'Making of' - Weeks 5 & 6

During week five in 'making of', we were introduced to a new 'noticing' task, where we had to be observant and look out for what are known as 'thankyou' photographs, capture them, and finally title them. The title is usually a play on words or an interesting observation relating to the photo. I found that when I attempted to go out of my way to look out for these photographs I was unsuccessful, but during my trip to Liverpool and at Media City, I came across many by accident, and accompanied them with suitable titles, some of which I am very pleased with, others seem slightly too forced.

Liverpool isn't a fan of 'The Sun'

Locks by the Docks

I Luve this phune case

Music gives me a smile

Taking out the hash

I enjoyed this task as it shows us how much we pass by daily that we ignore or forgot, but though capturing them, I have preserved and documented them, however I wish I would have engaged with it more and included a range of different locations.

These are the movements which I captured via film which will be studied during 'Making of'. One of them is a generic walk cycle, which is essential to learn for animation. I was temped to document walk cycles when people are at alternate emotional states, therefore showing how that may effect there walking cycle, however I feel as though I should start with a neutral walk cycle and then progress to them later. I also captured two other movements, someone hitting a ball with a stick, and someone catching a large object, as I feel that these two movements both require a lot of different movements happening at once, which would be interesting to study. Weight and exaggeration could also be explored with these two movements.

I found this very simple and informative video on YouTube regarding the animation walk cycle -

From this video, I have learnt that they are four key poses which make up the walk, all of which can be seen in some variance within my primary material above, which are as follows;

- Contact

- Down

- Pass poss

- Up

- Contact (with foot placement switched)

All these specific poses are illustrated beautifully in this diagram below, which would assist me very well if I ever get around to designing a walk cycle of my own.

Going back to my 'catching' footage, as I previously mentioned, exaggeration is a factor which could heavily impact the style and weight of the objects in the motion. The same creator who made the walk cycle tutorial above, has made a video regarding that specific animation principals, and by watching this video, I realise how someone can alter the movement and timing of a motion in animation to show a variance in effort or weight, which can be done through exaggeration.

After reviewing the footage that I captured the previous week, I concluded that there were too many issues with it for me to work with it further, especially on the walk cycle. The main issues being; as the subject isn't traveling in a straight direction, foot placement is very complex, and due to the fact that my vantage point is very close to the subject, the camera had to be constantly moving, making it hard to accurately track movements. So for these reasons, I decided to recapture one of these actions, and also record two new ones, keeping in mind what I had learnt from my first attempt. One of these is another cycle, as I wanted to experiment with something similar to the walk but in an alternate context, so I decided to perform a run cycle, as its surprising how much that alters the key poses. The other was a throw, as anticipation isn't something that can really be applied to any of the previous motions (apart from before going into a run cycle to prepare), so I really wanted to experiment with that animation principal. As you can tell, I have slowed down the speed of the last two motions, the reason being that as they are all concerned with capturing quick motions, I thought that it was essential to see every key frame in clear detail.

After all this preparation work, I wanted to make a start on working with the walk cycle, so using the reference footage above, I very simply drew out the key frames in my animation software, and then proceeded to allow the PC to fill in the in-between gaps, as I was using key-frames as appose to animating frame-by-frame, I lacked control which is why some of the joints come loose or overlap at points, but I feel that I have successfully captured the motion.

I later then went back and applied this movement to a pre-made model of myself, which has all the joints that would often move separately drawn as separate assets, therefore meaning I can apply the same process that I went through on my simplistic stick figure by moving the assets in place of the key-frames, but with a fully drawn body, below is the result.

Going through all these stages has made me realise how much work is put in an essential part of animation, and by documenting each stage, I have created an overview and reflection on the process, which is what 'making of' is all about, so I am anticipating applying this documentation to future much larger projects in the future.