Animation Tips

Just thought I wrote a little insight list from my experience with animations. You'll be surprised how many people miss these simple rules.

Designing:

• Start with basic shapes. Shark from Finding Nemo starts out from half a circle.
• Play with proportions and contrast in all x,y,z axis. Ten 1:1:1 (head:body:leg) characters are boring.
• Add details that help define, not confused.
• Pay attention to flow and tension within your design.

Animating

• Get your camera right before you starts animating.
• Clear and concise anticipation, action and follow-through pose and timing. Draw them out even if you are animating in 3D. Come up with different poses and play with timing before you animate.
• Think of the line of action and its motion. Animate character as if you are animating a stick figure. Use arc, C shape, S shape and straight line to your advantage.
• Varies your motion speed to make it more interesting. (ex: slow slow fast slow...)
• Heavy thing has longer slow in and slow out, and create bigger impact.
• Elastic thing has more follow through. (Arm vs. Torso)
• Eyes move before head, head before body.
• Add secondary motions to make your character more alive (finger, etc.) but make sure they remain secondary.
• Before you rig, know your character's center of balance. (Man at pelvis. Woman at hip.)
• First and last words is the most important in Lipsync. Next priority would be words with P, M, E, and O. Get the rest as close as you can without loosing face emotion.
• Convey story and emotion, not your animating skill.

Lighting

• Color tint your shadow, don't use pure black.
• Eyes have limited exposure range. Use it to create illution of light.
• Beware of color relation. Lots of red will make all other colors look greener.
• Think about time and temperature. (Blue tint in the morning, even light at noon, orange at evening, stronger shadow in day, warmer light in summer, etc.)
• Add individual lighting to help boost specific object's form and matterial definition. Global lighting sux and HDRI is cheating.
• Blue object absorbs all other colors in light except blue, leaving the bounce light blueish. More saturate and brighter color object bounces off more light.
• Far objects tend to lose their color saturation.
• Use mask for light in big area to create uneven lighting and the illusion of atmosphere.

Over the Daredevil's Ramp - Concept Story

Concept idea for my storyboard class' final project. It is going to be a picturial story (for adult) about a daredevil stunt biker and her feeling just before her death-defying stunt. It's going to be very intense and emotional; probably the hardest work for me yet. Heck, the story is about conquering your own fear and breaking the limit, so why shouldn't I do the same, right? Below's the narration of the story I'm working on and a early sketch.

"My name is Jill Ferris and I'm a daredevil stunt biker. Tomorrow I'm going to perform the longest death-defying jump in the history. Even with the best preparation we did, the chance that things doesn't go as plan is so high that no one bothers to bring it up. I must be lying if I say that I'm not afraid of dying.

I'm terrified by my own fear.

As I change into my Daredevil suit, I can feel death's cold breath eveloping the air around me. Suddenly, I'm that helpless girl who wants to shirver forever in the dark corners. My tougue can taste the absolute emptiness in the air. It makes you want to cough something out from your throut even though you know nothing is there. I can hear death's distant laugh echoing in my brain over and over.
So why am I doing this?

Perhaps because inside of me, there is that little devil who wants to break herself free from that shrivering girl in the corner. Abraham Lincoln said "the only thing to fear is fear itself." Simple and elegant truth, but how many people are willing to face their own fear, their own excuse, their own weakness. We accomplish nothing if we fear failure. If only I can show that we can be stronger."

Low Relief Painting - Thai Chicken!

This is a little experiment I'm doing for my texture class; can you paint good lighting in b/w then apply it over the textureto fake a low relief sculpture? Well this is what I got. I must say, I really have deep respect for art in my country. Can't imagine how they came up with this for a chicken. Let's just say that they were lucky I wasn't the one designing these things for them. :3

Random Street Sketches

I was walking back from art store and I passed this suppostedly 'huanted house'. It really gave me goosebump and so I really wanted to sketch it. However, being a chicken that I am, I sketched the church close to it instead.

:p

Too bad it rained before I could finish this... Just wanna say I really like the architecture in Savannah. They are kinda cool in a wierd old way.

Another random sketch. I always have an eye on this house because it looks like a castle. I didn't get to finish it though 'cuz I had to go to class.
Anyway, while I was drawing this, a boy who lived there came up and talked to me about the house. Basically, bunch of poor families live together in this house like a community. Hey kid, you might not have much money, but you have a nice big family and you got to live in a castle! Many rich kids will be jealous of ya. :)

O.B.S.- Over Bliss Syndrome

More crazy story for my storyboard class. It's about a guy who suffers from a "happy disease" and the only way to cure him is to make him sad. Isn't it intriguing how do you go about making someone sad? Eventhough in real life, most people does it all the time without thinking. :p

Leaf Painting

Arr well this is the second part from my leaf painting assignment, dying leaf. Again, all done with brushes in Photoshop.

Puzzle Park- Puzzle Part

This is the second assignment for my game environment class; adding puzzle elements into map from the first assignment. As you see, I added a huge crazy bunny boss at the end. I just love when he explodes... :)

Susie and her Yellow Elephant

storyboard เรื่องใหม่ครับ คือเค้าให้แต่งเรื่องจากคำสามคำที่เค้าให้มา ดูจากtitleแล้วคงน่าจะรู้ว่าสามคำนั้นคืออะไร เหมือนง่ายแต่จริงๆคิดกันเกือบตาย มาคิดได้เอาวันสุดท้ายพอดี ของจริงสิบสี่รูปแต่เอาขึ้นแค่หกรูปอีกแล้ว พอจะเดาเรื่องออกไม๊เอ่ย

Leaf painting

Another painting done for my texture workshop class. Front, back and backlit color texture of a clover. :)

Story About the Truth

storyboard เรื่องใหม่ครับ ทำแบบเร่งสุดๆเพราะว่าต้องแรเงาด้วย เป็นเรื่องที่เคยอ่านแล้วชอบเลยหยิบมาใช้คราวฉุกเฉิน

"Once upon a time, the truth was born into the world. Overjoyed by desire to share its wisdom, the Truth ran straight to the king. However, frightened by the Truth's nudity, the king ordered the guards to cast it out. The truth didn't give up. The next morning, it dressed itself as a philosopher and went back in to see the king . The king, who despised philosophers because he could never understand their words, cast the Truth out again. Another next morning , the Truth dressed itself as a priest and went back in to see the king . The king thought that priests were preachy and thus cast the Truth out again. Still not giving up, another next morning, the truth went back in again. This time it dressed itself as a storyteller whom the King was overjoyed to see its presence. 'Come tell me a fun story!' the king replied. Finally the Truth was given a job in the castle and it could spread its wisdom around the world.