Module 1 Walking Cycle

Progress and Time Management

Time Plan:

I created a timetable of how long it would take for me to do a drawing. I gave myself 1 week at most and at least 3-4 hours a day to create the assets, artwork, animation, editing, and stylising. I believe this worked efficiently as when I prepared my timetable I made sure I followed it every day, as if I had to hand it in within a week to give me that extra push even though I didn’t.

Document Daily/Weekly Progress:

I felt like I was behind schedule at first as the drawings were taking a while to do, as I changed my mind on my character. I still manage to complete my character on time with all the movements been correctly drawn out so I believe I stayed on target as I wanted to.  I underestimated my work load and next time will give me more time as this lead to not fully being a head of plan. 

Uploaded Images

Here shows my walking cycle of my character. As you can see I did a simple walk to show the key movements of the cycle. By changing the leg, arms and hat you can clearly see a movement. This turned out to be a hard module to do as mastering a sequence of a walk is harder than I imagined. I feel as if I was able to get the key movements but next time I want to try something harder such as running and adding colour to the character. 

Strengths and Weaknesses

Overall my strengths for the project went really well as I worked through what I was supposed to do, and always looked back on references so I knew exactly what I was doing.  However I did have weaknesses as well as strengths which meant I had to deal with issues such as I found it difficult to get the key movements correct as sometimes when playing my loop the walking cycle didn't look completely correct. In order to get this right, I had to draw out my character movements again, but I finally got it to work properly. I resolved this by looking at Muybridge work and researching online at key movements. With it being hand drawn, I didn't have much time to colour it in Photoshop which is what I would of liked to have done in the future as of course it would look better. But I am impressed I was able to get idea across and was able to prove I can create a character showing movement.  I did however colour and line work one of my images just so I could see what it looked like.

 I did overcome my weaknesses and was able to make my work better by knowing I had them. The strengths I had was always making sure I had no weaknesses and if I did I would work on them. I put a lot of effort into this module, and I will keep doing so with other modules. So any weaknesses I still have I will overcome them in over modules as I will always keep practising and improving on my work. 

The threats I had en-counted was, that I was found it difficult to get the key movements correct as sometimes when playing my loop the walking cycle didn't look completely correct. This lead to me redrawing some of my hand drawn drawings but I finally got it working properly as I kept researching others work similar to my own. Keeping the same proportions of the body was hard as I could never get it just right, but then realised to make it easier for myself I could trace my own images, and change the movement of the leg and arms at the same time, which helped a whole lot. I felt like I've dealt with my problems very well as I've just kept going at it and trying as hard as I can.

Progression through this module

My progression though this has been very successful. I was able to follow all the requirements and get everything completed on time. It was very difficult as with me starting late in the course I had a lot of work that needed to be caught up on but I'm very happy with my overall work. I feel I have achieved my goals and aims and done a successful character in motion by using very basic tools.

Applying Numeracy to a Project to achieve a final outcome

Keeping the same proportions of the body was hard as I could never get it just right, but then realised to make it easier for myself I could trace my own images, and change the movement of the leg and arms at the same time, which helped a whole lot.  If I had the chance to now however, I would make more changes on my character as there is always room for improvement, but I would make his hands and legs a bit better as his toes and fingers are all different sizes and out of proportions. Its good to always refer to your own hands and feet even if you are drawing a cartoon as when drawing i've been taught if you drawing your hand/feet while watching it its a better outcome than you would get if you were copying someones drawing online. 

Personal Development Plan

The objectives for week 1 are to make sure my idea is in place and know what I want to do to the character, what type of movement it will do extra. Week 2 I will work on the development of of my project and draw out my character. I will take time to make the character look as if it is simply walking. Week 3 will be putting it onto dragon software so that you are able to clearly see the movement i have given the character. 

Inspirational Work

 Eadweard Muybridge influenced my work as he was able to create a series of studies which included human and animal life and movement. From seeing his examples it made me think of my own, so I used the same techniques he did and begin researching into what would be my moving character   He used a plain backdrop to stop unwanted parts from getting in the way of the background; he then photographed in front of the backdrop then observed the process of the movements that were being made.  He would shot these shots several times a second to make the images look like they were in a constant loop of movement but indeed were simple separate images.  

Refection and Evaluation 

Overall I found the project manageable but hard as I have other modules to do as well as this one but I felt that I have managed my time appropriately and therefore got the work done on schedule. I’ve had a lot more pressure with having more modules to do by I think having the pressure has helped me to do better and made me prepared if I get that amount of work all at one time.

I believe I did achieve my overall aims and objectives as I was set out to do as much hard work as possible. I put a lot of effort into my research so my end project would look as good as it could. My main aim was to make sure my character did a walking cycle and I know for sure I succeeded.  My animation was fit for purpose as I did exactly what the assignment told me to do and made my character do a walking cycle like it would do in a cartoon clip.

Module 2 Storyboard

Progress and Time Management

Time Plan:

I created a timetable of how long it would take for me to do a drawing. I gave myself 2 weeks at most and at least 3-4 hours a day to create the assets, artwork, animation, editing, and stylising. I believe this worked efficiently as when I prepared my timetable I made sure I followed it every day and stuck to it. It has been difficult to manage my time efficiently with the other prior modules I have to catch up with but having a time plan has really worked out well.

Document Daily/Weekly Progress

I felt like I was behind schedule at first as the drawings were taking a while to do, with all the constant tracing and having to keep doing drafts of the storyboard to make sure the idea works.  However I still managed to complete my storyboard on time so I was always on target but I think in my second year I won’t find this as a problem as I won’t have to catch up on any prior modules. Any lost time I felt I had was because of the amount of concepts I was drawing, however once this was done, it was matter of colouring in the storyboards which didn’t take too long. 

Uploaded Images

The animation will start outside with the bear (Rory) lying down. A fly (Buzz) flies past and is sucked in with a breath. Trapped inside the stomach Buzz tries to think of a way out. After a light bulb moment he pulls out some dynamite. He will cover his ears and we will see a view of Rory. An explosion happens, then Rory falls from the sky after explosion as Buzz flies off happily. Rory then crashes into the ground, Buzz flies past, blows a raspberry and then quickly flies off up a tree. Rory starts to climb too, gaining on Buzz who takes a detour from the main trunk along a branch. Rory follows and is just about to grab Buzz when SNAP! Branch falls and Rory ends up in a ditch again.

Strengths and Weaknesses

I had many strengths when doing the storyboard, I was able to think of an idea and research other artists to try and use the methods they did and this worked well. However I did have weaknesses such as when doing my storyboards I found it difficult to decide on what would be the next frame, and was worried I was skipping too far ahead as in my head I know what story I’m trying to tell but that may not be the case when others look at my work.

So in order to stop me from worrying I decided to ask friends and family to look at my work and see if they can interpret the story themselves. It turned out that they did understand it but give me ideas on how to add a couple of extra frames just to make the story perfect as sometime they got a little confused how one frame jumped to the next. This helped me a lot and made my storyboard better. 

A threat I had when doing this module was that I couldn’t animate it properly on Photoshop, I had the storyboard in place and the right idea for a story but I don’t think I had enough frames to actually make the key movements when making the storyboard into a movie. I created the storyboard like a comic strip so when putting it together and playing it o the timeline, it doesn’t look right at all. This was a problem in the end, and I wasn’t sure what else to do. I think if I looked into more on the internet I may of got the answer I needed but unfortunately I was never able to resolve this. 

Progression

My progression though this has been very successful. I was able to follow all the requirements and get everything completed on time. It was very difficult as with me starting late in the course I had a lot of work that needed to be caught up on but I'm very happy with my overall work. I feel I have achieved my goals and aims and done a successful job in creating a storyboard. I felt it showed what the story is about and seemed a funny idea to do something with a bit of humour.

Apply Numeracy to achieve final outcome

Keeping the same proportions of the body was hard as I could never get it just right, but then realised to make it easier for myself I could trace my own images, and change the movement of the leg and arms at the same time, which helped a whole lot.  If I had the chance to now however, I would make more changes on my character as there is always room for improvement, but I would make his hands and legs a bit better as his toes and fingers are all different sizes and out of proportions. Its good to always refer to your own hands and feet even if you are drawing a cartoon as when drawing i've been taught if you drawing your hand/feet while watching it its a better outcome than you would get if you were copying someones drawing online. 

Personal Development Plan

The objectives for week 1 are to make sure my idea is in place and know what I want to do to the character, what type of movement it will do extra. Week 2 I will work on the development of of my project and to draw out my storyboard and make sure it works. Week 3 will be putting it on mounted board and making sure the storyboard is coloured in photoshop.

Inspirational Work

I looked more into her work and grew to love it more, so from there I tried to use the same methods and techniques that she does. She takes one step at a time on each storyboard and like any artist does it all in rough then develops on the idea. I’m going to approach my storyboard the way she always approaches her.

I created a mind map try think of an idea, I knew I want to do a run and chase effect with two characters but it was deciding on what two characters I wanted to do this with. I wanted to do a chase and run effect as to me it seems like that idea has died over the years, cartoons like tm and jerry and Looney tunes don’t seem to have that many viewers what it used to be about. So I have decided to try and bring back the idea and use different characters to create that effect. 

Reflection and Evaluation 

Overall I found the project manageable but hard as I have other modules to do as well as this one but I felt that I have managed my time appropriately and therefore got the work done on schedule. I would of preferred more time so I was able to animate my storyboad but next time I know to look into tutorials online and get help that I needed. I’ve had a lot more pressure with having more modules to do by I think having the pressure has helped me to do better and made me prepared if I get that amount of work all at one time.

I believe I did achieve my overall aims and objectives as I was set out to do as much hard work as possible. The only unfortunate factor was animating it but everything else was a success. I put a lot of effort into my research so my end project would look as good as it could. My main aim was to make sure my story worked when doing my rough sketches and I feel as if I succeeded in doing so. My animation wasn’t quite fit for purpose as I never got round to completely animating a moving story but I know by looking at it and showing others, they knew what the story board was about. My down fall was knowing how to animate it correctly on Photoshop.