Notes for myself

John told me to rearrange the walk so that I could see it in a cycle.

Link

(It's kind of fun to watch the peg holes go by, haha).

Anyway, looking at it this way makes it easier to see some problems. The biggest issues of concern:

- The head. It tilts too severely. The original looks strange, but still smooth-- my study should match that
- The extreme on the far arm is jumpy. That should be easy to fix, but the arm itself looks weird and wooden, like it's just a puppet's arm moving out! Maybe I should make the fist move a bit more?
- The near arm is very jumpy. It's a little twitchy in the original but it's too much so on this one. I think part of this could be fixed by making the hands on frames 9 and 10 fit in more with the others.
- The tail. No flow.
- The eyes are still weird, of course. Need to tweak them still.
- John said the hair overlap is too mathematical. I don't know exactly how to fix that, but I'm willing to experiment!

Next time: I need to perfect the animation in its rougher stages.

Also: To those of you who have been leaving comments, I appreciate it! You are nice folks.



UPDATE!: I have an exam on Monday and some other school stuff to do, so I won't be able to put in as much time straight up as I'd like to. So I will be updating this post with my progression on fixing this.

HERE is the first update. I am redoing the head and neck, making sure that moves smoothly. Specific feedback VERY appreciated! When you back away it looks fairly smooth but I don't think I'm satisfied. It loses some of the original's bounce but I think I want to focus on just making it work smoothly rather than complete fidelity. I need to learn to crawl before I can walk. Or, I guess, walk before I can walk interestingly.

I have also been informed that I misinterpreted his head shape! It is upside-down! I'm such a dork. It also tilts even less than this!

Second Woody study

Wow! This took... a week and a half longer to finish than I had planned. Seems like everything conspires to get in the way (ranging from no calls/no shows at work, resulting in scrambling for coverage, to huge deadlines sneaking up on me at school). So, I resolved to finish this this weekend. I guess I was technically about an hour and a half late, but I would have made it had my computer not gotten a virus today. Yeesh! If it were up to me this would be my only school, but I guess I need that piece of paper.

So I put everything aside to finish this tonight. It's not really "finished," per se, though, because I want to fix a few things.

Anyway, so here's the clip off of which my study is based. It's from "Solid Ivory," also. I really like this cartoon!

And HERE is my study!

I need to go to bed pronto, though. Tomorrow I need to whip up a research paper for art history, so I may not be around much (if I am, sock me, because I need to get that done).

Without going into too much depth:

The original was not very well constructed. But it was spunky and interesting. It has charm and energy. His eyes aren't in perspective in the original, but the asymmetry is charming. To make it more solid, I chose to make his eyelids asymmetrical over his eyes. I liked embellishing on the brow, but I don't know how well that worked. I think I went with the pupils being way too huge (they shift during the original) and they don't wrap very well. I think I may go over each frame and make the eyes work better. I also think that shading them in was a bad, short-sighted idea because it flattens them out.

The tail doesn't react to the movement as much as I think it should.

Most disappointing, though, is that it doesn't have the same vigor that the original does. Hmm. That's something a little less tangible, less easy to articulate and specifically fix.

More technical, base stuff: It is a pain in the ass to split the scan into two. It also results in some weird seizure flashes when it animates. Next time, work smaller, and I will avoid going lower than what the scanner can take. I will also be sure not to end up going so high that my drawings ever touch the area near the peg holes! What an embarrassing beginner's mistake. Fortunately it should be easy to avoid in the future with better planning.

HOWEVER, the peg strip and animation paper made the process seem LOADS more intuitive and I am already addicted to the way it feels! It's so fun and I can't wait to do more!

Any feedback would be completely appreciated!

More again!

Okay, here's an animated version with the previously missing frame and some adjustments to frames 2 and 14. I saved a 24 fps one (I think that's what it's supposed to be) and a 12 fps version so you can actually see what's going on. The 24 fps looks really frantic.

24 FPS
12 FPS

Does anyone know of a more efficient way of uploading these things? Should I make them into smallish .movs? Upload them to Youtube or Vimeo?

Anyway, thoughts:

• The extreme on the left arm seems to jerk a little. It's preceded by some choppiness of the hand-- like it switches angles too many times in too awkward of ways in a really small amount of time. I see now why the original had sort of soft, bendy hands on those frames.
  
• Some things shift shape/size (the beak, even with perspective and all that tilting taken into consideration, seems to change its proportions)
• I think the jerking comes from when he shifts weight (and consequently the line of action snaps)-- it doesn't flow gracefully at all once he recovers from the step
• The tail feathers have no idea what shape they are. I think it's because of weird inbetweening in the original animation. I was being conservative in terms of following the original because I know I'm new to it. I know part of the shifting is because they're moving back and forth into space away from the viewer, but it doesn't feel as sensible as it should. Should I take more liberties next time? They also shift length but that's my fault.
• Also related to blind fidelity to the original-- the eyelids go down a little. I wasn't sure exactly why-- he doesn't fully blink. They just sort of go down with the step, like they have to catch up with his head when it pulls up. I kind of liked that notion so I stuck with it, but I don't know if I pulled it off. I also thought the pupils shifted around a lot in the original and I wasn't sure what to do with it. Again, should I try to keep it more consistent next time or trust the decisions the original artists made?
  
• I like the feet and far hand most. Making sure I paid attention not to tone down the feet was a decent success. The far hand stays pretty solid.

Either way, an awesome exercise. Doing so many construction drawings one after another really got me into the swing of things. Little weird a-ha moments are more and more frequent. It's like staring at a magic eye and totally getting it for fleeting moments at a time, but not being able to cross my eyes hard enough to get it to stick. Or something.

If I could get a critique, some advice, etc., I'd appreciate it a lot! I think I wanna study another walk before I try making my own.

Quick post before work.

Edit: I must have forgotten to put one of the frames on my flash drive yesterday before I left for work. Woops. I put the missing one in, working on fixing the other problems.



I finally finished drawing all of the frames from the Solid Ivory walk last night.

I think the head bobbing down on frame 2 doesn't look right. There's also some shifting of the hand size. Here's John's post containing the footage I'm studying. The original does look stompy and fast, but I can't help but feel like I missed something.

















(this last frame is just frame 1 repeated)

Busy busy

Preview of my walk cycle studies. I have about 1/3 of the frames done, but I'm revising all of them, too.




I think I'm going to request less hours at work soon. I am not drawing enough. Luckily I'm not scheduled for tonight, so I hope to get some decent work done.

Things I am learning about Woody Woodpecker

Original above

Just something really quick that I started on my lunch break at work last night. I will probably revisit it when I can. Again, this fattening phenomenon. I squished everything and pushed his head-feathers forward way too far. I started the baby but ran out of time.

The eye on the right is completely off the head. I'm wondering if I have a mental deficiency.





John K has been gracious enough to offer me a lot of help recently. He even gave me a specific assignment. I'm flattered and really motivated.

Anyway, to get started on what John wants me to do, I need to study Woody Woodpecker. I've been watching the theatrical shorts. Pausing, rewatching. Studying walk cycles.





I didn't upload all of them because the other frames aren't as well-drawn on my part. I need to get over this timidity thing; I think as I improve it'll take care of itself. I like this third drawing above more than the others. The line of action works.



This one not so much. Hands look stupid because I rushed them too much, even for a quick practice doodle.

I like the character used design here, so I think it's the one I'm going to stick with when I animate him. These are from a walk cycle in "Solid Ivory" (coincidentally John posted it today).

These are just quick, very quick, studies of the parts of a walk cycle. I drew them Monday night. I scanned in all of my studies and put them together but they animated very choppily. I guess it is my first actual flirtation with character animation, though, so I'm not discouraged. I'm just not showing you.

Fun things I've noticed:

- He is a dick and is primarily interested in food and haranguing people. Awesome.

- He looked more interesting with fat legs, but moved more wonderfully when he started to even out a bit but kept a really prominent, pointy beak and somewhat stout stature. I don't like the pinchy-legged Woody of the 50's and onward nearly as much.

- I don't think his head is an oval. It tapers on the bottom, like an upside-down egg... unless I'm not reading it right. I can't seem to get head construction under control as much as I'd like.

- I really like the openings to the cartoons where Woody pops in, says "Guess who?", laughs, and immediately there's a cut to Walter Lantz' name. When it fades it's just not as snappy.


This is a (sort of large-- which is why it is a bad photo instead of a scan, sorry) sketch for what will be something for my landscape drawing class. I am figuring out the colors first, but will paint it soon.