Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Opps!

Opps so sorry! I have totally forgotten to keep this blog updated!

As for what has been happening, I spent a lot of time researching how a cat walks and observing my own cat barney and how he walks. I have been conducting this research in order to complete my newest animation of Barney walking!

Still working on the animation right now (so many frames!) hopefully I will be done by Thursday (the deadline).

And for those of you who do not know Barney, here is a picture of my little happy family:

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

4. A one-page description of your project.

For my Art 450 class project I am going to be making a series of short animations meant to be a crash-course study in 2D animation using Adobe Flash. This project will consist of multiple short animations and one longer final animation.

The first animations are each going to have specific lessons tied to them that I will be learning through reading "The Animators Survival Kit" by Richard Williams. I also plan to seek knowledge from the Internet by using online tutorials to help familiarize myself with the Adobe Flash software. I have planned to complete a minimum of 3 short animations, although I hope to complete more, that each may or may not have color or sound. The themes of study that these short films may consist of include; a walk sequence, bounce sequence, a loop, and a musical- just to name a few ideas.

The final animation will be much longer than the rest and will use all of the things that the previous short animations have taught me. My current working idea is to animate a short film of my cat Barney that will be set to music.

I hope that through reading Richard Williams' book "The Animators Survival Kit" and studying online tutorials that by the end of term I will have completed a 2D video that I can potentially use as a portfolio piece. I also hope that through completing a series of animations I will have familiarized myself enough with the software that I will feel comfortable using it in the future.

7. Treatment visuals for your project—your own work

I thought up some ideas for some of my shorter videos in Spanish class on the side of my homework. The top idea is to make a jumping animation of my cat Barney. The bottom idea is to make an extremely simple animation of the Pokemon Digglet popping in and out of the ground (I think that I am going to animate this one first).
The book I am using for this class, "The Animators Survival Kit" spends a lot of time on how to animate walk sequences, so this was my idea for a simple walk animation. The plan is to have the baby elephant enter on one side of the shot, walk to a flower, pick it, and walk off the other side of the shot.

Project Proposal

Your first task is to create a project proposal. You will present the project proposal Tuesday, April 5 (via this blog). Your Project Proposal must contain:

1. A working title for your project.

Animation Crash-Course


2. A one-sentence description of your project.

A series of short animations meant to be a crash-course study in 2D animation using Adobe Flash.


3. A one-paragraph description of your project.

This project will consist of multiple short animations and one longer final animation. The first animations are each going to have a specific lesson tied to them that I will be learning through reading “The Animators Survival Kit” by Richard Williams. The final animation will be much longer than the rest and will use all of the things that the previous short animations have taught me.


4. A one-page description of your project.

Will post later tonight


5. A description of your products of study—what you're going to actually produce during the course of your project.

3-5 short flash animations, which may or may not have color or sound, and one final longer flash animation that will include both color and sound.


6. Visual and/or written research for your project—other people’s work

~”The Animators Survival Kit” by Richard Williams

~http://shazy.deviantart.com/gallery/#/d39atn2 (see previous post)

~http://oha.deviantart.com/art/MUSICAL-CATS-2D-animated-film-83303733 (see pervious post)


7. Treatment visuals for your project—your own work

Will post later tonight


8. A written description of specific technical and research issues you will need to address during the course of your project.

I am going to be reading Richard Williams’ “Animators Survival Kit” from cover to cover and selecting specific lessons from the text in which to base my shorter animations on. I will also be reaching out for knowledge from the online community for tips on how to animate using Adobe Flash.


9. A timeline of your project. When you will be doing all of this good stuff. You must include specific deadlines (for example: "May 17th", not "some time in May."

  • April 5th- Project Proposal is due.
  • April 15th- Complete first short animation, and post to blog.
  • April 29th- Complete second short animation, and post to blog.
  • May 13th- Complete third short animation, and post to blog.
  • May 27th- Post work in progress of final animation.
  • June 10th- Have final animation completed and posted to the blog for grading.

10. A blog containing all of the above. You must document your progress and process on the blog by updating it weekly.


I promise to update this blog a minimum of once a week, with posts concerning the progress of my animation projects.