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Workflow breakdown - break down the workflow, processes and techniques you used for each step of your project. For each process:​ ​Discuss your research into this process, and the information you gained from your sources. Embed images and videos where appropriate​​​

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 This Project is a series of  small 2D animated shorts such as a character playing with a sword, walking ect. It includes things as; 

• Simple Warm up Animations 

• Lip Syncing Animations 

• Using the pin tool in after effects 

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Animation list: 

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• Pabu/ Ferret jumping- exercise 

• Jack/Guinea pig-exercise 

• Character Head turn- 2d exercise 

• rough sword animation- 2d exercise 

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• 'Trash'- Lip Syncing Animation (Cross-collaboration)

• 'Ducks' Lip Syncing Animation (Cross-collaboration)

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• Appa Flying- Pin tool in After Effects 

• Character head Rig-After Effects (using joysticks and sliders)

• End Title page animation 

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2D Animation Exercises

The animations I had completed here, was the main focus of my specialisation (of course before I found out It shouldn't have). For this project I wanted to have simple animations that were somewhat similar to ones i've done before. The focus on that was to try to improve on the actual animation. The work flow I had followed for these were all the same (so i'll only explain using the one exercise).  While starting out, I found some reference images, gifs and videos of what I was trying to recreate, heres some examples: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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                                                  Something I seem to struggle with is the lack of references I use. I then move onto   

                                                  animating very rough lines to find the general shape and movement of how the character                                                         should move and then I add more detail once Im happy with how it looks.                 

 

 

 

                      

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                       

 

 

 

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Lip Syncing Animation 

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Working on the lip syncing animations is where it feels more  like a specialisation then what I had originally planned, as it's something new that had to watch some tutorials on. I didn't do much research other then the 2 tutorials and a quick google image search. I felt that after watching the 2 videos, I didn't need to do much more research to know what I was doing and it was one of those things where I needed to practice it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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To give the characters more life I also gave them either simple facial expressions or head movements as i wanted it to be more then a flat character with moving lips. 

 

Rigging, Pin tool and Joysticks + sliders  Animation

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The first Rigging animation (Appa) was done with the pinning tool in after effects. It's a tool I used for the previous  assignment that i wanted to use again but to use 2 layers to create  different effects. While working on the appa animation i was going off memory from what I learnt from this tutorial and the  2.5 animation test.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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After all these i started working on more simple animations such as the Character head turn and the rough sword one  until i needed to do a task the required more research, which lead me to the the joysticks and sliders rigging tutorials. I had a look at a few before I found one that I could understand 

until  I found the one with the bear 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like with the Appa animation, my first step was to get a character ready and instead of creating a whole new character I just used my vampire one I had created earlier in the trimester, all I had to do was change the point of view of the head. I followed the tutorial as I was watching it and I did come across a couple of mistakes. One was I didn’t select all of the layers while I clicked the button that binds them and creates the control so it ended up like this; 

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I did wish I could have done more with the joysticks and sliders plugin and added more detail and just made my whole specialisation based around rigging 2D characters but I didn’t think my project through to do so and I ran out of time to learn more then the basics. 

 

 

Before the  Joy sticks and Sliders project came along I found myself not knowing what to animate/ Study so I decided to do a dynamic character pose side study which was outside of my drawing comfort zone, Because this part of the project was un need so i had turned it into a simple  Animation to go at the end of my showreel. At first I just had the same picture in after effects and cut and move the image to make it look like it was flying but because I learnt the  very basic of joysticks I decided to re do it in there and it turned out less staged.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Mouth Rig 

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The mouth rig is something I moved onto after creating the head rig after I found a tutorial that caught my eye. While creating this, i stuck to what the tutorial went through step by step including the pen tool which I was hesitant to use as I  had never used it before and it took some time trying to get use to it. After a few attempts of making the general mouth shape i followed through with the tutorial, it seemed easy enough until i had to create the 4 key frames that joysticks requires to be able to make the rig. The tutorial didn't go through clearly how to change  the mouth into the keyframes so I had to figure it out myself which I struggled to do. At first I tried moving it the normal way i know and it didn't work. i then turned on auto key frame and moved it with pen tool which is how I created the different mouth types, i did have to re do it a few times as i ran into  small problems  such as the gums where showing or the teeth would disappear when i needed them to show ect.  Once I completed the frames I created the joystick control and the videos up the top show the results. Ive done something wrong somewhere and I couldn't end up fixing it as I had run out time, hence the due date for this project. However, If i had more time to complete it i would have moved onto another, longer tutorial which seems to explain more about using joysticks ( i had watched 4 mins of it) to try and figure out what i was doing wrong. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

​Appraisal of the finished project: What worked, what didn’t work, and why? How did it match with your expectations? 

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With this project, there was a few things I wish I did instead ​​of focusing on simple Animation exercises but other then that

Im happy with how most of the animations came out. With the exercise animations I think I could have added more principles of animations rather then simply making the characters move. The animation that I’m most impressed with is the lip sync ones. I think I did a pretty good job considering its my first time learning that skill, I do think at times there are flaws and I could have drawn in betweens for the mouths or even given the characters more attitude. I also wish I had more time to add more joystick and sliders into this trimester because I found that sort little study interesting and I think it would have made a better specialisation.

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What didn’t work was the amount of time I spent on animations that weren’t as important, as well as my attempt at another walk cycle. 

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Another thing that didn’t go well was my motivation, time management and issues at home that didn’t make it easy to complete specialisation. I do think If I dealt with those issue in a better way, including coming into class everyday I would of had a better experience with this project and I  would have known not to put my focus on simple exercises a lot sooner.

 

Future lessons & goals: What can you do differently next time, what to repeat? What else do you want to learn?

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Future lessons- Do a lot more research and keep in mind that specialisation is to learn something new not to re-do past tasks. 

- Stay motivated and not let personal issues affect how I work 

-Think more carefully on what exactly the new skill you want to learn is- be more specific rather then just saying ' I want to animate 2d characters'.  

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What I can do next time is carefully read over the brief and plan out more efficiently and to double check with lectures if my overall plan matches with the brief. 

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What I'd Like to know how to do next is more advanced Character rigging with joysticks and sliders. If I had more time to learn it for this trimester or thought more carefully what my specialisation would be, it would be following through with tutorials like these ones.

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