Challenge Success

Yay~ I beat the 30 day drawing challenge, and successfully!

(I wanted more frames, but until I learn how to get timing by frames and not fragments of a second in photoshop, I'm stuck)

Oh James...

Another ABB "Bond's Worst Nightmare". My Bond looks suspiciously like Fallout's vault boy...

Didn't know Photoshop could do animated gifs, so I wanted to give it a try. Pretty neat, albeit really unwieldly when it comes to timing. I have a pretty good feel for how long frames last. But 0.2 of a second... no idea. Their choice of interface doesn't help. Turns out that it runs at different speeds on different browsers too. BUT!! It's awesome for short and simple gifs. I'll definitely be doing this more often.

The doodle concept.

Term4 - Short - s09 Horse-> House -> Turtle2

Yeah, it's been mentioned that my titles might be a bit superfluous. I will try to shorten them from now on (this post marking the last)


Anyway, this is the key for the 'house' horse


And this is the suggestion that Mark made- though the flow was working, he mentioned that the key I made is from a slightly downwards angle, and does nothing for the illusion that the horse is growing. This picture is the revision he threw down. The difference in the impact is staggering.


He also mentioned that the choice I used for the shrinking motion was backwards; for the horse to be sucked down instead would add emphasis to the knight's movement that followed. I originally wanted to do that, but could not solve the problem of the horse's legs simply shifting along the ground. This is another picture that Mark did that solved that problem.

Term4 - Short - s09 Horse-> House -> Turtle

Scene 9 WIP for the short.


Breakdown of the second half. Fixed the POA busted frames.


I added some extra movement to the beginning in an attempt to be more realistic. It worked, but it detracted from the animation... a lot. And it made the action too slow.

Also realized that the shoulder sphere left the POA a bunch of times.


First rough

Term3 - Animation - Critique (Dialogue & Panta)

The final dialogue I used for the critique.
The biggest points mentioned during it were: that I forgot that movement flows from the hips (I was originating it from the torso), and that I need to learn when to stop moving the character. They did say that the mouth movements were looking good though. I still need a LOT of practice on subtle animation. In short, I don't do it. Though I'm trying to change that.


Quick modification of the quicktime file made by Dillen Brown (the Creative director of Pixar Canada!!!) when he came to our school. After a discussion of acting with the animation classes, he came around to our rooms and looked over some of our stuff!

His main point was to hold the final frame on 'darla'- he said I could get a lot more mileage out of that pose than I was using it for.


First run for my dialogue.
Again, not enough time to portray my acting choice on the later half. The head turn looks like he's snapping his neck.


A slightly revised version of the pantomime I chose. I would have liked to have had more time to work on this. Still too much movement with not enough time to register it.

Term3 - Animation - Pantomime

Started work on dialogues and facial acting this term.

These assignments are to keep us thinking about the body action and to prevent us from becoming completely focused on the face and mouth. As such, we only blocked out the body movement for these assignments. If you have no mouth movements and the character still looks like he is delivering the dialogue, your in the right direction.



Same as the previous, but broken down and inbetweened.


Action is too fast. I realized that when your timing is dependent on the dialogue itself, you need to leave enough time to animate those chosen actions in that amount of time. Seems obvious...but no.


Missed the accents on this one. Hitting the accents right on the frame makes it look slow.

Term2 - Animation Barrage!

I chose to throw all the animations from this term into one big batch because I am not all that happy with what I produced. Suffice it to say that 'you learn more from your failures than from your successes" - which is good, because I learned a hell of a lot this term.

Involuntary action. I chose a slip.
The trip action itself is not horrible for what I was capable of at that time, but the two steps leading up to it are really weak. I still suffered immensely with overlapping action - and did not really know the difference between that, follow-through and secondary action until just after the third term began.


Sports based action. Tennis Serve.
Not a whole lot to say on this one. I really enjoyed this assignment. I did get a little crazy with notes on the page though.



This week was weight. I chose a character lifting a heavy object off an knee high platform.

I liked it until he touched the box :/. Still no grasp of OA. I also did everything after the grab in a night (did not film live-action reference, and the teacher suggested that I start over with only three days of a two week time-span left), and my glazed-over eyes did not seem to notice the extreme angle at which the object still manages to stay on the platform. Kind of funny now that I look back at it. Need to work on time management (might be a slight understatement).



Had to pick another choice from the same list as the animation below and block it out. I chose a character taking a step back and pulling himself up to sit on a box.

This was the introduction to full-body animation. Unfortunately, Charles took some well deserved time off after Christmas vacation and another teacher was let go without replacement just before, so we only had two teachers over four classes at the time; and the seniors seemed to have taken precedent. We were pretty much unsupervised during this crucial transition... Things did not go well.

About half-way through I had an epiphany about just how complex overlapping action is - and a glimpse of just how much I had to keep track of. My brain melted. This was the result. (I animated straight ahead for the OA on the arms - it shows).

On the plus side, I gained a very valuable quote from Charles when he came back. He looked at my animation, talked about how animation is a reflection of the animator, and said "(to put it bluntly) Thoughtless animation from a thoughtless animator". That quote now adorns my desk in big highlighted letters as a reminder. I'd like to say that I plan much more thoroughly compared to before.

We had a list of options for each assignment this term. The first was a choice of basic body mechanics. The last assignment of working with only the torso and legs. I chose kicking a ball.

I always loved the Warner Brothers style, and so wanted to stray from a realistic depiction. Much much more difficult to do than I originally thought. I did not realize that since this is so exaggerated, live action reference could only help so much, and that the rest of it would be dependent on my own knowledge of the driving forces... which was not great by any means at the time. Still, I had a lot of fun working on this one.

Term1 - Animation - More assignments

I realized that it will probably be a while before I get those layouts to the point where I'd be happy with them, so I may as well get this thing up to date in the meantime.

Sooo here we go.



Jump on and off a box.


Progressive generic walk


Character walk cycle (I...don't really know what sort of walk this is supposed to be)

Animation Term1 - First few assignments

Don't ask about the star... ... just don't, I don't know what I was thinking. I have learned a valuable lesson... I will NEVER do that again... well, at least not on assignments to be graded.

And yeah, I noticed how he rolls over his tail and defies the physics of solid ground. I forgot about the ground line and really only realized it after I handed it in... On the bright side, I haven't neglected it since :)


Showing weight with balls.



Everyone knows this one. The quintessential bouncing ball. Oh how I cringe when I look back on thee ;) . Must mean I've gotten better since I've started. I'll allow myself a small pang of pride :)

Some Pre-VanArts Animation

A group assignment. The first frame is also used as the last frame - as such, all the classmates' animations would hook up properly. This was my bit.

A throw effect. The Character is really stale, but for animating straight ahead on a 1st attempt - I thought it didn't turn out half bad...

My first walk cycle.

Now that I look back, these drawings are so rigid... I'll take it as a sign of improvement.