Animation tests- fox facial expressions

So finally I have had enough time to sit down and dedicate a couple of days to creating some facial expressions for my character of the Fox. I have been working on them for a while now, but it has become very apparent that I need to actually do some animation tests as that is the only way really to see if the expressions I've created have been successful. Here are three tests that i rendered out to test the artwork (created in Photoshop). The animation tests were done in AfterEffects, due to the fact that I'm using bitmap not vector images, and Flash (last time i checked) has never been able to handle it without crashing. I think the last test is most successful, as it conveys emotion quite well, it could be better and I will continue the experimentation process until I'm absolutely happy with the result, but for now here are the first tests , (it's been so exciting seeing months of work on the character now starting to come alive, my favorite part!) 

Looking at form through tone- life drawing

Today's life drawing session was interesting, as I completely immersed myself in looking at tonal values in the surroundings of the figure, almost forgetting that I'm looking at human form and considering the scene as a whole, trying to avoid the "tunnel vision" that I normally get when drawing a figure. This exercise has been about relating everything in the drawing to the surrounding area, working the whole drawing rather than focusing on details and I think it really shows through in my drawing this week. Firstly this is the first drawing that has been worked all over the paper, rather than leaving some bits unfinished, (like feet in most of my previous work), secondly because the figure is rather large and I was focusing on the tones, I have completely neglected to look at proportions, instead focusing my energy on getting an overall feeling of the scene. I am please with the result, despite the fact that it's not normally what I would consider a good depiction of the actual model. But it's okay because what I did instead was to gain a new perspective and try a different approach.

Tonal Study- Life Drawing

Today we did a two hour tonal study drawing, which i enjoyed so much i can't even describe it. 

The key to our drawing task was to cover the whole page in graphite hatching, to create a general mid-tone  then use a rubber to rub out the lightest areas of the scene, followed by more graphite hatching to darken the shadows. We were suppose to look for differences in tone and work the whole drawing at the same time, contours weren't allowed, so I didn't even do a faint pencil outline, before starting to draw. I enjoy painting, and this exercise felt a lot like oil painting to me, because nothing was fixed, you could change and shift your marks over and over again, by rubbing out or darkening certain areas. The challenge was to work gradually, and resist the temptation to get sucked in working on certain details, because every single tonal value in the drawing had to relate to the whole composition, and not just to the adjacent area. Here is my drawing from this exercise. 

 

ChickenFox- Animatic v4

Here's the almost almost final animatic for ChickenFox:

ChickenFox- Animatic v3

So it is about time I post an update on the ChickenFox progress, over the last week, here is an improved version of the animatic. I will post later the changes I've made and the changes that still need to be made, as discussed with my lecturer- Derek Hayes, I have changed a few scenes, few cuts and a few camera angles. But as I said I will talk about all the changes when I post the final version. For now here is the work in progress: 

Life drawing- looking at form

Today's life drawing, was focused on different representations of form, and we were given several exercises, such as representing the figure as basic geometric shapes and using parallel hatching, as a way of depicting form. I didn't want to do the box exercise, as I didn't feel it was challenging enough for me, it seems quite boring, but I did try the hatching technique and actually quite enjoyed it. Here are 3 drawing's from today's session, the first two took 40 minutes each, and the last one was 25-30 minutes, because the model was late, we got less time to draw this week. 

I think the most successful one is the hatching drawing, as it really gives a sense of mass and volume, which was the aim. It is good to get out of your comfort zone, when it comes to drawing, because that way we force our eyes to see differently, we start drawing what's actually in front of us instead of drawing what our brain thinks something should look like.

More poses, drawing.

Today I had my, animation life drawing class, where we get to draw a variety of VERY quick poses. The objective behind that technique, is to learn to capture and represent movement, through very quick poses. Such poses, although sometimes very frustrating do focus your mind on capturing the line of action and the weight of the figure, which is very important in order to represent dynamic movement. 

I find that in longer poses, I spend more time on details and less on the overall "feeling" of the pose.

Below are examples of some drawings from today, and because the poses are extremely quick, I always have more drawings from my Wednesday sessions. I didn't annotate on each one how long the poses were, but generally the really simple line contour poses are 15-30 seconds, and slightly more detailed ones are 10-15 minutes and finally the one in colour takes a lot longer and this one in particular was 40 minutes I believe. So without further a do, here they are: