I have some animation reels I want to share. I just got back into animating and am working on a short film (that I just finished the storyboard for, and am planning to animate in the near future).
I wanted to share these reels. They showcase my animations from the past (from 2015 and onwards) and my recent ones (in 2022)....
This is the first reel. Some of these I made when I first started animating. So, you will see changes throughout.
And here is the second reel. I made this somewhat more recently from 2017 to 2022.
This, is a more recent animation, that I made of my character, Ophelia. It was really fun to make and my plans in 2023, are to finish the short film (or at least get a portion of it done), and animate even more consistently than I did last year.
(Images used from Pexels and Pixabay, though I did the doodles over them myself).
Hello everyone!
One thing I have really wanted to learn for a long time is coding. I sort of know a few things: my website (not my other blog, though it is linked to it) Q's Creative Corner is where I do the most coding (at least in CSS and HTML). It is very much a work in progress and something I want to eventually finish coding in the future.
The coding in Girls Rise Up is completely different, because it uses a combination of coding and dance. My group, Courage, is not representative of what the whole camp was like. Every group did something different that was related to STEM and dance. My group did animation and a bit of Python.
I had tried learning Python before with different platforms, but I didn't get very far into it. I believe this was due to the way that the platforms taught it. STEM From Dance, and their (virtual) camp Girls Rise Up helped me. I felt like I learned a lot more there, especially because of the community, which was very welcoming and friendly, and I didn't feel afraid to ask questions if I had any about my coding.
An example of some of the Python coding I did; and no, I'm not that old
Dance was also an important part of Girls Rise Up, because most of the coding we did was related to our dancing (for example we would have animations that followed us as we danced). We'd choreograph our own dances and come up with ideas of what we'd animate over top of it. The animation we did wasn't traditional animation. We didn't draw each frame; instead, we used code in order to do it.
During the program, I was also introduced to new dance styles. For a while, I had just done Ballet, but in this program they introduced me to different styles of dance. Had I not done Girls Rise Up, I wouldn't have decided to try out these dance styles, so I think it is amazing that they introduced me to it.
During the camp, we had different speakers come and tell us about their careers. (They either did STEM and dance, or just STEM, or just dance.) I thought was neat because it showed more options of what you can do with STEM, dance, or a mix of both. At the end of it, we had a showcase of all the work we did. It felt really cool, and given that we had such a limited time to learn the coding and the dance, it felt really good. And as someone who does multiple creative things (which people often don't think are connected or tell you "you only can to do one"), I loved that they showed how both of them are connected.
The code I made.
My group choreographed a dance to the song "This is Me" from The Greatest Showman, and I ended up choreographing the lyrics "I am brave, I am bruised, I am who I'm meant to be, this is me." I decided to do a spotlight animation over my dance, where the colors changed every time I did a movement. (They went from greenish blue to dark blue.)
Before the camp, I would have normally done something like this with video editing. I find it neat that DanceON created a way to video edit using coding (with overlaying). And, even after the camp is over I have decided to keep learning and working with DanceON, because I feel it will help my coding skills get better. And I find that I will use them in my videos, even if they aren't dance themed.
At the end of Girls Rise Up, people in the group were awarded with different awards. (My local theatre did something similar to this.) I was awarded with "The Tech Savvy Award" and "The Leadership Award."
Another cool thing that happened before the camp even started was that STEM From Dance sent me (and the other people participating) a t-shirt, a mask, and a note-book, among other things that are themed around the summer camp, Girls Rise Up:
This is a really cool mask
The note-book, I actually plan to use it for taking notes about coding even after Girls Rise Up is over.
Me dancing while wearing the shirt (You may not be able to see it well because of the bright sunlight.)
In the end, I'd really love to do more with STEM From Dance because I feel like I learned a whole lot, and their camp was an awesome experience. And I would recommend the program to anyone who is interested in learning coding and/or likes dance, or likes both.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Which do you like to do: STEM or Dance? And have you ever thought of combining them?
If you got a post that was very short and all caps in your feed, and shortly after was deleted, that was because I was claiming my blog on Bloglovin'. Since it wouldn't allow me to paste the code to claim my blog on a page or somewhere else, I had to make a post in order to claim it. So you didn't miss any important posts, and that's why that happened.
Anyway, onto the actual subject of this post. I have been working on animation, and doing more with Adobe Animate. I also tried some animation on Photoshop since that is a software that can be used for animation. In the end I found that Adobe Animate was the easiest for me to use.
Keeping consistency
One thing I struggled with in animation is keeping consistency. A lot of my older animations did not have consistency, and after a while you couldn't tell who or what the thing I was animating was supposed to be. So, I decided to try it with this animation:
Adobe Animate has the ability to easily copy and paste your drawing, which is something I did in this animation but something I didn't do in the other animation program I used. I animated a flour sack character, which is a kind of stock character, since it is used as a way to practice movement like walking and jumping.
I felt like I figured out how to keep some consistency in this animation. Though one thing I wish I had done was to add more squish and squashing, which is something I find I struggle with in animation, and is something I feel I must improve in the future.
This is another animation I did. I decided to move the circle and then animate the legs and ears later, it made the animation seem a bit more consistent.
Squish and squash
Though this animation was made before the other ones (and in Photoshop, which can do animation), I felt it really helped me figure out squish and squash. Though I still feel like I have a lot to learn. (If the animation doesn't repeat, just refresh the page).
This one has a little less consistency than the other ones. This is partly because I was animating in a different program, and it wasn't allowing me to copy and paste at all.
Overall, I have found that I have difficulty applying squish and squash to characters, but am able to do it with objects like bouncing balls easily. So this is something I am going to keep practicing.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you ever done a flour sack animation? If so, what did you animate it doing?
Click here to read part one if you haven't already
Having had used a bouncing ball as a test, I decided to apply what I learned by trying out layers for the first time in Adobe Animate. The program allows you to have a lot of layers.
In this project I ended up using four different layers: one layer for one of the figures, one for the other figure, another for the background, and the last one for color.
A lot of the animations I made prior to this were not colored. I only used one layer and redrew the background each time I drew a frame, which was very tedious and at the end didn't make it look very good. Which is why I'm glad this program allows you to have more than one layer.
I also did an animation of Elm and animated her hair moving in the wind:
I really like how it turned out. I used four layers for this one: one for the color, one for the hair, one of the figure, and one for the background.
In the future I plan to post animations that are longer than a few seconds. For now doing animation consistently and doing short animations like this, helps me get back into the habit of animating.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Of the two animations I made which one is your favorite?
Since people gave me positive feedback about my post describing plans for my future animated short film. I thought I'd tell you more about the animations I am working on, and how it is has been going. I am trying a new program (Adobe Animate) for animation. The animation program I was using before (SketchBook) wasn't working for me (if it works for you that's awesome).
Since I am trying out the new program, I have had to play around with it, so here is what I did:
Step 1- Getting it to work/Trying it out
I decided as a test to do a simple animation technique, the bouncing ball. From here on, these are my notes that I captured as I was animating:
Given that I don't fully know how the program works, I thought I should start with something simple and move on from there. I figured out that Adobe Animate can in fact be used for 2D hand-drawn animation, and not just puppet animation, by doing this simple test. Though I did run into things that were bother-some.
This was very annoying to deal with
Adobe Animate makes it difficult to add a frame for some reason, and I had to draw and then press delete in order for the program to understand that it was a new frame. This made it very tedious over time: to press add frame and then delete over and over.
Why is it selecting this?
When I first started using the program, it would just highlight what I was drawing but it didn't do that when I moved to advanced mode instead. These are just some annoying starting points, which is what happens with every software when you do it for the first time.
Step 2- Making a coherent animation
Now that I know how it works I decided to make a short bouncing ball animation (which is also a thing that you do when you're a beginner animator):
This is definitely not an animation I'd upload to my YouTube channel or one that I feel super proud of, but it is a very good starting point for animating something simple when you don't know the program that well and are trying out a new animation program.
Step 3- Color! and a Background!
One thing I wanted to do, that my other animation program made difficult, was to do color and a background. I figured I'd try it out with Adobe Animate (as a test, like before), so I used the same bouncing ball animation I made and this time added color:
It worked really well, so then I added a new layer (it allows you to have many layers) and created a background (though I did have to move the layer down and copy it in order to do so):
And it worked.
Since this is going to be a series, the future posts you will see regarding it will not be test animations (though there will be a few here and there). Instead I will show you what animations I make with the program.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Have you animated before? If so, what animation program(s) did you use?
Hello fellow animators and Greek mythology enthusiasts.
I've talked about my recent writing and editing projects I've been working on. So, I thought it would be a good time to do an animation project post. Two years ago I announced that I was going to be animating Pandora's Box, but I didn't give any other details about it, so I figured it was time to tell you...
The scriptwriting portion This was the first time I wrote a script for something (besides a one woman show that I had worked on more recently in the summer of 2019--more on that later...). I might have to rewrite the script in some ways, and add some scenes into it, but so far I think it is a good first draft. I would like it to make it flow in the same ways that some of my stories do. Perhaps, I could make it a little less comedic, because I want it to be more serious. I find that when I write conversations, they tend to be a little weird, often with comedic elements, even when it is not intended. The reason I might have accidentally written it that way was that I had been writing a serious story before I wrote the script and wanted to write something more light-hearted...which isn't exactly what I want the whole script to be like. (I want it to have light-hearted bits, but as a whole I want it to be serious and have an epic feel to it). I am aiming for the script itself to be a little like the the movie Clash of the Titans (the 1981 version, not the new one).
(Image from Rotten Tomatoes, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/clash_of_the_titans)
I like how they took Greek mythology and retold it. Though, there were some minor changes to mythology, they didn't make it a different story or mess up the Greek Gods' family tree (like Disney's Hercules does). I also like the High Fantasy feel they gave the myth, and I would love to apply that to Pandora's Box. I also want to have a subplot with Athena and Artemis in animated movie, because it was not brought up as much as I would have liked in the first draft. And since Pandora was the first human woman on Earth, Artemis and Athena would be obsessed and excited over her. Another issue I still have with my script is the timeline. As far as I am aware, it is never clear in mythology when the various gods or goddesses were born, but I am sure I can create a timeline for it. For example, Artemis and Apollo have to be born before Hermes in order for him to steal the cows, and Hephaestus has to be born before Athena in order for him to crack Zeus's head open and allow her to come out of it. And since in some versions of the myth of Prometheus (which is before Pandora's Box) Athena is there and breaths life into Prometheus's creation, she has to exist around this time... The only period of time when it is clear that Artemis and Athena are not there at all is during the battle when Zeus dethroned his father Cronus. But that was only because at the time Zeus had not exactly been married yet and had no children. (And he married Metis later...) But in terms of timeline I really like how George O'Connor handled it in his comic book series Olympians, because he had certain times that all the gods came in, and he also figured out what myths the different gods should or shouldn't be in. The storyboarding
One of the panels from my storyboard.
Storyboarding is very different from actually animating but it at least helps you get from here to there. At the beginning it feels a little like you are making a comic in some ways without there being any actually speech bubbles. The thing about storyboarding is that it has to be rough drawing and you shouldn't do an overly detailed one. It's almost like plotting out a story, except that it is telling you where the characters will go, and how the character gets from A to B. And then after you're done with that, the actual animating comes in.
I began by putting the storyboard frames into the frames of the animation, though
my animation will not be drawn in the same way, as the storyboard frames are drawn. The storyboard frames are just there so I can figure out where the characters are going.
For anyone who is interested in animating and wants to know what app I am using,
I am using Sketchbook. And I used Sketchbookx (a different app) to the draw the background.
I then began inserting the images from the storyboard into the frames. This took a little while to figure out, since I had never used it for storyboards before.
Hermes will not be floating (at least not floating and unable to see his lower half) in the actual animation
My intention for the story board was to get something like this near the end:
Though I must keep in mind that the storyboard above is probably a final and complete draft story board and not what the story was originally like. There were probably many other storyboards before it. But I was aiming for the feel of it, though mine probably isn't the last storyboard because I might have to rewrite the script (and take away some of the narration).
After that I added in some keyframes, to make it move and not jump from frame to frame.
The next thing I did was to try to make basic frames in between the keyframes that showed how the characters flowed within the scene. Once I finish this one storyboarding for the whole script, I will be able to go in and make animation that feels as if it flows well.
Concept Art...
In order to actually animate the characters, however, and not rely on my quickly drawn sketches for the storyboard, I have to figure out what exactly they look like. Of course this may change and grow as I am developing them...But here is the current view of the characters...
I actually looked at several sculptures of Artemis to draw her. She will probably get a more distinct design over time, but this is what I have currently. The statue references I used were this and this.
But this is my second concept drawing for Artemis, though I might keep the statue-like face while still making her more tough and less delicate looking. Or maybe instead make her look like this (even though I didn't use a statue as a reference):
I am thinking that Aphrodite will have a different facial shape than Artemis (whether it be that I decide to make Artemis have the facial shape above or not).
As for her hair, I was trying to give her two different shades of red that made a cool pattern throughout. However I also seem to be referencing in her hair the fact that she was a cause of a war, the Trojan War to be exact, and that a lot of blood was spilled over that. (Also one of the people she loves is Ares the god of war).
I think when I draw Hermes again, I'm going to make him tanner since he is the messenger of the gods, which would mean he would travel a lot. But this is a basic starting point for his concept art...
The next thing I want to do is what I did in the photo above, drawing the character multiple times. This was very helpful in developing Gletta's current appearance. So I assume this will also work with the concept art for the Greek gods and goddesses, and even for Pandora herself.
