Incremental 2

This drawing is of great importance to me. This was the first one that began to move smoothly for me. Here. I started getting a sense of how much time each drawing took and the general proportions of the figure.

 In this drawing, the figure is just beginning to exert a force on the object. I mainly focused on representing the areas that visually displayed physical tension.

 This pose is taken from a stair-step movement. Here, I began developing a feel for where I could leave out certain details and still convey the position of the figure.

 This resting position after completing the action cycle of delivering a punch, left a lot of areas in the figure that created flowing contours and overlaps. 

 The was the final drawing in the "picking up a box" cycle. So, I had considerably more time to render the figure.

Bouncing Ball

Bouncing Ball from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

At long last!! It's finished, at least for the time being. The major issue I ran into was compensating for the change of force in the bounces whenever the ball changes direction. I had to make it believable while maintaining enough momentum to keep the ball bouncing for the allotted time. I ran into some issues while importing the video from the "Lunchbox". I kept getting these odd skips and pauses during the process. So, I tried my best to edit them out.

I did have to make considerable changes to the under layer when it came to how many frames each bounce would be. Since I wanted to experiment using varying speeds, I had to continuously adapt to how the movement progressed.

Another project I fully intend to revisit (when I'm really, really, bored).

MAJOR ISSUE= I just noticed this, the video stretched my ball vertically. The first squash and the ball in resting position are very distorted. I'm not sure what happened to cause this distortion.

Ball Under Layer

The preparation stage has been completed for my "Bouncing Ball" project, and I'm happy to say that I have   the four seconds animated at a preferred speed. Below I've included the: spacing test, path of motion, and the first four seconds played on a loop.

Spacing Test- I roughed out some spaces and placed a coin at each point (shot the animation) and got a feel for the speed the ball would move at. I decided that each bounce should average 17-18 frames.
sorry, the scanner didn't want to keep the drawing straight that day.

Path Test- Originally, I wanted to use a simple racquetball court for the environment, but I felt it didn't offer enough visual interest. So, I drew out my under layer path and numbered, in order, where the ball hits the ground.

Animation, I know the ball's hard to see. It's starting far back in perspective. It's in the top left of the screen.

Bounce Test #2 from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

Golf Swing Sequence

Golf Swing Test from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

I combined two tests into a single video upload. Unfortunately, I didn't reach the point where I found a movement cycle I was satisfied with. I didn't want to delay my bouncing ball any further. So, I do plan to revisit and complete this project. 
(Each test will repeat once.)


In the first test,
Well, I aimed for a more technical approach by working with the body in segments. One major problem is that some of the limbs move in an unnatural way. Two, the length of the club shouldn't have been foreshortened as much as it is here.


In the second test,
I am pleased with how the figure starts out. I got some nice movement at the beginning when he takes a breath and focuses, but I can't ignore the fact that his feet start shrinking. He shouldn't be moving back in space. Once I realized the figure's change in proportion, everything fell apart from there.

Pendulum

Pendulum from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

The assignment's simple enough; animate the swinging motion of a pendulum. Within this task lies several challenges: maintaining a fixed axis point, consistency of moving objects' size, and making the movement believable. This animation was carried out in 120 frames. Each swing is composed of 13 frames.

After drawing out 8 back and forth swings, I quickly encountered some sources of difficulty.
First, Coloring the drawings with markers on printer paper caused the ink to bleed. This slightly altered the size of the pendulum in various frames. Second, I was able to achieve the exact speed I was aiming for in the animation sequence, but the spacing of the frames causes brief negative space reveals within the colored space of the pendulum.

The creation of this illusion takes focused patience, and requires that you draw out the sequence from scratch several times to gain a natural sense of the movement. I drew out the process a total of 9 times. The part of the video plays 6 swings and then loops the same 6. The second part of the video is one looped back and forth swing that I added more frames to in an attempt to slow down the motion and eliminate the temporary negative space reveals.

I use looping in this assignment to analyze any inconsistencies.

Incremental #1

First of all, I realize that the drawings are not at all in proper order. It completely slipped my mind while I was drawing these. I should have each pose arranged by how they appeared in relation to each other in space. It's just a bad habit of mine, from Life Drawing, to separate each figure and shade them. However, I did number them so I hope that helps.

INCREMENTAL SAMPLE #1

What I enjoy most about this study is that it is one of the first incremental movement studies I drew. Since I drew this out before reading any "how to" diagrams or text, these drawing have a certain "freedom" to them that seems to be lacking from my other studies. Plus, I greatly wish to further study some of these more complex animal movements. For example, the fish mainly gains the illusion of movement based on its progression through the space around it. This was one conclusion I made while doing this study.

METAMORPHOSIS

Tadah, Here it is! The progressive product of two weeks work. Having incorporated my 30pg. flip-book from the previous week, this animation contains a grand total of 175 drawings. Booya!

The beauty in working this piece was the size. Although there was a decent amount of drawings, it was in a small enough format that I could flip through the pages with ease and actually see the animation progress as I drew out the motions.

The most rewarding part of this experience was being able to visualize the scenery's developing perspective and the overall speed of the various motions, and then actually seeing how the final product compares.

The biggest challenges of this project was realizing how quickly materials run out, and anticipating how to move through a space that doesn't really exist.

You'll notice an odd twitch in the video at roughly 35 seconds into the animation. This occurred because I shot one of the frames upside down (accidentally). I also wasn't too happy with how the flickering effect turned out. I'm happy to say that I did make a second cut of this video where I corrected the twitch.
Enjoy, clip is below.

Metamorphosis from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.

YEAH! Edited version uploaded! I changed the timing on a couple things. It's not any major change, but fixed the little things were bugging me.

Metamorphosis_edited from Douglas Meloche on Vimeo.