Landing and Sliding Jump animation

Lately I’m working on Good wolfs landing and sliding jump animations. These are examples of first pass animation, which later will be further defined and adjusted to the scenes.

There were no longer any reference images from Muybridge, therefore I have looked for some videos on youtube and print-screened some key frames to inform my animating.

I am aware that the sliding jump animation seems to rely on translate keyframing, meaning the body seems stiff. I'll revisit this one after some time off, as I found it is worth animating back again with a fresh eye.

Wolf Video Reference

Just adding to the wolf reference material with the BBC's Frozen Planet - a great documentary about the polar regions of our world.

Researching Quadruped Animation

The project is stepping into other stages of animating. A challenge of animating quadrupeds asks for some better research into approaches and techniques. To start with I have looked at real life references. BBC Motion gallery  and Frame Pool websites offer a great deal of sources.

For instance there is a variety of videos of wolves and dogs in differing  situations. Time lapsed videos and those X rayed ones were the most informative. 

At 11 second club , a website for animators, the topics of how to animate quadrupeds directed quickly to Edward Muybridge’s Books. The animators have discussed the images are as useful as giving 70 percent of the entire animation. Therefore this will too be the key source for animating the wolves.

Another hugely useful thing to do was to read about the general breakdown of
dog’s move. Apparently, there are mainly 5 types of movement
dogs/wolves do:

Diagonal walking – diagonal legs move simultaneously at the same direction

Pacing  - legs on the same side of the body  move at the same time and direction, there is more roling in the body than in trotting

Trotting - (inbetween walk and sprinting) legs move in diagonal pairs, leghtening the distance of coverage , but not  in simultaneous order , so that one of the  feet is  on the ground

Sprinting – ordinary run

Galloping – moving in a series of leaps , front legs then back legs hit the ground , barely touching the ground. (looks like flying).

The animation will be aiming to build a believable yet stylized animation, so I also looked at some existing animations of quadrupeds. Most interesting seemd to be   Andreas Deja, animator of The Lion King’s  Mufasa character take.

 In his opinion building animation of animals one has to suggest real animal qualities but in humanized shape (with expressions and body language, behaviour). Also, there are no hands which help to express a great deal of ideas, therefore the concentration goes onto the overall pose attitude, angles of head, face. 

Some other references are films which showcase some wolves animation, such as The Secret of Kells (2009), Princess Mononoke (1997), The Lion King (1994).

So far this was the initial research before going to animating the characters.

Character Fix

Tuesday was a day of feedback on wolf Characters. After discussion with Leo and Phil, I also talked to Justin Wyatt. In short, it was obvious designs needed some problem solving and revisiting.

 For the good one things seemed to go over the top:  decorativeness  and saturated in complimentary colours  were obfuscating the shapes. I've added some mass to his neck and change the 'face make-up' .A little nice touch, suggested by Leo, was to get rid of eye pupils.

In contrast , the bad wolf , presented other set of problems. Mainly regarding shapes of the back  part of the body and how it would work in animation. He was looking stiff as a statue figure. The challange was to figure out how he'd work. So I've come up with this idea, which was kind of evident in the design already, that the bad wolf is tied with an anti-matter/black matter which is holding him in place. So when he moves parts come together and distance away.

I added tail ( finally :D ) and fixed the spine line.

I came across this truly useful video when understanding wolf movement:

Will  sure be used again

Discussion on Visual Development

Today we have discussed visual development. As both of us are happy with work, next week should bring detailed resolutions of btoh character design and environment concepts.

There is a particular animation which illustrates how we're aiming the enironment to look like. In terms of colour, it would be quite desaturated. The wolves and their affect on environment ( together with lighting, dynamics etc. )  would be in full colour and therefore would suitably stand out.

Week three: Defining Further

Week three has started and the time is spent to further define the project. We had run through our storyboards and are preparing yet another animatic.

We also set up some clear rules which help think about our project and guide its production:

The wolves race from “unconsciousness” through “sub consciousness” to “consciousness” , the environment corresponds to this idea (ex: unconscious – empty blackness)

Each wolf is always on the heels on the other

There are 3 main layers of each shot: Wolf, effects, environment

Wolves cannot affect immediate ritual space as none has taken it over.

As we are about to step in design stage, we piled up some more reference sheets. This time we are looking at native american graphics evident in carvings, decorations, amulets etc. Also some references of their dolls, which becomes the mcguffin in this animated short.

Animated Short Ego (2007)

This morning Alan suggested watching this particular animation
(The quality isn't sparkling, apologies for that)

Style Approach: References to Native American Art and Design for Theater

The story is taking it's shape, soon we'll work on character and set design and overall style for the animation. Few key sources are informing it: Native American tribe art and (set) design for theater.

Amerindians have a symbolic representations for animals,which do vary slightly , here is an example of wolf:

Examples of Totems, pottery, masks, jewelery and spiritual paintings are truly suggestive for shape, colour combinations, surface textures and graphics

The tale is aiming to represent fight happening inside each of us,  in the inner environment. It  has a more abstract feeling , surrealism, lucidity and secrecy about it therefore, the second big influence, as mentioned above, is design for theater performances.

Clear and recognizable structures merge with abstract decorations and fantastic lighting. Volumes interact and start creating something unexpected. Also, it seems one of the major aspects of set design right there is consideration how all of it will play with the surrounding darkness. How the darkens, as one of the key  elements , will play its part.

The following example plays with same setting but different lighting approach, which results in mood changes

Lastlly, all the desicions for reference should now come together and be evident and consistent in our own concepts.

Story Concept development, New references

Today's discussions brought new ideas for the project. It is yet to take a more clear shape, regarding how everything would unravel on the screen. The following material serves as reference:
 

When a man is witness to a murder and takes pictures of the killer, he has to run for his life. During the chase he is able to turn the tables and the prey becomes the hunter. All resulting in an unfortunate ending.




Also a particular music video seems to be capturing some of the intentions:





Lastly, our current focus is developing the story and presenting an animatic.

Wolf Sketches/Reference

Just some studies of wolf anatomy as I've been collecting reference material for The Wolves Within project.







References

Discussing Approaches

After discussions with tutors and in between ourselves it seems we have an idea to transform this legend into a theater play tipe of animation. However there seems to be two ways of approaching this idea.

1. Idea:
As like in a real theater play where camera is representing the audience, it can be positioned in front of the play and be left still for the entire performance to happen in one long take.

2.Idea:
The other for camera work is to have it much more involved in the play. Much like in Alfred Hitchcock's Rope , all the action would still be revealed in one long take, only this time carefully both considering camera's movement and staging of characters to tell the story.

The best examples of such idea are these two following videos:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKukDFyupd8&feature=BFa&list=PL93BDEF0C54209CB4&lf=mh_lolz


Philips Carousel from The Foundry on Vimeo.

Native American Art and Symbology

American indians possessed rich and varied culture: from fisherman to agriculturist, susbsistence and buffalo hunters. Within diverse environments thei evolved a spiritual relationship to forses of nature, deep concern for animals, understanding of human responsibilities . The origin of the art motifs result from this relationship and observation of nature.

Traditional pattern work, images of animals, objects cary specific meaning

Totem poles  recount  legends, notable events, celebrate cultural beliefs and are  artistic presentations.

Introduction to Self Initiated Project's Idea; Native Americans' legend: Wolves Within

With the start of 3rd year in CG Arts and Animation, starts one of the two most ambitious creative projects.

The Wolves Within

An old Cherokee is teaching his grandson about life. "A fight is going on inside me," he said to the boy.

"It is a terrible fight and it is between two wolves. One is evil - he is
anger, envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego."

He continued, "The other is good - he is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside you - and inside every other person, too."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather, "Which wolf will win?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed..."

Source: http://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/TwoWolves-Cherokee.html

It is a legend told by a Cherokee tribe.Having the basic plot and idea where all is heading (namely, opportunity to develop two wolf characters, environments representing inner space and possibly, if intended, set it all up for future to turn it into an animated short), we also get clues for sources of reference.



As said before, it is a legend told by Cherokee. They refer to themselves as Tsalagi which means "Principal People." It is one of the Better known Indian tribes and also one of the” 5 civilized tribes” because they had assimilated numerous cultural and technological practices of European Americans.

However, sources have indicated that Indian tribes don’t have a distinctive examples of art from each other (at least it is fairly impossible to make such distinctions because of data loss ect.) , so it is considered that what is relevant to Cherokee art is also relevant to all Native American art. Therefore we too reference Native American art in general to further inspire our style.

The project is only yet taking shape and many decisions are waiting to be maid, therefore our focus at the moment is simply familiarize with wolves shapes, anatomy and already created representations.





Initial anatomy and structure studies:







So to get acquainted with "what's out there" I also gathered a sheet of wolves design. Quite honestly, none of the images seem to be similar to what we are aiming for our designs.



Finally, project would build on clear classification of virtues and vice