Update

So this week I really spent my time going back and forth through the animation module and the pictoplasma yeti one, honestly I'm probably enjoying the latter more, simply for the fact that with a single, still image I can go all out on a character design. Pictures of my character designs will be posted at the weekend most likely.

As far as the animation module goes I have still got a lot of work to do, I have finished a line test of my Big Guy so I have the movement of him walking pretty much sorted.

Over the weekend I intend to get this coloured up with a layer of shading, I also intend to get my Yeti entry for Pictoplasma finished.

Oh, and here's a rough version of my little character from the animation, needs tidying up, I will also most likely end up making changes to him too as I'm not 100% happy with it... but that's the case with pretty much every single drawing I have ever done.

SMART TARGETS

-Still need to get these model sheets of the 2 characters sorted, I have all the elevations drawn out so colouring them up won't take long at all. I will work hard over the weekend to try get these complete.

-I have also started character designs for the work based module which is a live brief from Pictoplasma to design a Yeti/Bigfoot character. Hopefully by the end of next week I will have a final concept.

-I have began a side profile walk cycle for my small character, for this character I want a Dexter (Dexter's Lab) type walk cycle where his legs move very fast and also kick, I've done a 3 frame walk cycle with no foot roll so I'm hoping when I get them scanned that it will give that same effect.

-I plan to do a walk cycle of my big character in the next week along with a series of line tests for hand movements and various expressions, once I'm happy with these I will redraw them with clean linework and start to build up colour and then eventually shade. Depending on how long adding the shade will take will influence my final animation.

-I may also, if I find the time during the next week, plan out some scenery designs, I don't know whether to keep the scenery as a flat image or build it up using Cinema 4D.

-I am also planning on perhaps undertaking another live brief with a few others... we shall see.

I have slacked off abit in the last week, so I think I am probably behind a little, but as long as I knuckle down over the weekend and the next week I'll easily be able to get this stuff done.

Oh, and I still need to think of names for my characters.

Weekly Update - Characters

Over the next week I really need to get these character sheets completely finished, as well as trying to complete at least a line tested walk cycle for one of my characters.
The main things I am worried about on the animation is the hand movements, I think i will need to practice by doing perhaps a number of reference drawings.
I have also slightly changed my narrative, changing the big character from a hopeful super-villain to an already established super-villain testing his gadgets and experiments on the little minion character I have designed, the character design for the big character will remain largely the same, but perhaps making him appear slightly more intelligent and changing his clothing.
Honestly I feel a little bogged down with the work after these small changes, however I think I will be able to get this all wrapped up within the next week.
It is probably a little late on to be changing aspects of my work, but I feel like if I am to work on this throughout the entire year I want something that I am completely happy with so that I don't get fed up half way through or decide to make changes later on in the project. The characters, remaining largely unchanged are at least sorted for me to begin line tests.

The movement of the characters will be significantly different from each other, although form what I have planned for my animation there won't really be that much movement, instead it will focus more on the expressions and reactions of the characters.

Big Guy:
Movement -  Strong, confident movements, fluent and quick, large strides
Expressions - Arrogant, confident, sinister, malevolent

Little Guy: 
Movement - Nervous, twitchy, unintimidating, small, quick steps
Expressions - Tired, nervous, glum, constantly scared

1st Character... again.

I have yet again redesigned my character and I finally think I am happy with him. The body shape I was always happy with, the little legs, wide shoulders, huge arms and thin waist were all the stereotypical cartoon superhero aspects that I wanted to portray through the big character (being the "perfect" example of the super-villain candidate).

The face was really the thing giving me trouble, my first design was too plain and almost too much like Mr. Incredible, this was not intimidating enough and not able to portray the range of extreme emotions I wanted.

The second was developed (see previous post) and it was a little more unique, but again I felt it was too plain and uninteresting, nothing was really eye catching about him.

This one, which I hope will be my final, was more informed by cartoons such as "Billy and Mandy" and "Cow and Chicken".

I still however need to do the expressions and poses for this character AND design my other characters...

Character One

This is the design of my first character; the big, beefy, intimidating guy.

Of course this is just a rough one, I will be editing some parts (specifically the face)  and adding more detail to make it a little more interesting as at the moment the image is quite flat.

This version of the character was done with the pen tool in Inkscape so it's a very clean finish, I intend the style of the actual animation to look a little more rough around the edges by drawing the frames and live tracing them.

Honestly this character has been giving me ALOT of trouble, I have redesigned him about 5 times now and after each time thought I had him finalised, there is just something (that I can't pinpoint) I am not totally happy with.

A New Year...

...and with this comes a new project; an animation that will be worked on throughout the year.

Already I have a pretty good idea of what exactly my animation will be and what the style of it will be, these however still need to be finalized.

The animation will basically revolve around a Step-by-Step guide on the most important aspects of being a Supervillain/Criminal. Each point will be acted out by two characters who will be significantly different in both looks and personality and the two will be in competition with each other to be the best.

For research I will look at cartoons such as Ren and Stimpy to look at how the two characters bounce off each other as well as obviously researching into styles of characters and animations.

So far I have only one design for one of the characters, he is an almost stereotypical muscular, intimidating criminal, very tall and brooding, the other character that I have yet to design will be the complete opposite.

This time round I have decided to go with a different art style from the type I pursued last year, alot of the stuff I did last year was very simplistc, cute characters, this time I've opted for a more disney, comic book style approach, just really to broaden my styles.

I had a few previous concepts that I had a few character designs for, I doubt I will pursue these, but I will not dispose of them yet.

Completed walk cycle

At last, it is done, the walk cycle that is, I fixed the feet the best I could so they didn't look quite so flat, I made the arms seem slightly more flexible and fixed the head as it movements were abit too extreme the first time round.

I also put the colours from my model sheet onto the character, I played around with their brightness in the material editor however as they didn't look too good on the model when rendered, so they are probably not exactly the same as the model sheet.

I will play around with the morph tags on the faces and perhaps render out some facial expression movements.

In all honesty I think a full 15 second animation is not going to happen, I simply think time is not on my side, I have a ton of paperwork aswell as the finishing of this here blog and my model sheet backstory.

Making the walk cycle was actually easier than it seemed, using the timeline I was able to plot out exactly were the walk would loop round again and plot all other movements based on those of the legs and pelvic movements.

Basically the walk cycle took places over 40 Frames, the very last frame is a copy paste of the very first on every limb movement, this ensured that the loop would be perfect as the last would feed perfectly into the first again.
On every leg movement the arms would move in unison as would the neck, torso and head, for  instance on the 12th frame were the one leg would move forward the opposite arm would move back and the body would tilt to the left or right, the head would swing in the opposite direction to that of the tilting body.

Once all the movement were complete I simply set the timeline to go from 0 to 39 and I would have a perfect loop!

So here he is, I was originally going to put a sack cloth texture on, but after testing this using bump maps etc. I found I actually liked the flat colour effect better, I will still produce a few screenshots with the cloth texture however to show the results.