Picking up a heavy object challenge

For this challenge, we were given a reference to then go and create an animation with in-betweens of a character walking up to a heavy object and picking it up. We were also asked to do this with 'The Snowman' as our character. This meant getting the characters proportions right on each frame.

This was my first attempt at the challenge in which I spent a long time figuring out how the keyframes should look and drawing them all out. Doing it this way makes it a lot easier to do the in-betweens later on. I was very pleased with how this looked, and I think I did a good job of keeping it true to the original character design.

This is the final version with all of the in-betweens done too. On average there is 2-3 in-betweens within each keyframe, and i found this worked best with the timing at the end. I am very pleased with the end result, I feel like I have improved my in-betweening technique as I went on, and it has a better result than when I did the tough ted challenge. This took a long time to get right and was very difficult but overall I am pleased with it.

Character walk cycles

Taking our character designs we created, we were then challenged to do a walk cycle with both characters, whilst showing movements specific to the character's weight and personality. The walks have to be distinguishable.

This is my character walk for my thin little doll character. She is a little girl and so would have a fairly normal walk, perhaps with a bit of a skip in it. I found giving her a skip walk way too challenging and couldn't figure it out, and so I ended up sticking with a more normal walk. I am still very happy with this however, because the walk runs smoothly, the timing is good and the proportions worked out nicely after a lot of tries.

This was my first attempt at the fat character walk. I found this very difficult, and couldn't at all work out how a fat character would walk, and keeping all the proportions together. i spent a long time trying to figure this out, and am still displeased with the outcome.

This was my final attempt, and although there is some improvement, I still found it far too difficult and wasn't able to improve it much. Despite this, I am still happy with how it looks when it's the first time i've tried this.

Character Designs

Thin Character

For my first character design, I wanted to do a toy box theme, and have my character look like children's toys. So, my thin character is a little doll.

This is a sheet full of my initial ideas for the doll girl, trying lots of different styles. I originally planned little details like having a key on her back, lots of frills and bows. However, in the end I decided that these details are complicated, unnecessary and would be too difficult to animate so I simplified her down greatly. 

I then decided on having her look like this which would be much more simple and easier for animation.  after drawing her out, she was equal to the size of 5 and a quarter coins, which would make it easier for me to do a character turn around and keep her proportions in check.

This is the rest of the character turn around. I found this extremely challenging, because whenever I've drawn characters in the past it's always been just a front view or side view, but to do angled drawings of her and a back view, and having them all the right proportions was very difficult, and there was things I had to change. I am however really happy with how it looks now.

This was a sheet of character expressions I did, to test how the character would look with different expressions and how they would work with the style of drawing I chose. I am very happy with how these look.

Fat Character

For the 'fat' character, sticking to my toy box theme, I wanted to have a big happy clown toy, as my character. For this I had the challenge of making the character appeal to children, because clowns can often be considered scary. I tried several different clown looks on this sheet but was still left unhappy with it.

This is when I considered combining the clown with an animal giving him a human body with an animal head. I tried rabbits and cats, but decided that the rabbit looked and fitted best with the clown character.

I then decided to see what I could do with the rabbit to make it look more like a clown. I tried different faces, and adding hair, but all didn't look quite right, and so I ended up deciding to stick with the design on the previous sheet.

With my decided character design, I started with the character proportions and the turn around. this character, including the ears reached to 6 and a quarter coins, making the rest of the turn around easier for me.

This was my original attempt at the turn around, where the front and back design looked okay but not the side. My main issue was his feet; because I decided to him large clown/bunny feet, this was difficult to get the right proportions in. I also found drawing a large character really challenging because it's not something I often draw, and so I had to learn as I went along.

This was my final turn around, where I improved various things with all three. The main changes that had to be made were to the side view, which after being given a lot of help and advice, looks a lot better now. Because the feet were such a problem for me, I had to change their design and make them smaller. I am very happy with how it looks now however.

Walk Cycles

This was my first attempt at doing a walk cycle, and I used a basic skeleton, so that the movements would be easier for me to determine, and also easier for people to see in the end. I was happy with the movements and how I made the arms and legs move as he walks. However, I learned later that he is actually taking too much of a big stride when he walks, that does actually look strange when watched all together, and so I need to change it and make it more of a natural walk.

In this attempt, I did what I set out to do the first time, I made him take less of a stride, and I also improved the timing slightly so that it looks a bit better. I still think i could slightly improve it, but it does look better.

For this walk cycle, I used a different character with different proportions so that I could challenge myself further. This didn't work too well in my opinion, but I think i went into something too difficult too early, and need to practise more before trying something harder.

Tough Ted

This was a challenge we were given, to do the 'in-betweening' of three animation frames given to us. this involved doing 2 in-betweens with the 3 frames. This was very challenging for me, because it involved working out a lot of movements, whilst keeping the character's proportions the same. I think I did pretty well for this being something I had just learned about. I also feel I learned a lot from doing this, and was taught little techniques that have come in handy a lot since. I think the last frame i did was a bit wrong because of how the arm moves out to point, and i will need to change this.

This was my last attempt, in which I changed a frame I had done wrong originally, and also added another frame which makes it flow better and more smoothly. Having been my second attempt i did a lot better with how I did the frames, that I learned the first time around, and i'm very happy with how it looks.

Head Turns

1st Attempt

This was my first try at drawing a character Head turn. I think I did okay for the head proportions whilst she turns, however I made her face do too many expressions in an impossible amount of time, and so it looks a bit strange when played back. However for a first attempt it's good because i was able to learn a lot from it for the next one.

This was another attempt that was much more successful than the first, because it looks a lot better visually, and the proportions are better. the timing went a lot better also, however I still saw a lot of room for improvement and had to change a few things for the next one, but I am very happy with this.

This was my third attempt, which I wasn't entirely happy with, but the timing and face movements worked a lot better. I used a different style in this one that's more familiar to me to see if I could make it work better.

this was my fourth attempt, in which I planned to make it exaggerate the whole body movement, just personally to see if I could do it. I am really happy with the movement and body proportions as she moves around.

This was my final head turn, in which I wanted to test a head turn from the back to see if I could possibly do it. I am actually really happy with this one, it works really well and I didn't make the head too thin as he turns.