Richard's Thread

[Richard Willimot]

Hello all: started with the thumbnails off the mouse walk cycle. Not very easy trying to stay on model even using reference. I think the closest I got was 5,lots of work to do on this. Really have to watch volumes,especially the head. Any comments on this first attempt would be appreciated.
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy147/pengy300/mouse_thumbnails002.jpg

[Rodney]

Richard,
I believe you are being hard on yourself for no good reason here. He's looks fine!

The suggestion I would make would be to do things (drills?) specifically designed to boost your self confidence in drawing smoother, quicker lines.

In other words, your drawing style (or at least the one represented here) is a lot like mine which is more of of scratching and searching for the right line.

Note: In some cases this can be an awesome style!

Looking at your drawings of the mouse the lines look to be drawn right. They are in the right place but not loose and flowing. So why not move ahead to the next stage and seek a more confident (single) arcing or straight line?

If you haven't reviewed any of Don's drawing videos for awhile it may be worth reviewing them again from time to time. Don is a beast when it comes to confident lines. When he places pencil to paper he draws the line simply, smoothly and (often) lightly. A single solid flowing line is then put in place during the drawing/refinement stage when he returns to that area the next time.

Just about any of Don's videos will demonstrate this confidence with the drawn line but a good place to start a review might be with the following:

Loosen Up (http://www.donbluthanimation.com/tips.php?c=1&t=101)

Note at about 4:20 Don outlines the effect of lines drawn too tightly. Later at about 6:10 he demonstrates (over an example of a loose sketch) how he draws with a confident line. Note how he tells us he could have drawn that line in the 'sketching stage'... skipping that underlying demonstration stuff entirely. If I may be so bold to say it, to me he has provided an important insight into his confidence in drawing lines.

When Don draws he has a unique way of committing to paper a series of smooth, loose and flowing lines. When he does commit its instantaneous and results in a confident line.

Minimum Lines (http://www.donbluthanimation.com/tips.php?c=1&t=99)

Here Don focuses on the lines we are making here that might not be fully understood yet. We are searching for the lines. So in this video he talks about visualizing and emphasizes why we shouldn't tie down or detail lines too quickly. When we do commit we can do it with a minimum of lines.

Hope that makes sense!

Now... I hope in my own animation drawings I can follow my own advice.
I think I can. When I scratch and search to find my lines I know they won't be very animateable.

[Richard Willimot]

Thanks for the advice Rodney,I think you nailed it. Great advice in those videos,Don makes it look sooo easy.

[samuelvictorjones]

I agree you're being too hard on yourself - I think you did a great job, especially for a first attempt. I like your little mouse :) Good job!

As for loosenning up, thats my exact problem. The first time I draw something I'm really stiff, (far worse than your example :) ) but after drawing the same pose a few times, quicker each time, I feel the character rather than getting hung up on getting it perfect, and actually end up with better drawings :)

[lavallelee]

It's a good start, to capture a character takes a lot of practice. Draw, draw draw!

[Richard Willimot]

Thank you for the comments guys I think you're all spot on. I wonder if by the process of drawing the char more and more we don't come to understand them more?

[Rodney]

I wonder if by the process of drawing the char more and more we don't come to understand them more?

I've set aside some time this evening to devote to drawing these characters so I hope to find out myself! :)

My thought is that we tend to retain a lot of information just outside our conscious mind in our muscle memory. Within that space we tend to stop thinking consciously and move and manipulate things around to wherever they are needed.

In a sense we are only restricted by the paths previously created and stored within that space. When we try to create new paths we often return to the conscious mind in our effort to resolve those idiosyncrasies. While using muscle memory we aren't concerned with that... we just connect on that deeper level and go with the feeling... drawing on our experiences already stored in muscle memory.

Of course the more we draw the more we will retain of our experiences drawing within this area reserved for muscle memory. As we combine those reserves with other sensing experiences we tend to leave that space less frequently.

Just a thought... not a creed. ;)

[Don Bluth]

Hello all: started with the thumbnails off the mouse walk cycle. Not very easy trying to stay on model even using reference. I think the closest I got was 5,lots of work to do on this. Really have to watch volumes,especially the head. Any comments on this first attempt would be appreciated.
http://i786.photobucket.com/albums/yy147/pengy300/mouse_thumbnails002.jpg

Hi Richard,
Actually I am quite impressed. Loosen up is good advice. Let me add one thing to that. When you draw, please your own inner eye. You, as the artist, are in charge of what is beautiful and good. Keep pushing until you like what you draw.
Don

[ericaanimation]

Richard,

Good start on your thumb nails for the assignment. I think the poses are good. I too have trouble loosing up when I draw.


Erica

[Gabriel-Carson]

the mouse is harder to draw correctly then he looks. I am having trouble keeping the size relationship with all the body shapes. I think your doing great! maybe Just increase his feet size. poses look nice!

[Richard Willimot]

Hello all, Here is my test of the extremes I added a head turn to mine. I'm a bit confused on the setup for the feet,i have these moving a half inch. Will the inbetweens on ones be a quarter inch move? http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=412 Also does anyone know how to export the mov looped out of flipbook?

[Stewart]

Hey Richard,

I don't think you can export it as a looped sequence in Flipbook, however you can select your sequence in the XSheet and copy and paste it a few times. Then when you go to export, just make sure that the settings start from the 1st frame.
[To select a sequence, click on the first image, then holding down the shift key, click on the last image] Select copy and paste from the menu et voila!

I've just tried it out on my Mac and it works fine.

Also, you probably already know this but you can loop the playback in the quicktime player by pressing the command key and 'L' on the keyboard.

Stu.

[Richard Willimot]

Thanks for that Stu, Here's the version of the "Seth" mouse walk on two's,I added a head turn but it's too fast right now. I've left the hair off this initial version because I wanted to get the main body poses down first. As always any comments would be greatly appreciated. http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=418

[samuelvictorjones]

I like the idea of Seth mouse turning to look at the camera. I've done a similar thing with Stuey, because Don said he's always nervous I envisionned him checking behind himself. I think moving the head this much EVERY loop will be too much and look un-natural, but if he looked to the camera, say, once every three loops, it'd look really cool. I think you did a good job at rotating his head too. I like your test so far - the extremes look slightly angular, so I guess I'd recommend loosening up a bit more again.

A good way to achieve this might be to take the individual frames that you've done, and redraw the same ones over and over again quickly. If this is too hard to do accurately, you could use a lightbox to trace, but again I think practice & speed are the element to loosen up. Its definitely something I need to do also, and thats what I find helps me :) Anyway, good job!

[Richard Willimot]

Thank you Samuel,I'm really trying to loosen up more and capture the feeling of the pose.

[samuelvictorjones]

No worries. Funny what Don said when I pushed him about the head turn, he mentionned perhaps on every third loop repeat we could add a variant. That was what I thought, so glad he confirmed that we could do that rather than outruling a head turn completely. Mine kinda has to turn behind him to show his nervousness, so worried when he initially said to you to take out the head turn :laughing:

[Richard Willimot]

I think I'm gonna stick with just the ordinary walk for now. Until I can get that working right I don't want to get to complicated on myself.lol Are you going to try putting the backwards walk in like Don suggested?

[samuelvictorjones]

I think I'm gonna stick with just the ordinary walk for now. Until I can get that working right I don't want to get to complicated on myself.lol Are you going to try putting the backwards walk in like Don suggested?

I'd like to incorporate that if I can. My first priority is getting the standard walk right, just as you said :D

[Richard Willimot]

Here is my revised walk cycle for the mouse. I must say it was easier to concentrate on what I needed to without all the secondary stuff in the way.http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=423

[Richard Willimot]

Hello all: Having some problems with the pan bg. Any advice or ideas would be appreciated. http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=451

[tk421]

R,

I had the same problem. I think it has to do with the BG being on 1s and the character being on 2s. After I watched mine several times I realized that the BG was moving faster than the mouse. I doubled the # of frames in the BG causing it, in effect, to move 1/2 as fast. When I did that, the timing worked.

Now that was a way I got it to work while trying to figure it out so it may not be the correct thing to do, but it might give you some thought in the right direction.

If you figure out what the problem is, let me know!

Good show on your Frog character today. Really coming along.

[Richard Willimot]

Thanks tk i'll give that a try.

[Richard Willimot]

hello all: not sure if we're still supposed to post here or in the gallery but i'll try here first :) I went back to the drawing board so to speak and redid my pan. I think i figured out how to do it with flipbook now. It looks better now as Don said it was moving too fast before. One problem when the bg loops the wrong foot is up for some reason,not sure why. Any help would be appreciated,I think this is the only problem anyways lol http://www.donbluthanimation.com/videos.php?showvideo=483

[samuelvictorjones]

Hi Richard, nice job - this is working well now. No slipping on the feet, he's walking at the right speed :)

I just saw the arrow pointing the way to Arizona, gave me a chuckle :laughing:

I think what you're asking is why does the background loop but not the walk cycle? Don coverred that breifly before but its a tough one to grasp so I knew it'd confuse most people. Took me a while to get it right too, & invloved a lot of planning when making the background just the right length.

The animation of the walk cycles has been made to loop. (if you have 12, 16 or whatever drawings it'll go back to the first after the last, & will animate without jerking.

The background has also been made to loop, so that the last picture & the first picture are the same. This will also animate without jerking, repeating as many times as is needed.

These facts do not mean that the last frame of the background loop will co-incide with the last frame of the walk cycle. Infact there is only a 1 in however many frames you have chance of that happenning. If it does, you got lucky, well done! ;)

In your case, as with most other people's it doesn't. The solution to this is to loop the background again by copying and pasting, letting the original drawings of the mouse carry on until they get to the last drawing. then start looping the mouse drawings again in sets of 12s, 16s or whatever you're using. KEEP copying and pasting the entire pan animation, and the walk cycles, until the last frame of the mouse walk lines up perfectly twith the end of one of the pans. Only then will the whole thing loop smoothly when ran through a looping media player. You may have to loop the background up to 15 times before a 16 frame animation will match again. Its pretty much trial & error.

The way I counteracted this was with fairly meticlous planning, measuring how far the background would scroll each time, then multiplying this by how many drawings to do each loop, to make sure by the time he got to the "end" of the loop it'd co-incide with the last drawing. only then did I measure the correct length on the piece of paper before drawing it. (I actually did the math so that I could pan the background 3 times in the video file & allow it to loop, as I knew I wanted to add a variation to the loop & Don suggested to do this 1 in 3 times).

To be honest, this calculation is largely un-necessary, in most cases, its probably simpler just to keep copying & pasting till both last frames co-incide. I'm pretty sure that'll work in all, or certainly most, cases.

Of course, all my planning went to pot when don suggested a slow down of the character, as I then mucked it up slightly & mine doesn't loop properly either anymore ;) But the one I submitted on week 4 does :P

[Richard Willimot]

Thanks for the reply Sam, I've been wracking my brain trying to figure it out. I was hoping someone would catch the sign :) There's something else hidden in the bg too.

[samuelvictorjones]

I saw the pencil had writing on it, couldn't make out what it says though? I like the mushrooms, gives me the urge to colour them in red & white for Smurfs or Mario to enjoy :)

[Richard Willimot]

it just says staedtler,nothing too creative I'm afraid ;)

[samuelvictorjones]

AHHhhh lol :laughing: