Genius Hour Blog, Peel 3rd

This week I started really animating what I had planned. It's going slower than I thought it would, but I'm trying to do as much as I can each day. However, with the deadline for the project creeping up on me, I might have to shorten the final animation. At this rate, it seems like I won't be able to animate an entire two minutes in time, since so far I'm barely at over ten seconds, the majority of which is blank frames because of the intro I didn't want to use. I want to do the whole song, but I'm pretty sure it'll only be some of it. It takes a really long time to get everything looking smooth for just a few seconds, and I already have a lot of schoolwork besides this project. I definitely want to animate the beginning skating sequence and lip syncing for at least some of the lyrics, but I'm not sure how long my animation will end up being. I'm going to make sure I work on it during free time in classes (which hopefully I'll have more of now th...

This week, I worked less on animating and drawing and more on reading more into techniques and information. I requested The Animators Survival Kit from one of my two local libraries, but it’ll take a little time to get here. Meanwhile, I checked out three beginner’s books from the other library so I could start reading, though they seemed more directed towards younger people or less informed readers who have very little to no experience or understanding of animation, so a lot of the information was things I already knew. I skimmed through the three and decided that one of them was too childish with no new information and instead focused on the other two, which had good basic information. I’m sure The Animator’s Survival Kit will have more in depth information and more helpful tips. However, a few things were helpful, such as teaching the basics of timing each drawing in a fluid way and how to use squash and stretch to make movement more dynamic. Even though I had learned the majority ...

           This week I got more done than last week, at least. I was feeling lost on what I wanted to animate the character doing at certain parts of the song, so this week I drew out a rough "storyboard" of the general actions I want paired with different lyrics and sections of the song. The rough "storyboard" will be provided below.             I also started setting up the lyrics and lip sync for the song. This will give me a clear reference of what mouth position to put on the character for each syllable and lyric. I haven't done this for every lyric, but I have the majority of the song lyrics mapped out. These lip sync lists will be provided below for reference. That way I can add the face onto the pre-drawn frames and make it seem like the character is singing with fluid mouth movements.             I also watched a few more DrawWithJazza videos, specifically on face construction and how...

          I'll admit that I didn't get much done this week, since I was focused on the Romeo and Juliet projects we had. I'm still deciding on different key poses to draw the song, and I haven't started drawing any in-between frames as a result. I did find out, however, that one of the libraries near my house has a copy of "The Animator's Survival Kit." But it's already been requested by one person, so I don't know if it'll be available soon. Since I want to get the book soon, I'm also looking into other options.           "Disney Animation: The Illusion of Life" looks good, and is written by experts, but in a way that beginning animators can understand without using terms that are too technical. It gives tips and tricks for the reader, and even includes examples of storyboards and animation strips.           "Cartoon Animation (Collector's Series)" also looks helpful, including lessons on how to animate dynami...

Whoops! I forgot to post last week, so here it is. I already watched severeal animation tutorials by Youtuber Draw With Jazza, including videos on how to distort different frames in an animation (squash, stretch, smear, etc.) and videos on how to draw different parts of a face separately and put them together during the animation process to make it look like authentic face movements. (Links are provided below) I got my dad to install an animation app on my tablet, and I tested it with some keyframes I drew. It's pretty jumpy because it's only a test, though. I already drew several keyframes of the character I chose, including all the keyframes necessary for an axel jump (a type of figure skating spin). I've chosen the song I want to set it to and have all the keyframe mouths drawn for different vowels and consonants so I can make the character lip sync to the song. I still have a lot of key frames to draw if I want to fill the entire two minutes-ish song, though, and I...

I think I've decided on my topic for this project. I'd like to learn how to animate, since I can already draw stills and it would interest me to learn how to animate gifs and videos instead of drawing individual pictures. I'll probably rely on courses on Youtube.com or Lynda.com, and I'll also watch courses on anatomy to make sure the animations look accurate. I already have a few ideas on what I could animate, but they either seem incredibly time-consuming (like animating a video to go along with an entire song) for the time frame or like they'll be much too short to show off. I think animating something to go with music is probably my best choice, but I'll need to decide which song I want to use and what to draw to go along with it before I can actually start drawing anything. Also, I need to choose a good-quality animation app to download onto my drawing tablet that can handle the kind of length that I'll be working with. One thing I'm unsure about is...