Jennifer Bricknell | BA(Hons)UCA Computer Animation Arts

 As I am doing essay writing this year I decided to keep myself in practice with animation exercises on the daily, I am trying to do at least two exercises in animation or drawing a day. This is animation exercise one. 

Bunny Animation Flameling Animation Legged Character Animation In today's animation exercise we were tasked with personifying the bouncing ball we had done last week with various appendages, I chose to do bunny ears, flames and legs. The bunny one seems quite cheerful as the bounce is quite cartoonish and cute. The flame one I decided to add some ash fallout when he impacted the ground and for the legged character I decided to exaggerate the length of their leg as well as making it go at funny angles when the character impacted the floor to emphasise the discomfort and sudden impact and the effect it would have on the legs.

Today we worked on animation, lighting and rendering items making several renders of the same image so that we could see problems in textures and fine tune them as well. I also have a better understanding of how to make constraints and expressions with wheels.

In today's animation exercise we explored one of the fundamentals of animation, being how a figure or shape with Squash and Stretch using it to exaggerate the movement of an object. The exercise also helped give better practice for using arcs to make the jumping of the ball look more natural.

Today we went through the process of texturing the tutorial car, including going through glass objects and such.  We also worked on rigging a little bit, making an expression so that the car wheels would automatically rotate as the car was moved to prevent extra work being needed to animate for the animate. It took me longer to understand this and I thusly fell behind during the lesson so I will watch and follow the video tutorial in my own time.

In today's lesson we looked at arcs and pacing within animation, arcs often have a form to them and a line that guides the object that is following said arc.  Though their spacing is different they all make it to the same place at the same time, this is due to the amount of key frames and markers that are within the animation being the same within each animation, the starting point, mid point and end point are all in the same places. The distance the ball has to travel across the screen is the same in all instances.  The difference between the two coin movements is the illusion it gives, the first coin movement looks like a coin moving from side to side whereas, in my opinion, the second coin looks like its going in more of a circular motion than a linear motion thats suggested in the first coin animation. The markers when closer together give suggestion to a third dimension whereas with even spacing the animation gets no suggestion of a third dimension and remains lookin...

Today's work in the animation workshop just one final sequence left to do in the animation which i plan on finishing tommorow afternoon.