oops its been ages!

oh dear, i have just realised how long it has been the last time i updated my blog.. i swear my memory is getting worse and worse! we have been away for a week to attend the Bradford Animation Festival which was AMAAAZING!!! we saw so many inspiring films which included a wide variety of different styles of animation. It was really useful to see because it has given me lots of ideas about the kind of animation that i want to go into, in particular stop motion (the stop motion films stood out to me the most during the festival.)
This week, we have been given the task to animate a walk cycle in both 2D and 3D... quite a step up from mr cubie! i have done a first attempt at the 2d one but i am not happy with it, the character looks like he has a very bad limp! i really struggled with planning out the different stages of the walk, and i found it difficult to visualize it in my head. in fact i have found most of our projects a real struggle :S i don't know how i am going to cope with the 3D task this week! here is my first attempt at the walk cycle:

Whiteboard Stop- Frame

Our group were given the opportunity to have a go at some experimental animation. Laurence and I decided to use the whiteboard to brainstorm ideas for the product, and settled on the idea of a girl being robbed of her balloon. We used a mixture of hand drawn techniques and human intervention to make a small clip. We were relatively pleased with the outcome of the stills, but the finished result plays back too fast due to problems with the software. Below is the finished film:

2D Animation.. not great

I am not happy with the result of my 2D animation this week. We were given a similar task to the 3D animation: to make a large Mr Cubey and a smaller Mr Cubey character interact, therefore giving them emotions and personalities. I decided to animate the smaller Mr Cubey jumping forward and bouncing off the larger Mr Cubey. I like the start of the animation because i managed to capture the jump quite well. But I added in exclamation marks and question marks to represent the large Mr Cubey's bemusement as to why the small character just lauched itself towards it. But it didn't really work very well because I didn't draw enough frames, therefore the clip is over in a second and looks pretty rushed. Also the larger Mr Cubey doesn't have any personality, it just stands there looking bland.
We haven't been given a project this week because we are off on a trip to the Bradford Animation Festival next week which I am VERY excited about, it looked amazing!! But next time we are given a 2D project I am going to spend a lot longer on extending the animation and getting the poses in each frame perfect. Here is my finished 2D clip from this week:

Its been a while

I admit I have been very lazy concerning my blog, I havent been on here for ages! I need to keep on top of it so that I don't have to upload everything at once (I'm sure my poor little laptop doesn't appreciate the work load!)
I feel that the last couple of weeks have been more of a success for my 3D work, because I have finally managed to create something on Maya... on my own! Shock horror, I honestly didn't think it would happen after having numerous nervous breakdowns in the studio. We were given the task to animate the Mr Cubey character again, this time we had to combine Mr Cubey and a sphere character by making them interact with one another, therefore giving them personalities.
Admittedly my animation doesn't really make much sense (at one point the sphere starts levitating.. not sure why really) and the timing is all over the place at certain points. Bu overall I am happpy with the outcome because previously i really struggled with getting the object to move in Maya, let alone give it emotions and character! Here is the finished 3D clip: