heya, it's ari. thanks for dropping by, even if it's obligatorily for a comment. i don't mind; a contributor is a contributor, regardless of intention.
the last week or two consisted of the wild beginnings of 3d animation in maya, also known as "falling asleep during demos; the sleep-in-ing". i have a firm belief that turning the lights off doesn't help. didn't licata herself along with the safety manual suggest keeping lights on when working with screens to avoid straining your eyes? do we avoid safety precautions more than we should here? along with the occasional backward-chair-sit and pencil fights between dwonnathan and me, i don't see why turning the lights off is a good idea. i honest-to-god thought the helmet tutorial was fairly simple but i didn't know what i was in for with what was to come. dumb egg faces and apples and imaginary lines created from extruding more than needed. what is this, homestuck? are we going to be extruding cruxite dowels to create the ultimate blue apple artifact to enter the medium? will a countdown initiate before our eyes forcing us to toss our nanna's ashes into a ghostly kernelsprite along with whatever crap you've got on hand, perchance similar to a jester plush? although my rambling intensifies, my points remain. may the darkness of the demos have mercy on my spirit in the few coming weeks.
i'd love learning how to at least model our characters, even if we can't do anything aside from that due to brevity and time. maya has proven to be the most disengaging platform thus far, but i can manage for the class competition, whatever it is. let us pray i'm not sacrificed to any gods in the process. it's likely i'm overexaggerating here.
some things that made me happy during the week; getting a chance to bond more with my teachers through a quid-pro-quo situation relating to art along with the upcoming auditions for my school's production of "grease!" i've come to terms with the fact that i'd have to play a male role to get a lead or secondary, and that's okay. transitioning takes time and i have to trust in myself that i'll become an alto given the due time. i've also gotten into "hamilton" more and i'm enamored by the story and characters! the soundtrack is godly and i have lin manuel miranda to thank for the glorious ear-gold. i was also informed recently that i'd be getting actual chest molds to help my transition, along with my parents and me starting the search for an endocrinologist, which made me quite the happy fellow. my mom also informed me of how some of her coworkers saw me as "her daughter" when shown our family's christmas cards. i'm glad that the shreds of femininity i have shone bright. hopefully, they'll be more prominent in the upcoming years in both my physicality and character.
some things that frustrated me were the ramifications of my late-night endeavors. my mom explained that since i go into rem sleep after 40 minutes, my body takes a loooooong time to wake up, persay. i usually get cranky getting woken up after an hour, but the same circumstance after pulling a hefty all-nighter was disastrous. imagine a 16 year old ball of rage trying to reason with their parents to let them rest. once i got into my room it was game over, y'all.
thanks for coming back, i appreciate you <3
the link of interest this week is about the development of kingdom hearts iii and leaks from the community. someone got a hold of a physical copy illegally and distributed them, and now nomura responds asking that you stray from spoilers and remain on watch. some people just can't wait a month and a half, huh?
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Blogscape Smackdown; Secondary Action!
After hours of useless procrastination and expert level time-wasting, I return at the latest possible time to give you the low-down for the next principle of animation! As always, these principles are designed to aid you in the journey to better work, and this one is no joke. Secondary action is the hot tea of today, so strap in and enjoy!
Kevin Koch, the writer of the reference article, says that if there are any one of the principles to hone in on, it's this one. Koch states "good secondary action energizes your shots and marks the difference between being a competent animator and an entertaining visual storyteller." The level of character that including this can add to your animation is very telling. By Koch's definition, secondary animation is a movement dependent on a primary action. This means principles of drag and follow-through are used alongside it. Now we can start to cohesively piece together why these 12 need to work harmoniously to produce good results. Adding to his original claim, Koch delves into the intricacies of this. Secondary action isn't just a second motion following a first, it harnesses the ability to be something different all together. For example, take the scene of an artist sketching using a pencil. Anything aside from their eyes on the paper with their arm moving the pencil is a secondary action. This can range from them shaking their arm from fatigue, looking around quickly for spectators, mumbling to themself while nibbling on the pencil's end, anything is possible with the grasp of secondary action.
An important little note to keep in mind is that the main action can't and shouldn't be overcast by anything else. Having a drunk character stumbling around is the main action, while the swinging of their arm holding a wine glass, for instance, paired with a crazy few expressions ties in as a few secondary actions. Examples from past students/mentors is presented to showcase how little things such as moving a pair of chopsticks, a teacup, or a wine glass can influence the way your character is viewed in the scene according to the context provided. An easy way to help you notice where to adjust your work is to play the animation with no sound. If it works fluidly and you can gauge the shot, it's a great fit!
My opinions on this one in particular are of course going to be positive. I love how much you can do with secondary action in animation and the amount of livelihood and character you can develop here! This principle offers expansive worlds of creative flow and I hope you can use it to your advantage.
Kevin Koch does a masterful job at explaining the topic, and left me with no stone left unturned on the subject. This was one of the few so far I actually enjoyed picking apart. He avoids using complicated terminology and provides a myriad of simple details that crescendo into the climax of the article and let it down easily. Thanks, Kevin.
Kevin Koch, the writer of the reference article, says that if there are any one of the principles to hone in on, it's this one. Koch states "good secondary action energizes your shots and marks the difference between being a competent animator and an entertaining visual storyteller." The level of character that including this can add to your animation is very telling. By Koch's definition, secondary animation is a movement dependent on a primary action. This means principles of drag and follow-through are used alongside it. Now we can start to cohesively piece together why these 12 need to work harmoniously to produce good results. Adding to his original claim, Koch delves into the intricacies of this. Secondary action isn't just a second motion following a first, it harnesses the ability to be something different all together. For example, take the scene of an artist sketching using a pencil. Anything aside from their eyes on the paper with their arm moving the pencil is a secondary action. This can range from them shaking their arm from fatigue, looking around quickly for spectators, mumbling to themself while nibbling on the pencil's end, anything is possible with the grasp of secondary action.
An important little note to keep in mind is that the main action can't and shouldn't be overcast by anything else. Having a drunk character stumbling around is the main action, while the swinging of their arm holding a wine glass, for instance, paired with a crazy few expressions ties in as a few secondary actions. Examples from past students/mentors is presented to showcase how little things such as moving a pair of chopsticks, a teacup, or a wine glass can influence the way your character is viewed in the scene according to the context provided. An easy way to help you notice where to adjust your work is to play the animation with no sound. If it works fluidly and you can gauge the shot, it's a great fit!
My opinions on this one in particular are of course going to be positive. I love how much you can do with secondary action in animation and the amount of livelihood and character you can develop here! This principle offers expansive worlds of creative flow and I hope you can use it to your advantage.
Kevin Koch does a masterful job at explaining the topic, and left me with no stone left unturned on the subject. This was one of the few so far I actually enjoyed picking apart. He avoids using complicated terminology and provides a myriad of simple details that crescendo into the climax of the article and let it down easily. Thanks, Kevin.
Sunday, December 2, 2018
sleepy kid tells u abt their week
The last week was masked as a boring trash can fire, but sneakily morphed into a raging inferno of interest. Recently, I got into the hobby of Perler Beads, which are beads that you can iron to fuse together into a single solid form. They've proven to rule my life in recent time.
The perler bead conundrum comes from a rampant need to expand my horizons and I guess my introduction to pixel art led me to naturally stray to these hot circles of stress. I mistakenly got the 22000 BUCKET of TINY BEADS and now that I know how tough they are to use when they aren't sorted, I regret setting myself up for disaster. The finished projects aren't bad, but they cause havoc on my eyes and arm due to having to sort through the colorful mess presented before me. Picking individual beads one at a time and placing them on a pegboard is only part of the process. Breaking down the pixel art into a chart to use for pegging is the initial and most boring step in the process. The end result is great, though, especially since they're versatile enough to make 3d forms, keychains, boxes and more.
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Aside from my tangent rant on beads, the class has reminded me of 3d form in math from 2nd grade, counting cubes and such. We worked on our 11-second club animations, and I fear for a certain clown's completion. I love how collectively as a class we get exponentially more hard-working until it's too late to get the time you need and we end up in a spot where we only did half a whole scene in a week. That's okay too. We all make mistakes and we learn from them. Good luck tomorrow, everyone.
I'm semi-excited for Maya tutorials, especially since I will hopefully be able to make a T-pose of my characters. Haha, right? Funny meme? I was wondering what it'd be like ever since I saw the 2016 class make memes of the squirrel T-pose (thanks, Maddox) and comment on how they "made memes illegal in Licata's class."
I wonder.
Frustrations blossomed solely from how I spent my weekend- sleeping, lazing around and tossing beads on pegs, slowly losing my mind every longing instant, but then i slept and now i'm okay
are we truly ever okay?
is safety just a construct designed to make you vulnerable?
...
The nice things of the weeks past come from my bettering attitude, the perler bead payoff and also the love of my friends. Yea, this means you too. Thanks for being there for me, even if we don't talk in class much. I appreciate it. <3
are we truly ever okay?
is safety just a construct designed to make you vulnerable?
...
The nice things of the weeks past come from my bettering attitude, the perler bead payoff and also the love of my friends. Yea, this means you too. Thanks for being there for me, even if we don't talk in class much. I appreciate it. <3
Tick-Tock-Timing! (BSSD)
Slow in and slow out is paramount to any animation, and in this analysis of Kevin Koch's take on this subject, we'll be discussing this principle of animation and the effects it has on your work. The definitions of this principle vary, but the common meaning is taken as the effect in which when an action takes place the movement needs to gradually increase until it's up to speed, and then slow down upon reaching the climax action. Having no SI+SO in an animation leaves it mechanically unstable, so try adding some support in there!
Koch explains how SI+SO works in correlation to the real world and its properties, revealing that
"objects accelerate when they start to move and therefore they needed more drawings there." This became known as "Slow in." The gradual increase in speed up to the top velocity indicates the further along the action you go, the fewer frames you'll need to succeed. The opposite happens when an action is ending. The subject loses energy and slows down. There need to be more frames towards the end; hereby dubbed "slow out." Koch then shows a few timeline examples of frame spacing that can be used to demonstrate this process. The more inbetweens there are, the more gradual the animation will appear.
The concept of Physics is easily applied here, with the 4 main components being "Position: where something is in space Translation: movement from one position to another Velocity: the rate of change of position over time (speed with directional information) and Acceleration: the rate of change of velocity over time" Koch explains why early stop-motion looks so jittery by revealing how they worked with Straight Ahead animation instead of the more reliable Pose-to-Pose. The animators had no way to monitor their actions and spacing throughout the animation, leading to spacial and timing errors. Use these pieces to your advantage to study points to avoid in your work.
The points provided here apply to any part of the body, and applying these principles to your work takes a bit of time in the beginning. You won't begin to notice much of a problem here until far along in your animation, and that's okay. The implementation of this into the real world has its effects and reasons- some of them being to build force, to provide safety for your limbs while swinging them, and to show power in your work. If someone were to punch, without SI+SO, they'd be full force on the dot, sending all gravity laws into wack, possibly breaking their arm and whatever is in its way. Kind of reminds me of Deku from BHNA. These laws are applied in both real life and animation to provide safety and also direction in your work.
My personal opinions on this are as usual; they're imperative to the survival of both your animation and your own being. Imagine a world where any forces can just pop outta nowhere and knock your socks off and then the force instantly stops. It seems like something the Flash can pull off but not without repercussions. Koch's analysis was very informative and I thank him for providing us with this information.
Koch explains how SI+SO works in correlation to the real world and its properties, revealing that
"objects accelerate when they start to move and therefore they needed more drawings there." This became known as "Slow in." The gradual increase in speed up to the top velocity indicates the further along the action you go, the fewer frames you'll need to succeed. The opposite happens when an action is ending. The subject loses energy and slows down. There need to be more frames towards the end; hereby dubbed "slow out." Koch then shows a few timeline examples of frame spacing that can be used to demonstrate this process. The more inbetweens there are, the more gradual the animation will appear.
The concept of Physics is easily applied here, with the 4 main components being "Position: where something is in space Translation: movement from one position to another Velocity: the rate of change of position over time (speed with directional information) and Acceleration: the rate of change of velocity over time" Koch explains why early stop-motion looks so jittery by revealing how they worked with Straight Ahead animation instead of the more reliable Pose-to-Pose. The animators had no way to monitor their actions and spacing throughout the animation, leading to spacial and timing errors. Use these pieces to your advantage to study points to avoid in your work.
The points provided here apply to any part of the body, and applying these principles to your work takes a bit of time in the beginning. You won't begin to notice much of a problem here until far along in your animation, and that's okay. The implementation of this into the real world has its effects and reasons- some of them being to build force, to provide safety for your limbs while swinging them, and to show power in your work. If someone were to punch, without SI+SO, they'd be full force on the dot, sending all gravity laws into wack, possibly breaking their arm and whatever is in its way. Kind of reminds me of Deku from BHNA. These laws are applied in both real life and animation to provide safety and also direction in your work.
My personal opinions on this are as usual; they're imperative to the survival of both your animation and your own being. Imagine a world where any forces can just pop outta nowhere and knock your socks off and then the force instantly stops. It seems like something the Flash can pull off but not without repercussions. Koch's analysis was very informative and I thank him for providing us with this information.
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