Thursday, August 25, 2016

Let's go Nude!



  Or  actually maybe leave it to the professionals....
This week life drawing- an improvement on last week/getting back on track
but far worse on the arriving on time front  :(
Still not too bad for no warmup/sitting behind everyone etc.











First go of CAT rig

cat_test from Lachlan Creagh on Vimeo.

About 3hrs worth today - not refined too much- seeing how I went- broad sketches of actions that might be used in an ad.
(Just hand animated with the ik /fk- not using any of CATs automation)
Actually it felt quite easy/didn't take much thinking to do this much- a good flow activity-
good also that even after spending most of the last 8 years drawing that the animation will be better than ever/still easy once I'm into it fully.
Phew

Tuesday, August 23, 2016

Cyclops ,goblin and the Free Range animation crew.


Late night watercolours number 2

Lots of  bleeding on the free range fox and chicken- ah well
Didn't get the characters or the feel quite right with them  but aspects are alright..


Monday, August 22, 2016

Night water


A late night fiddle with watercolour.
...hmmm looks like its been a while
 - it'd be good to try andhave more colour about the place on the blog.

Sunday, August 21, 2016

What have I done....?

in the last week?

A lot of time spent trying to absorb as much of  Toon Boom premium in my trial period before it expires.  I'm really excited to get and do something... with bit of finished animation in it..
It looks like its a lot better for doing 2d characters and scenes than After effects.
Especially the way rigged characters are contained in their template.

Fortunately I was able to look at/use the Toon Boom 'Learn'  site- in Beta, which is way superior to their other online learning offerings that I could see. A really good resource for animation learning full stop- as they don't just have how to use the software but all about studio type production- even animation principles. So a lot to look at.
Thoughts-  the node based nature is really great I think- and a lot of stuff is exposed for people who are into that sort of scripting/programmatic stuff.
- only seemed convoluted or ass about when  I was watching the rigging tuts with the invert masked auto patched character-
mainly if you are going to have an invert mask a lot of the time with a predicable use for a snippet of node network why not include that as a pre made node?
Anyway...I'll watch that bit again.

Sad bit is instead of watching cartoons with my boys the way I used to I'm now analysing their choice of deformation/elbow style etc....breaking it down into what I've learnt or  how to do it.
Ie I was walking past and the kids were watching Camp Lakebottom- and the main character must have had every conceivable type of arm deformation style  in the space of 5 secs with different styles on each arm- curve deformation ('hose'), rigid bones /segments- sharp elbow, smooth elbow, etc..
The examples on the learn site had different views in the one template but with similar deformation/hierarchy- whereas that arm stuff is different deformations on same view-- although they did have a 'planted'/steady  foot example with 2 deformation types on the one thing.....hmmmm.

Spent a day looking at the Magic Word book again....need to sort that out and do 'final' roughs and text.

Starting to look at a new  job for Radium in 3dsmax- which means I have to get to grips with Vray.
Which will be good to know but I feel I want to spend my time on the 2d animation .....
Ah well.
Am going to the Vray roadshow in Brisbane on Wed to kickstart it all.






I was at The Big Draw again on Saturday at the State Library.....
that's me there- drawing the Witch from the magic word book.
Photos courtesy of Ozan Tortop,-
As you can see Ozan has manipulated the photos to make me look much older and portly than I actually am.
I did a few drawings below while I was on the spot- all a bit dodgy but that's what happens when put on spot and drawing before people......








Cyclops




Page of cyclops designs and some little situations,-
relating to a story that would be great to work on.

We'll see how the writer fares with the publisher

but it was nice to spend a little time on Saturday night thinking of designs.





Chinese whispers...



A few doodles while contemplating whether I could do an offered educational reader for not much money....
Answer is no I think- although the story was really nice, my knowledge of china is not good- afraid I'd insult someone/get their dress wrong without proper costume research- and no real time to do that research for the money offered...)

Life in patches

Only managed to make it to 2 halves of life drawing the last couple of weeks- :(
A bit patchy when I've been there....(turning up late.)
This is at the West End/Kurilpa hall.

Have a feeling my eyesight is a bit worse....glasses soon I think..
Or at least it takes a bit of time to adjust/focus- is slow.

Because I wasn't doing so well I had the idea to just mark in watercolour style where the shadows were instead of trying
 to start shading -
the pose ending-
and only having the initial crappy shading done anyway.








The one where it is shaded was about the last pose and I thought oh what the heck and then a minute and a half later it was end of pose.....

Sculptors life drawing has been in hiatus for the month and I'd like to get back there.
Kurilpa hasn't been so bad- at least for these broken visits- its just because I like to draw with an A2 board on my knee its hard to find a space in the  crowd.
So the drawing below is quite small because I was a long way away....not how I like it.






Tuesday, August 2, 2016

No Undo

So I've had part of my ear cut off and a bit of my neck used to patch it..
Cut and paste because there was no undo....
.thats cancer I guess.
Spent the last few days sort of bleeding.....
(Can't see what sort of job has been done because its all bandaged.)


Still looking at software-
Adobe Audition with a view to voices for animation etc
Will be looking at 3ds Max and Unity again-
Premier again,
 Illustrator  and Adobe Muse......

Bought a good book on Stop motion animation.. (a bit troubled I hadn't done anything with Dragonframe for months- even  tests or development  :(     )
Has lots of good hints on the practicalities while you are animating and what to do if you forget ti animate a bit of a character...(as you do)

In other news
Closer to sealing a deal on Over is Out book.
I'll be at the Big draw at the State Libraries in August
and at the Sydney SCBWI conference in September.....
Might also try Ozcomic con in Sydney this year.... I've been a bit absent from these things this year...
and its nearly Spring..
.time to liven up

Goblin -After effects version

Goblin after effects test from Lachlan Creagh on Vimeo.

So - trying the same layers I used in Character animator in after effects
and in the case of the dodgy walk cycle- trying the same thing.....
The walk sort of works!
But after effects was dismally slow with the boned puppet with duik on it- and thats just one little simple character:-
I think segmented characters are way faster and don't bog after effects down.....I think.
So I guess the next thing is to try attaching just an animated head and lip synch from Character Animator and attaching it to a body with ik in After effects.
But what it leads to is back to Toon Boom...

Why-?
 because after effects isn't really geared towards 'characters'- as a unit- just comps- whereas I hope and assume that Toon Booms libraries are just that-
ie I hope you can set up a character, put it in the Toon Boom library and then insert it into any scene and its all good to go.
(Adobe Character Animator does have  "libraries" you can make of puppets or their pieces- .......)


So next I've tried out the DUIK import rig/comp thing-
seems to work for something simple and segmented- seems to take  much  longer on the goblin,-
(actually what it did on the simple thing is actually good because its just the controllers and comp thing that come into the new comp...... )
and it looks like it made a copy of the goblins comp- which is good
but didn't insert it with animated handles in a neat way (the way it did with my segmented test)
so not so good...... but then its a free  plugin....so its something....
but still I think I'd have to try Toon Boom.