Molly Fuller

We were given a character set of 3 different balls with tails, two of which are made to look like animals - a fox and a beaver. We were then tasked with creating an animation of one jumping around with its tail bouncing, making sure to create the follow through and overlap of the tail's 4 moving parts. Here is the one I made in the lesson: Here is the one I made of it buncing along the floor. I had some issues with the dope sheet so I'd like to retry this one at some point:

We were given a model to use to animate walking, here is my first version of Monty where he's walking in an average way: Then I did a slower version with a sad monty face: Then I tried animating Monty so he looks like he's sneaking: I like the bounce I managed to get in his feet, especially at the middle. Here is another angle of sneaky monty:

Today I redid my bouncing ball animation using a coin: I did the timings much better this time, using the fairings more smartly so I could see exactly where the coin needed to go for each shot rather than just a guessing game like I did for the first version. However, in this version, the timing is still not correct, as you can see - there should be less fairings to make the ball look as if it was moving faster, especially for the first drop where gravity would make it fall much faster. Here is my stop motion balloon:

In this week's life drawing class, we used the 3 hours to draw many poses using differing amounts of time for each part. At first we were given a few minutes for each pose, and then 1 minute, then 30 seconds. In the last half an hour of time, we used nice brown paper with white chalk and charcoal, similarly to last week's use of black paper, chalk and charcoal, the paper giving us the mid tone to work around. This was the final drawing of the session where we had 30 minutes to draw. I really like how the upper torso came out as I feel the shadows and highlights are done quite well there, except for his left arm where the shadows aren't really blended out enough and there isn't any mid tone left to give it any tonal gradation. The proportions of the legs compared to the upper body aren't very good, especially his left leg which is too wide, especially the line on the right of the calf, which should be further to the left. His right leg should also be angled so its ...

Here is my flour sack animated, jumping over a chocolate flake with an ice cream background, along with shadow, highlight and drop shadow: Here is my improved water balloon animation after receiving feedback: I especially looked at the timing for the first drop of the balloon from the height, and also the volume after a couple of arcs, as my original one had gotten smaller as it went along.

For this week's assignment, we were tasked with drawing a piece of fruit and creating a character using the fruit's shape as a starting point. I decided to study a few different fruits (and vegetable) before landing on the banana, where I drew a drooping suited character who looks very miserable, and I really like how those came out, as I feel like you can tell their emotions from their body without much use of the face, which I need to improve more on. In the lesson we looked at perspective lines and how the horizon placement higher or lower can change how dramatic the landscape will look, for example when its lower on the frame, it will look much more dramatic, as it's closer to the floor.

In our 3rd week we have been tasked with using our teacher's feedback and advice, and improving our water balloon. My animation needs to have more inbetweens in it, especially after the first half of the video, as the balloon is quite jumpy and it strobes quite a lot. I also need to make sure my balloon's squash and stretch is more accurate - after the first bounce, the balloon doesn't squash nearly as much as it should, so I will also be changing that part. We have also been tasked with creating an animation of a flour sack jumping, as you can make it seem very emotive and almost human. We went outside and created reference videos of ourselves jumping to help us work out the timing of our animation, and when each key frame should be on the timeline.

In our second lesson of learning about 2D, we used TVPaint having been taught how to use it, and we started looking at water balloons, and how they move and warp in shape when they bounce - we had to think about the volume of the shape, and how it can't get bigger and smaller incorrectly, we have to keep the volume consistent as it squashes and stretches. We also then had to clean it up and do the linework, colour them, and add shadow and highlight to add depth and realism. Here is my water balloon animated:

In our first lesson learning about 2D, we videoed bouncing balls to use as reference and then put them into Adobe Flash, using the rotoscope method to animate them, while also keeping the trail there so we could see how the ball moves - this task wasn't really learning how to animate (especially as we don't use Flash for our 2D animation), but simply to better understand the way that the ball moved, looking at how its speed changes in relation to where it is, like gravity dragging the ball down faster, how it slows in and out, etc. Here is my rotoscoped ball video: We then used Adobe Flash to animate a ball bouncing while adding in squash and stretch.

We looked at different types of trees and how each type has different branches, e.g. oak has big curling ones, whereas ash trees grow much straighter - this was to show us the importance of research when animating - knowing our subject, and how it grows and moves, so that we can make new ones even when we aren't just working directly from references. We went outside and looked at different trees, and the same tree at different angles - this will be important when animating, as you never see something from only one point of view.

We were given a pre made character set of different balls (tennis ball, bowling ball, beach ball, golf ball, etc.), and were told to create animations in maya using these balls, showing their weight and how it effects them: how many bounces they do; the arcs of their bounces; the speed; squash and stretch; etc. This ball was perceived by me to be quite squishy, so the shape squashes and stretches a lot when it hits the ground. It also has lots of bounces and big arcs to show its lighter mass. The bowling ball is heavy so there's only a small bounce or two with small arcs and then it slowly rolls into a resting position. The beach ball, however, is really light and full of air so it bounces more, and it has large arcs that curve much higher. I added a simple chair shape to the scene to create an obstacle that the ball could bounce against.

For this week's assignment, I chose to do 'From the Real to the Surreal', where we have to take an everyday object like a chair, bus, living things such as plants, etc. and give it a twist of the surreal, making it look 'very odd indeed'. Here are the drawings I did for this task: The owl was drawn from this screenshot I took of a video on the internet, as I thought the pose and face were very scary and almost haunting, so I tried to make it even creepier by showing it eating a human arm. This was inspired by a drain I saw with a tea bag lodged in it with the label hanging out into one of the holes, looking almost posed. I wanted to try and make the drain look like a tea filter but I wasn't sure how to go about it so I ended up just drawing the drain, and then I added the odd visual of the drain floating in the middle of nowhere.

At the beginning of this drawing for animation lesson we set up our objects on the table in the middle of the room - we then sat and drew a section of the setup, making sure at least some of the objects were overlapping, as it was important for this lesson and its teachings. We looked at overlap in this lesson and how important it is in animation - our teacher showed us multiple children's drawings and got us to identify what was inaccurate, and then what had improved in the drawing skills in each one as they aged, like perspective, layering, using horizon lines to portray distance, making objects smaller to show they're further away, etc. When we looked at the drawing of the older child at around 12 years old, we saw that they used lots of hills in their drawing, layering them on top of one another, showing the depth of the drawing through that, and how these 'hills' are seen in many character designs to show depth as well, for example, in Cruella De Ville'...

For this week's drawing for animation assignment, I chose to do 'Strangers In A Day', in which we were tasked to ask strangers for what I should draw that day for the whole week. I have posted multiple pictures of some drawings due to the fact that I drew on the back of the page using ink pens and they ran through the back onto the pencil drawings. I found this one really fun to do, because the people I asked told me to draw some fun and interesting things that I perhaps wouldn't have drawn otherwise, like the stamp or the keys. I think this is an important habit to get into, asking people to give you something to draw, so that you can practice drawing absolutely everything - as is with animation, you are creating an entire world, starting right from scratch. I hope to continue practicing this task to help me improve in drawing out of my comfort zone.

In our life drawing class, we were given A2 sheets of paper to draw on, practicing with the charcoals and graphite to create as many different marks, lines and shades as we could. This was my sheet of paper after I had fun drawing all over it: Then we swapped our paper with another student in the class, and were tasked to see shapes and interesting things inside their marks. The sheet I received had lots of circles and wavy lines, so I decided to turn mine into an intriguing character with oddly shaped eyes, wiggly eyebrows and wonky glasses resting on his head, a large bulbous nose protruding above an old cigar. The marks that my fellow student made created a really cool base for the skin, with all the different kinds of marks showing through and creating a really interesting texture. Next, we started the life drawing using a male model, and drawing on A2 print paper using charcoal again. We had a minute per pose, so it meant that I really had to focus on getting the mo...

I never really took to stop frame animation growing up, only really watching a few films made in this way that I really loved like Wallace and Gromit and The Miracle Maker, but more recently I have really seen the beauty and unique style of stop motion, and have watched some wonderful shorts and films too. In the lesson we looked at the way the body moves, and how nothing simply moves immediately at a certain speed, but actually slows in and out, gradually increasing and decreasing in speed. We were tasked with creating some short videos of basic animations like bouncing balls, pendulums and balloons - this was to help us practice making our fairings and checking our timing as we create these simple animations. We also had to use our fairings to make the objects slow in and out so that the final animation is much more realistic. Free swinging pendulum: Mechanical pendulum: Ball: Even though I'd already created bouncing ball animations in 2D and 3D, I sti...