Extra Animation - helping a third year

I was approached by a third-year to do some animation for their final film. It was a much welcomed break from this cat animation so i tried my hand at it. I was asked to do two closeup shots of a girl -the first with eyes widening in awe, and the second with her looking up at a huge impressive structure.

These are what i came up with, after many rough tests and reworks

More cleanup - final version?

Okay so i've been tearing my hair out trying to get this blasted cat to move properly. over the past week and weekend i've been cleaning up alot of the animation and getting the lip movements in. I'm already sick of it and thinking about leaving it here and moving onto a new animation. Still, we'll see what my tutor reckons tomorrow

Anyway this is the animation as it stands now. If i were to finish it, all that needs cleaning is the last part at the end

Fifth Draft...so many reworks

So it took me 4 different reworks to get the right movement i wanted for the jump

here are the different versions:

I settled on the fourth one because i liked her ending up in the original crouch i had intended.

Here it is with the sound and rest of the animation:

Fourth draft

Heres the fourth draft --

I was told to rework the part where she jumps away from the camera, so this bit is cut out for this draft. The first closeup shot is cleaned up

Third draft

Heres the third draft. Just blocking in some bits, tweaking stuff mainly. I tried to get that last part moving nicely with the lipsync working. I also fixed the part where she sits up

Character sheet - second draft

So heres my character - Foxy Cleocatra. Shes a black cat, headstrong and not to be sassed. Tried to go for a subtle egyptian theme and of course she had to have a female afro

And heres a second draft -

Proposal, Animatic and first draft

Proposal

Career intentions


Ultimately i am aiming to go into 2D animation, illustration or graphic design for a career. Anything that involves drawing, be it digital or traditional. I would prefer freelance work because the thought of a big industry is intimidating to me, perhaps something to aim for a little further down the line. For now i like to have more control from start to finish, and enjoy working from home. When i do eventually tackle the industry, it will be smaller studios, so i can build up my confidence before trying my luck at places such as disney. Already i am a part time graphic designer for a company, so that is another potential career path secondary to my animation goals. I enjoy painting and character design work, but feel i will be outclassed in the industry in those areas, so i shall be focusing on 2D animation for the remainder of the course.


Skills


I will need to really practise drawing in general, the principles of animation, and most importantly to me, adapting to the software, which is my biggest restriction at present. Animating is easier for me on paper, but much more time consuming, therefore not efficient/practicle. For this term i will be forcing myself to use computer software to animate, so that in third year i am wasting as little time as possible. I already have skills in Photoshop, Flash, After Effects and other such programs, so it is just a case of settling into a comfortable workflow and using those skills combined with my drawing to refine my animation.


Production Pipeline


This term, i will be aiming to simply get as much animation practise in as possible. I am already starting with a lipsync, something new to me, and generally just want to get into the habit of animating on the computer and getting my skills honed ready for my third year film. Depending on the nature and length of the animations with determine how much work i get done, but a variety atleast for a suitable skillreel at the end of the term is what i am going for. By the end, i hope to have enough for a 1.5-2 minute showreel to hand in, demonstrating my skills and what i've learned. Throughout the weeks i also plan on getting some ideas down for my third year project, to get a headstart over the summer for next year. Most animations will be made in Photoshop, whereas the final showreel will be composited in After Effects.

Right, back to the animation:

So i did these a couple of weeks back. the animatic to my chosen sound clip. I chose to animate a cat, after a lot of time spent playing with ideas. I like animating 4 legged creatures. Tails are hard to animate but if you get it right, its a nice touch to an animation.

-shaz

Introduction and Excuses

Hello

My name is shaz and i'm an animation student at University of Lincoln. As part of my second year of study i am currently working towards a showreel to showcase the skills i have learned on the course.

I'm primarily a 2D animator, though i try my hand at layouts, character and storyboarding when i can.

As part of this module, i have to make a blog documenting my progess throughout the term. Unfortunately and rather anoyingly the tutors have neglected to tell us this, so i am taking the initiative and going ahead with one anyway. However because of this my blog will be a bit behind and will require a few posts early on to catch up and get up to date with my progress over the past month. I hope when reading this the tutors/examiners will take that into account

thanks
-shaz