Action Analysis.
For This we had to really examine movement, I was really interested to study bird flight among other things. Not just because it was an excuse to go to the zoo... well mainly because it was an excuse to go the the zoo. Anyway i started off with humans pushing and pulling stuff.
A few of my friends helped me with postures for both push and pull elements, my plan was to exaggerate the elements for the animation, Here's an example of my friend Hannah doing my bidding and how I made her movements more cartoony for the Maya part of this Round Robin. Here's my stop motion as example of the outcome of my labours...
Character Interaction
We all got to play. But it was interesting seeing more than one form moving about that the same time and how we reacted, this gave us an insight into human movement and space between people and the too and throw of conversation and reactions.
MY FRIENDS ON WHEELS
Like my young self, all of my friends back home skate?ride various things, i wanted to capture and doodle their movements, especially the push offs into the action. heres my man Miles working the bike.
Here's my man Antoine on Miles' unicycle. As you can see to push off you have to start unbalanced and make up for it later, however seeing as He got the nack of the unicycle on the day, miles was pretty angry.
Here's some handsome man pushing off from a skateboard, i was interested in the way the back arches during the push.
Antoine being awesome basically. But for the lift off all his weight is driven to the end of the skateboard so he can quickly throw it forward and make the jump.
I do want to maybe try some animating to what i captured, but for now recording on the spot and from photo evidence in a sketchbook is fine. aslong as i observed the action, it should stick with me for future reference.
Animals
We went to the Noahs Ark zoo in Bristol to analyse all them animals, was really fascinating, Every animal had a very different movement, even in the same species. I guess it was here that i realised individual weight and even personality make every living thing's movement unique.
What I did see
I got a lot of quadruped movement in but was mostly fascinated with bird movement, we saw loads of beautiful beautiful poultry and even emus, ostriches and some flying birds of prey. to jot down their movements was tricky, i found birds walking to be interesting because of the backwards knees. I managed to get s video of the ostrich walk that i shall animate.
Hitch-hiking and various animals around the sofas that I sleep on.
Easter started to bore me so i decided to try and get round a bit of the country, either meeting people I knew or begging for a sofa to sleep on to a stranger in a pub or something. It went well, i bought my mac and sketchbook and decided to animate whatever animals i could find there. I was going to add these to an animation idea i had to capture bird flight, zoo animals and a platypus because i love platypus'.
Stop 1. A sparrow.
My stupid friend didn't have any pets so i panicked and saw it out their window, the told me it was a sparrow, so i stole it for animating, i did look at a flight cycle to get a taste of the movment.
Stop 2. A Dog.
I knew these guys wouldn't let me down. Got myself a puppy dog to doodle. Shame he never stayed still long enough to get any good leg movement, i ended up just animating a rough head movement.
Stop 3. A goldfish.
Was running out of money and phone battery at this stop. They had a goldfish but i had no camera to record it's actions so i had to do my best with what i had. I found this the hardest to animate because its fin movements didn't seem to determine the distance it would travel so i had to play a lot by ear.
Stop 4. The spider from your nightmares!
Massive it was! and slow, so quite easy to get an idea of its leg movements, i did have to smooth it out a little but i think i got the basics of it. i noticed how the leg movements were in pairs, so the furthest from the back would be similar to the second from the front.
Animalation
So here's the finished result, i popped in the ostrich from the zoo and a platypus from youtube for good measure, i wanted to end it on a human but didn't have time.