Week 5 – Lift, Push, and Personal Films
This week, we returned to more physics-based exercises, looking at how we can convey a sense of heaviness when animating someone lifting a ball or pushing a block.
The first lift I animated this week is this block. Now, because I’d joined Group B’s class early before my own, I didn’t get the full context of the exercise, and as it turns out, this would be considered cheating. Not because I was early, but because I’d hidden half the body behind the block, so you can’t really work out how the body works.
In Group A’s class, I learned what we had to do was film ourselves picking up a ball, using anticipation to lead the audience to follow our movement. The result is seen below, which I’d argue is much more successful in convey weight.
Steve only touched upon this, but I went ahead and animated what a push would look like. This time, I switched to twos, as going slower works much more effectively than potentially ones which might make the movement feel too fast. Unfortunately, I thought I’d backed up my original Clip Studio file, but in a routine space clearing, I lost the original file. Any potential changes or feedback would require a complete redraw (which isn’t the worst thing in the world).
Lastly, in regards to the animation front of this week, we went back to Maya. Kevin taught us about cameras. I had a bit of trouble setting it up, so I asked one of my peers, Victor, to help set up a camera. The result gives the character, Bonky, a looming presence, as if they’re towering over the viewer.
I only took part in one life-drawing session this week, as we once again focused on trying to express character and emotion. I can’t say I fully understand what I’m trying to achieve with this class yet, but I hope to soon. That said, after using 2B pencils for the last month, I decided to go looser and using a fineline pen instead to achieve a sketchy look. Initially, I was chasing a style like mangakas would use, but eventually let go of this and sketched freely, which was a nice change of pace after grappling with as perfectly proportioned drawings as I could achieve.
If I had to identify a favourite part of this exercise, it was trying to draw the body in motion (3rd page) and the alternate angles of the head (4th and 5th pages). They felt like polar opposites, the former being extraordinarily loose and exaggerated with the latter allowing me to convey a sense of depth and see the head at alternate angles to what I’m used to. All in all, I really enjoyed this life drawing session.
Lastly, the reason I chose not to attend the usual weekly life-drawing session was so I could work on a new animated short film. In my practice, I normally make 1-minute short films: a nice length which allows you to carefully craft a sequence and narrative without outstaying its welcome. In the last year before this MA, I’d spent 8 months working on a solo 27 minute adaptation of a classic Lupin story, so I didn’t get much of a chance to work on this various short films.
This short film, “1 Minute at CSM” (tentative title) isn’t part of the course or what we need to submit for it, but it’s a good way for me to start implementing the lessons I’ve been learning over the last month. Exercises like the ball life, anticipation, overshoot, timing, spacing etc. can all be put into this film at various points. Not to mention it’s a nice record of my time on the course so far.
If you’ve kept up with my blog, specifically in regards to animated documentaries, then you know about Andy Glynne’s precursor to making an animated documentary: context. If you’re making a film about daily life, wouldn’t a live-action vlog work better than animation? It almost seems hypocritical to agree with such a statement and then make one anyway. But I think, in this case, it should work because these are memories that haven’t been documented previously. And I can’t travel back in time to pick up a camera and suddenly record all of my experiences. What this short film aims to do is capture and approximate the various tasks we’ve been assigned, the space and location we work in, and some of the smaller interactions I’ve seen and experienced in the last 5 weeks. Am I using animation as a gimmick? Yeah, I’d agree with that. But I think showcasing an animation course through an animated documentary, showing the characters on this course, maybe the most effective approach in telling a story like this.
[Edit: 13/11/21] I finished the 1 minute documentary which is below: