Running Indian: Skin Color Test

I just finished the coloring of his skin and the tones I had picked out and animated. I like how the forms animate in color, but I am not convinced this is how I should do it. I think the lightest skin tone on the legs and belly confuses more than they do any good, so I am doing a pass where I take them down to the mid-tone brown.

All in all a good test and a nice preview to how it will look when the coloring is done.

Running Indian: Animation

About a month ago I finished the first pass on this animation. The first pass took about half a days work. I finally had some time today to continue my work on it.
Today I've straightened out some arc issues and I feel it's ready for me to move along.

I did a fast color pass on the legs and feet to experience if the kick forward will flash or disappear in the entire shape. It is through color and value that I would like to make this clear as much as in silhouette.

Here's the linetest

Here's the color test

I was positively surprised with the colortest and I believe it will be possible to find the right color for underneath his feet to have them stand out, yet not flash. I set the colortest up against another background than white to ease the eye as it will be when a real background is made in the same value as the blue I chose.

Another scene in the bag!

Above clip is copyright property of Cartoon Saloon

(Text incoming)

Seanduine silhouette animation

Here are the two first scenes I have animated for the short film, Seanduine, accompanying an old Gaelic folk song. The song is about a young woman marrying an old man for his gold. My classmate, Louise, animated the old man chasing the donkey in the bottom scene.
Enjoy!

(The clips above and below are copyright property of Cartoon Saloon)

Animation for the chorus

I was fortunate enough to get the chance to do the animation for the chorus of the Puc music video. I got a single key drawing to build upon and a take on the timing of the scene, but I had fairly free hands to make it work and that in a funny fashion.

Below is shown the drawings I did for the animation and the timing I ended up with. The cycle is repeated across the screen and it has two different jumps, similar in down and push-off, but different in its hang-time to contact.
(All pictures and animations in this post is copyright property of Cartoon Saloon)


I would also like to share the workflow I used for this scene. It was great fun cleaning the scene up by animating with pure shape instead of the usual linework. So, here's a little overview of how the drawings progressed.

Especially the pass from rough animation to filled color shape was fun. It offered an opportunity to push the shape language of the animation and really work on a flow that animated well as well as compliment the graphical edged style of the design.

Here's how it all looks when played out.

The animation has been approved and is moving into compositing soon, nice!

First Animation at Cartoon Saloon

I just did my first animation scene at my internship at Cartoon Saloon and luckily I have permission to share it on my blog! The scene was for a short music video called Puc, but unfortunately it got cut in the last review of the animatic. I'll be moving on to my next scene later today. It is great to get to do some animation and I am looking forward to help the guys out as much as I can while I am here.

The scene below is copyright property of Cartoon Saloon
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Banquet Scene

Here's a linetest of the latest scene I've done for the fabulous film 'Forest'! It's so great to finally get to animate the main character of the film and implement all the small traits Tobias's given him.

I'd like to write a bit about the approach I take on a scene like this. So in the post above you can read about my work flow and planning in a stop motion scene. Now I haven't been doing this for a very long time, but I am finding it very insightful to try and would like to share the thoughts I have on it. So if you dare, check out my next post! And if you already read it while reading this, because you don't check my blog often enough, well go read it again and leave a question, comment or a hearty hello!

Straight-Ahead Break

I took a 30mins break from the scene I am currently doing for the bachelor film 'The Lumberjack' and did this small facial piece.
I am going to put a big fat 'WHAT!' in it.
I have a lot of small things, especially facial animation, that I would like to test and this seems like a really fun way to do it. Not too much planning, just going on my gut feel. Here is the clip.

Wolf Animation

This scene is the second one I've done with the big wolf for the bachelor film 'Forest'. In this scene we cut to the wolf in mid air jumping over a fence. As it lands it starts a low sneak towards screen left. I have animated the actions only on the 'y' axis and in composite the animation will be dragged along the 'x' axis. We chose to do it this way to save space in the greenscreen room.

Enjoy

Animation tests on Forest

Finally I got the go to start touching the puppets for the Bachelor project 'Forest'. I have spend the last two days trying out stop motion animation for the first time and I am loving it!
Already now I can feel that a lot of practical knowledge about animation can be gained through this very hands-on method of animating. There aren't room for shaky hands or clumpsy feet or friends and ctrl-z is non-existing!
Here are two small test scenes I did with the main character of the story, enjoy! I know I did!

One week of 1st pass animation

This is how the scene looks at the moment. There are still a few things I want to get more into, but in general it communicates the mood and feeling I set out to depict.
It has been very interesting to try out this new approach and I think that I have taken a really big step in the right direction.
I will ellaborate more on the work methods I used and the thoughts and choices made.
Please feel free to leave a comment with ideas, critique, praise or questions. Hope you enjoy it.

Hairdresser scene at its end

This is where I will leave this scene. I'll try and get it critiqued from some of the teachers I've had during the past years and hopefully get some good feedback.
The scene served its purpose very well and I feel a level of animation that is to my satisfaction..for now!
Next up is some illustration work for a classmates bachelor film. I will also be doing a scene for Tod Polsons short film *Escape of the gingerbread man* sometime soon. So some exciting assignments ahead.
Please feel free to leave a comment with critique or praise here on the blog. Until next post...

A Walk a day: Longlegged Man

So, second walk complete. I didnt want to copy/paste anymore so he only makes it half-way to the other side.
The character walk and design comes from a sketch I did this weekend. (See sketch-page in post further down the blog)

A Walk a day: Hatman

My hairdresser dialogue scene is almost done. It's been an entensive assignment and I felt that I this week needed something to diverte my attention. The Hairdresser scene will work as a step between the technical aspects of animation and a more performance minded way for me to approach a scene. Therefor I want to do a walk every day this week. This will leave me with nearly no time to plan or get caught up in too technical matters. It's straight-ahead and about extracting a character in a simple and clear manner. I did this one yeasterday and I have almost finished the one for today. It's work very well for me at the moment to have something more loose to take on when I need a break from the heavy dialogue scene. Hope you enjoy the walk.

Here is the scene as it looks right now. Most of what is needed from now on is filling in drawings without killing the pace of it all. It'll hopefully be done at the end of tomorrow.

Adding the lip-sync

Adding the lip-sync from Frederik Villumsen on Vimeo.

It is time to start getting the mouthshapes on the keydrawings witht the accents. It is far from easy and it will take a few passes for me to get it right I think. I wanted to do a small part of it almost fully to get myself on the right track before starting to 'ruin' all my keys with unusable mouths. So I started from the beginning. Lot os things to keep in mind with this! Mood, wide-to-narrow, open closed! I think the art in this is to be able to make it believable with the least effort possbile, while supporting the mood and thoughts of the character. Here is what I have for now for the first bit.

First pass on the animation

So, I've got all these key drawings that reflect the flow of the motion I want, but I am yet to see if my timing is worth anything. All my key drawings have been numbered with the frame number according to how I acted it out as well as matched to the dialogue. I haven't done any video reference of myself this time, so everything is on gut-feel. Though video reference can be really awesome I am not too comfortable using it. I can act out my scenes, but a lot comes from my imagination and I feel I put a lid on myself when having a video clip with myself doing the scene. One of the main points of this assignment was to get better at the planning stages. Thumbnailing, acting out the scene, listening to the track a gazilion times, all the things that supposebly give you the peace of mind to focus on the actual animation of the scene, when you hit that stage. And I've got to say it's been worth it. I've been through the process a lot of times the past two years, but it has never come together for me like it has in this assignment. In the posts above, I will go through my process in detail, both for you, the reader, and for myself. But check out the timing of the scene.