Animation Practice - Rotoscoping in Flash

Very excited to be sharing my first attempt at rotoscoping.  We were tasked with producing a 30 second animation that displays our knowledge and understanding of the principles of animation. (Brief is at the bottom of the page)

In short, we need to display an animation that shows realistic movement of a character, showcasing a level of technical ability as well as creativity.

The simplest way for me to produce realistic movement was to rotoscope some video footage.  I looked at pole dancers, martial artists, my son waving and parkour.  I plumped for a short film on youtube Urban Ninja pwns jet and cut it down to 30 seconds.

I converted it to an image sequence using Media Encoder, see how here.  This was then imported to Flash.  I traced each frame, repeating some of them and adding tweens to create new scenes that mimic camera moves.  I also added some elements to enhance the scene and exaggerate some of the movements.  I used the pencil tool mainly whilst tracing the character, it is a little wobbly, but it gives the effect of a handrawn piece which I rather like.  The pen tool would perhaps have given a smoother, neater result, but I am a fan of drawing by hand and old habits die hard.

I used the pen, line, shape and paint bucket for the minimal background features and graphics.  I was rather pleased to discover the guidelines which I used to move some of the guide frames to reduce camera wobble.  Another happy discovery were the 'Close Large Gaps' option for filling shapes and the 'Smooth Pencil' mode for neatening up some of my lines.

I rather mistakenly didn't select any music until after the animation was completed, it is more tricky editing the music around the piece as opposed to the other way around, but I think it fits OK.  There are just a couple of bits I would make tighter if I had selected the music first, but its hand it tomorrow and I'm not starting from scratch now!

I'll let you know how I get on with marks.  Hope you like this and would love it if you could share it with your friends!

Here is the brief:

Module Assignment

Animation Practice

Total Mark: 100%

Hand in Dates:

Tuesday 20.30 Week 7 (CD Hand in)

Learning Outcomes: (being assessed by this assignment).

On completion of this module students should be able to:

·      Apply creative skills in the development of an animation

• ·      Demonstrate an understanding of the theoretical principles and practical techniques underpinning successful animation

• ·      Create an animation demonstrating an understanding of realistic movement

• ·      Demonstrate realistic animation (through characterisation)

• ·      Demonstrate your understanding of the principles of animation from the animation concepts module

Overview

In this module you will produce an 30-second animation that must:

be relevant to the context of your award

You are required to:

create a final animation in a format of your choosing: worth 100%

The Brief

You must create a 30-second animation that demonstrates realistic

movement through characterisation.

The animation that you produce can be 2D or 3D and in any program of your

choosing. Some examples of different types of animation are:

• Rotoscoping (As used in Star Wars etc…)

• Stop motion (Wallace and Gromit etc…)

• Image sequence

• 3D animation

You are welcome to develop your own idea but you must agree the idea

with a module tutor.

The Deliverables

The Rendered Animation

The animation that you produce must:

Be 30 seconds long exactly.

Effectively demonstrate the learning outcomes.

Demonstrate your understanding of the principles of animation

Demonstrate the following techniques:

• animation

• characterisation

• creativity

• technical skills

The final animation must adhere to the following technical specification:

Flash based projects:

Your final output should be a .swf file. (Publishing your .fla will create a .swf

which will be suitable). This file must playback as intended without the use of

external files.

Other projects:

QuickTime format

H.264 Compression Codec

1500 kbps data rate

Audio AAC, Stereo (L,R), 44.1 KHz

MAXIMUM File size: 100mb

Failure to meet this specification will result in a large penalty being applied to

your mark and may cause your work to fail.

How to Submit

All of the following elements should be burnt to disc:

• any Pre-Planning work such as sketches, animation tests etc

• the final Animation

Failure to submit your work on CD could result in a zero mark.

Marking Scheme and Deadlines

Deliverable Type Deadline Weighting

Final Animation Burnt to CD Week 7 100%

Total for assignment: 100%

Overall grade: 73

Creating an image sequence

I used Media Encoder to convert video footage into an image sequence.  This converts every frame into an image file.

It is very simple to do and should you wish, you can change the size and frame rate of your file.  This is particularly useful if you are wanting to rotoscope for a simple animation, as 24 fps can be labourious.

So, firstly, I opened Media encoder and added my footage.

I then selected the 'custom' preset, checked the 'export as sequence' box and selected the frame rate that I wanted 15fps then hit OK.

I chose the location for the new file sequence under 'Output File' and hit the play symbol.

This has now created a file of images, one JPEG per frame.

New assignment - Animation

Brief is yet to be approved but essentially our next project is building upon what we learned in Animation Principles.

We have to create a 30 sec animation, about anything we want, but need to make it realistic. This means demonstrating that we understand how things move, arcs, how speed changes upon acceleration and deceleration and how momentum affects an object when it is stopped.

We are able to use Flash, After Effects, flick books, paper cuts, hand drawn frames, stop motion, in fact any medium we want so long as our animation is realistic looking.

I saw this film of aeroplanes taking off from an airport, condensed into 25 secs. It got my thoughts sparking off about my animation.

Motion Graphics - hand in!

I have got the piece to animate as close as possible to the idea I had... I am still learning so much of this assignment was learning about what I could do in After Effects, rather than how to do what I wanted it to do.

As ever we have limited time so this is far from complete, I just got it to the stage where I was happy to hand in i.e. I felt it met the criteria required and was produced at my highest ability.

Thanks again to models Rob Hallam and Kenny Baker.



Mark awarded = 68

My lowest mark at level 6

Inspirational Papercuts Animation

So for my Motion Graphic assignment I am wanting to incorprate some papercut styles in to the animation.  I have been googling away and came across this from macklinillustration it was her Final Major Project in BA (Hons) Illustration at Southampton Solent University, no surprise that it was a First!

Hope you like this!

Funky little spaceboy - Zoom Zoom

Done and dusted. Here is the final version of the animation for year 2. I love the music, found it on youtube, perfect for my little space boy. The track is called 'Zoom a little zoom' sung by Tom Glazer & Dottie Evans. The track is from Ballads of the age of science by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer.

The 11 second teaser was to show an emotion. I chose excited, don't think I have executed it as well as I'd hoped but I can develop it with time and more practice on Flash.




Final Marks: 70 = First

Animation - Pre-planning animatic submitted

Admittedly, this was a little rushed. I didn't source the audio in time so I did a botch cut in Soundbooth, on an overly 'obvious' choice, Babylon Zoo's Spaceman. This was sketched on my graphics tablet into Illustrator, then tween in Flash. Well here it is, this will be 20% of my mark, yikes! Search Amazon.com for flash animation

Animation - storyboards

Here are the initial sketched storyboards for my Animation Concepts module. These will no doubt be revised, again and again.

Search Amazon.com for storyboarding

Animation - Pre-planning

Here are some of the sketches that I have done for the development of my character for the current Animation Concepts module. My little dude is a spaceboy, based on an old character that I created a few years ago, and shamefully did nothing with him, but graffiti my colege books with. I have decided to go with the mood excitement. For this I will have my little spaceboy getting ready for his first day back at school.

Animation Concepts Module 2011 - Year 2

We have started a new module, Animation Concepts, continuing our yaer two studies. Since the start of this year, we now have two deadlines per module. The first deadline is technically 4 or 5 weeks in, a work in progress submission to see where we are up to, for the tutor to check we are on the right track. This is usually 20-30% of the final mark. Unfortunatley we have introduction lectures to the subject before we get the assignment brief, so in this case we only have actually two weeks to work to the brief. The Brief We are to create an 11-second animation that conveys a mood/ emotion through characterisation, based on a story, narrative or section of audio. Upon our first deadline, 22/03, we must submit a pre-planning animatic. This is an animated version of our storyboard. We will be marked on the cinematography, story-telling, pace and style and how it is synced to the audio. The rendered animation needs to convey the mood and emotion, as well as demonstrate our understanding of the 12 principles of animation. We must show the techiques that we have developed in animation, artistic ability, texturing and lighting. The rendered verison needs to be in Quicktime format, H.264 Compression Codec, 640x480, 1500 kps data rate, Apple lossless (AAC), Stereo (L,R), 44.1 KHz, maximum file size 30mb. Wooooooo. Having never animated anything before, this is going to be a fair old challenge.