Author: Alex Hill

Out Of Your Head Project

Final Video.

This is a compilation of the specific photoshop animation i did for the project. I rotoscoped some inbetween frames which i sent over to vera who drew over and completed the art for the black and white character. I then added the white blob character, forming and unforming and eventually breaking into a “love letter”.

here is our animatic which we used to plan scenes and timing.

Traditional animation

Traditional Animation

Pose to pose animation graphite on paper. Displaying a range of facial expressions and the change between them. I put a boil on the key frames to highlight the 4 expressions I was using.

Straight ahead background added to previous animation.

squash and stretch with bouncy ball

squishy object/ character tracing from squash and stretch bouncy ball movement

straight ahead animation

This rotation was exciting to me as hand drawn animation is what drew me to choose it as a degree. I felt comfortable with the straightforward animation as it allowed my mind to wonder and pick up speed as I drew. The pose to pose animation was a new technique that i quickly found useful. I will definitely be employing this “keyframe” tactic to future animations in order to map out milestones in character movement. One I struggled with in this rotation was the workload. It’s not the same as copying and then editing bits of the previous frame. There was a lot of repetition. Another disadvantage was not being able to watch what you have done back as often. This forced me to think meticulously about the direction of my work. In the squash and stretch task, it was difficult to display the momentum of the bounce from a fall without it look like the ball is jumping rather than falling. It was a bit of a physics lesson as well. Overall, I am proud of my animation outcomes and hope to practice this medium more as I am more comfortable and efficient drawing on paper. This would be a useful technique for storyboarding.

Point Of View Project

Point Of View Final Film

Point Of View Project

3DS animation second version

Post author By Alex Hill
Post date 8th December 2021
No Comments on 3DS animation second version

Point Of View Project

30 second project test

This is the background of the animation which I will eventually project onto a wall to film

This is a gif for now, but i have a video version. I found that with exporting the file to video however, the quality was depleted ( the file will also be rotated )

Photographics

Final Piece

For this rotation, we were taught ideas of composition and negative space, and depicting objects without directly photographing them through form and shape. (e.g: Alvin Langdon Coburn’s The Octopus 1909)

I did not start with an end goal when taking my photos, instead, I walked around the area I live photographing things with strong shapes and patterns. From there, I tried to observe similarities in some of the photos. At first, I struggled to pair images. I was picking my favourite photos not ones that would work best together. The concept for my final composition, pictured left, was a “midnight woodland village”. My feedback from the class was that the piece seemed nostalgic and out of a fairytale. Reflecting on the outcome, I agree. The leaves strongly remind me of lebkuchen cinnamon stars I used to eat as a child around christmas. Along with the chimneys, it seems like something out of a Grimm story.

I enjoyed the editing process a lot as we were taught the masking tool on photoshop, which I have always struggled with.

Character Design

Connection: motion graphics

Post author By Alex Hill
Post date 12th November 2021
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Story board plan ^^^

My initial concept from this given theme was the interconnectedness of all things. I wanted to show a cycle of life starting at bacteria, to seed, to plant, to human to pregnancy to fetus back to bacteria. Granted, this is not a cycle of life found in nature, but to me it represented that everything is made up of the same atoms.

I struggled with learning after effects as the software was new to me, and overestimated my ability which meant the cycle was cut off halfway. I still think i accurately depicted connection and my area for improvement would be to either simplify the stages of this cycle or continue to develop my after effects skills. I did enjoy learning more about what the software had to offer as I became more comfortable with it so it is definitely a software I will explore further. My final video shows all the skills I learned.

3D World Design

3D World Render

This is my first maya attempt. It was inspired by an abandoned tram carriage. I didn’t have a good understanding of tools like bevel and extrude. The main problem was the render. None of the colours were brought into the render. I also experimented with grass texture which didn’t show up.

This is the render of my second attempt. Again, the render doesn’t show the best of my work. I hadn’t realised that my version of Maya did not have Arnold and i hadn’t understood that this is a crucial part of showing a nice render.

My world idea was based on a tame impala single cover. It is half a room, and an ajar door with sand flowing out of it. The feature here I am most proud of is the door hinge i created which took a lot of extruding and inserting edge loops.

Moodboard

Sound

Onomatopoeia Animation

When I found out the rotation for this week’s project was on sound, I was a little anxious. I’ve have an ear infection for a couple of weeks now which had resulted in me loosing some of my hearing briefly. However, it couldn’t have been more perfect. These past weeks of muted hearing have made me reevaluate noise and the effect audio has on processing information, especially in art. I was inspired to make these three animation sequences to share this experience. I purposely made the animations in first person to have the viewer share the isolation of this experience.

To create this animation, I used a software on the Nintendo 3DS. I have been using this application for a long time now so was comfortable with the controls. As for the sound, I used a recording of my friends talking that I had previously used for the Monday sound homework and muffled the audio on audacity. For the second clip, I went into my camera roll to find a video taken at a club that I could turn into an MP3. For the last clip, I wanted a specific frequency for the ringing sound but all online “ear ringing sound effect”s were high pitched and shrill. I didn’t think this matched the tone and could also potentially be harmful for viewers with hearing loss. So instead, I found a tuning fork video online which was the perfect low hum.

Outcome reflection: I am the least happy with the middle animation. This was an animation I had made previous to the university course which I used as my starting point to revolve my other onomatopoeia sound animations around. Therefore it is a different frame rate and a shorter video so I had to repeat it. But I am happy with how the audio clips turned out I think they accurately translate the experience of losing my hearing.

Sound

Sound Scape

10 clips capturing the sound and atmosphere of an area. I filmed 10 clips from around my accommodation, filming the area twice during day and night or busy/ not busy. To include sound more, i overlaid a recording from the summer of my friends talking. I thought it was very effective that you can only hear the added audio in the silent moments as it is a memory from the past. I think it created a sort of ghostly feel.