Yr 1 Joseph Hogan Animation Journal

Within only the first few weeks of my animations study here, I have found many surprises while creating my animations, the most common of which was my difficulty with simplicity. When trying to animate many of the small projects that we were tasked with, they were all relatively simple and advised to be as such, however I could not help but over-complicate even the smallest of tasks. The results of this were inconsistent too, as some would go disastrously wrong and lead to me abandoning projects very soon, while others worked out very well and with relative ease. With my previous animations that I made before I came to university, I spent much more time on the monotonous stages like colouring, rather than being creative in the initial stages. However, these recent projects have been the opposite. I spend much more time sketching and planning, whether because I am made to think much more about who my animations function or because I have become faster and more used to the repetitive tas...

 Week 5 - Smears and Distortion For week 5, we were required to make an animation that makes use of smear/motion blur as well as distortion in regards to distance from camera. I decided that this was an opportunity for me to try out an animation that closely resembled an action sequence. The character flies into frame, throws off a knife towards the direction he came, before dashing straight back in. Both the flying knife and himself when dashing forward, fly closer past the camera, allowing me to make use of distortion and his quick actions were able to incorporate motion blurring. The rough animation was quite shaky as I wasn't sure of the timing and fluidity of the actions, however this stage was simply to get down the basics When I got to the line art phase, I was able to more easily incorporate the motion blur, as well as squash and stretch in places that required it. Motion blur has a lot more aspects to keep in mind than I had previously thought, however. When making smears ...

 Week 4 - Secondary Effects: For this weeks animation, we were required to add a secondary effect to our ball bounces, we could make a new sequence or just add to our previous ones. I chose to animate a ball that would land softly in the centre and then spin in a spiral shape, until it rolls off-screen. My secondary effect would be a trail of smoke that would be left by the ball. While I am happy with the end result, I believe with a little more thought and effort into the smoke, I could have made it much more life-like.  This is the rough sketch of the smoke trail

 Week 3 - Ball bounces This weeks animations were quite simple as I have previously attempted some ball bounces. I managed to keep within the brief this time and so I didn't over-complicate them much. This first bounce is a very light ball with a lot of momentum, and so I applied lots of squash and stretch. Looking back, it may have been too much, and so next time I will attempt to tone it down as to feel a little more realistic. The second ball bounce is of a much heavier, sturdier ball and so did not require much squash and stretch, in fact I did not use any. The ball also did not move much as a lot of force is required to move an object with more weight, this helped to exaggerate the balls mass even further.

 Week 2 - Monochrome Loop For this week's animation, I went a little too far beyond the brief and over-complicated the work for myself, however I believe that these complications greatly helped my understanding of this type of animation, especially rotoscopes. The idea behind this animation was to make a monochromatic shot of a hand opening, sparking a flame, and then closing again, extinguishing the flame. The whole image would be black until the flame was sparked, lighting up the hand. Unfortunately, the hand did not show through very well when I attempted this, so instead I turned the opacity down, allowing for my sketch of the hand to show through a little better. The rotoscope process was foreign to me so I wasn't quite sure how to approach it. Eventually I created my own reference footage in a mirror and used that to create the hand animation. When completed, however, the animation seemed stiff and boring. I chose to revisit each frame and add slight variations of squash...

  Week 1 - The Zoetrope Attempt 1 - Blob: This animation was used as an exercise in which to personally practice my squash and stretch. As this animation is incomplete since I moved onto the next, the frame-rate is inconsistent and so it's framerate is hard to pinpoint. I drew 27 frames for this 3.5 minute animation. While I was unhappy with the way my animation went, I was able to get a deeper insight into the application and effects of the squash and stretch rule, as well as its use in illustrating acceleration on a falling object. Attempt 2 - 360 Gun: While this animation is also incomplete, I felt that it was at a stage that presented my work and thought process for the week. It is a simple loop of a man dual-wielding two pistols. While firing them straight ahead, the camera pans around him where he looks back and shoots behind him before returning to the front as the camera loops back. This animation also went over the 12-frame limit, spanning 16-frames in 1.5 minutes. While c...