whiles. 

It was slightly confusing to use free tangents on the graphic editor because I haven't been figured out all the functions of the buttons and it can easily cause the mistakes.  

Eventually, I've solved the problem by reading through the Blackboard instruction, followed it step by step to approach the final result. The curve changed from linear to arcs which also changed the smoothness of the pendulum. 

I found out that simulated the exercise on Maya can easily make me understand how the arcs and bouncing of pendulum works. I also completed the bar sheet with this graphic editor. 

Finally, I moved on the stop motion room. Initially, I tried to do it without the guide and it worked awfully. Therefore, I drew an arc on the table just to help with the direction. It looks better than last time but I still have lots of things to improve such as when the block step back to prepare jump, it looked very stiff and unnatural. Furthermore, I would like to improve the arc because it looked more like an oval rather than a semi-circle.  

A to B move

Here is the Final video of A to B move exercise 

On my first exercise, I did not spend a lot of time, so it  looks disturbing. Especially the lighting, I can see the light had changed in one of the frames which differed from most other frames, it was snappy but still visible. I think that's because of the shadow of the bag, I had put all my stuff on the tables that include school bag, camera bag, notebook, rules and so on. This had made table messed around and distracted for me to take photos.

I might move bag too close to the scene which caused a dropped shadow that made a discrepant lighting. I should have organised my stuff and keep the table clean to make sure it always tidy for shooting. I should also adjust the lights before shot as it was not looking great at all.

In the future, I will make sure I clean all the unnecessary things on the corner and always adjust the lighting to  prepare for the shots. Perhaps I will remake the 'A to B block move' again to improve my work if I have spare time.

A to B slow in and slow out

Here is the  video of A to B slow in and slow out on the Vimeo

I think this exercise was quite hard for me because I could not figure out the timing and measurement of the block in the beginning. At initial, I tried to constantly increase 1mm between the frames but it failed as the block moved out from the camera frame. Then I tried second times, increase 1mm between every three frames, but still failed because it does not show the slow in/ slow out. Finally, I tried to increase 1mm at the first few frames, then, move to 2mm, 3mm and so on, until 10mm, I started to reduce down the distance as the block has to be slow out. It worked successfully for the third time.

Here is my bar sheet for A to B slow in/ slow out exercise. As you can see how struggle I was,  I used different colours of the pen to analysis the timing and tried to work out the measurement between frames.

I've spent three hours in the studio and I felt struggling, confusion and annoyance while doing the exercise. I frequently struggled with the technical things. For example, I was unable to connect the camera to Stop Motion Pro, it was very frustration as I tried so many times to disconnect the USB and put back on again. I was thought about give up, let's do it another day, but I eventually solved the problem with Josh's help.

The reason of unable to connect was that I did not set the camera on manual. I did not read through the introduction sheet when I started setup the camera because I thought I already knew it well from the last exercise. Hence, I skipped this important step and focused on the camera setting.This experience has taught me that always skimming the introductions first before we start making things. If you made one error, you would not able to continue and it might waste a lot of time to find out the reason.

In the future, I will make sure skim the introduction first and make it as a habit whenever I create a stop motion animation.

Gibbs reflection about first class of Animation 101

Description 

It was second week of university that we were giving assessment brief of Animation 101 and been shown around the stop motion room by teachers in order to conduct stop frame animation in the future. Two incidents were happened on that day which I was late for half hour because I thought the class started from 10 o'clock, this has caused me missed part of information which is '12 principle of animation'. In addition, I did not hear what Jame said clearly when he introduced of equipment because his voice was lower and there were too many people crowed in the room.

Feeling 

I felt upset about lateness of the lecture as I missed parts of important information. Although I have asked one of classmate for lecture time, she told me it might be 10, I should have ask other people or teacher to confirm the time again. During the introduction of stop motion room, the influence of late still affected me that lead me unable to concentrate. What I felt was confusing and depressing while walk around the stop motion room, plus I was standing at the back; the room was slightly small that students could not see properly.

Evaluation 

I did not ask the teacher any question when he finished because I was afraid of speaking in front of  other people, plus most of other students were really quite and this seems they have understood everything. but sooner I felt much better as one of my classmate said she has same feeling in the stop motion room as she was a bit confused but timid to ask. This has encouraged me to express my confusion next time and it might helps other students as well.

Analysis

In retrospect, I should have ask more than one people to confirm the lecture time or make note when teacher mentioned it during the lesson. I should also engage to express my confusion about the equipments or speak to teacher afterward. 

Conclusion

 In retrospect, I would do several things differently. I should have spoken to other student or teacher about the accurate lecture time. I could even post the question on Facebook group; they are willing to answer all the questions. This experience has made me realised that I should build up my confidence and social skills in the university. I should overcome my hesitant thoughts and engage to communicate with others in order to develop my social skills.

Action Plan

In future, I will express my confusion courageously and build up a relationship with classmates. I have been made several friends and often went out with them. Additionally, I have chatted with them on the Facebook group and share my work. Overall, I will constantly interact with teachers and classmates as communication is essential to our life. 

  

Introduction to animation 101

Description 

Read through the introduction to the module and the assignment brief.

Photo of assignment brief to Animation 101

12 Principles of Animation

1 Squash and Stretch
2 Anticipation
3 Staging
4 Straight ahead action and pose to pose
5 Follow trough and overlapping action
6 Slow in and Slow out
7 Arcs
8 Secondary Action
9 Timing
10 Exaggeration
11 Solid drawing
12 Appeal

 

image of illusion of disney animation from rbeemadiary.blogspot.com




image of illusion of disney animation from  www.amazon.co.uk

Evaluation 

I have browsed the book 'The illusion of  life Disney animation' and started read first chapter- Squash and
stretch.


When we draw on the paper, there is a marked rigidity that is emphasized by the movement. In real life, this occurs only with the most rigid shapes, such as chairs and dishes and pans. Anything composed of living flesh, no matter how bony, will show considerable movement within its shape in progressing through an action. (Thomas F, Johnston O, 1912, p 48)

The movement of squash and stretch are very essence of animation. I learned that when we animate a character, a smile was no longer a simple line. It spread across a face; lips and cheeks, the Squash and Stretch can really make the movement alive.

Learned how to write a good blog

• document my learning process
• annotate the documents
• evaluate personal experience  
• use the formal word to express the blog, do not use slang or internet word such as hahaha, lol, CU etc.
• give feedback and problem-solving 
• make label or category to separate each module so teachers can find them easily

Stop motion Pro A to B move

-move block from A to B

-25 frames hold, 50 frames move, 25frames hold again (our brain cannot recognise first-second moving)

-use 25 frame per second for TV use

-use DSLR camera

photo of whiteboard analysation