Animation 101: week 12: @00491819: Alex Montgomery: Clay ball, bowling ball lens cap fix and squash and stretch remakes.

Description: 

As this would likely be the last time I can get access to the stopmotion suite I set to work on doing some animation remakes and do what would be the last of the ball exercises. Before doing so I set to work on fixing the lens cap bowling ball animation that I did last week as for some reason it wouldn't play so I asked James about this matter and he noted it was possibly due to the file size and that in future I would need to check and see if the video played. Knowing this I did the exercise again following from the bar sheet and reference video from last week and my Maya animation. The issue though was in the lighting of the room as I was in a room that had one light working and I didn't know how to switch on the other lamp as I could see no visible on switch.

 I looked at the AVI film and at first it didn't look like it moved so I tried rendering it in media encoder using the procedure shown to us by Joe in the black board PDF when rendered it seemed to play very well. I set to work on my other animations and after revisiting some of my animations particularly the clay ball squash and stretch I referred to the advice given to my by Joe regarding my first ping pong ball animation and how the animation needed to stay within the frame and after looking at the clay ball it wasn't within the frame and so a remake was required. Fortunately there was an ball of cream coloured plastercine in the room for me to use and so I used it in my animation. Following from last weeks example I crafted a simple bar sheet from the animation and refined it for this piece. Much like before when the piece impacted the ground which was marked on the desk, I squished the ball slightly then when bouncing up it was then rolled up to show the stretch back into a ball when bouncing in an arc. Remembering from the arcs lesson I made sure that when bouncing the arc showed the ball slowing down and when it came to a halt a few small bounces were made at the end of the animation.

Whilst working with the plastercine ball I worked to make the clay ball animation of the ball bounces. Instead of looking for a reference video I decided to try and see if I could video the ball falling and then translate it into an animation. I tested the ball first to see what I would be working with and upon dropping the ball it didn't make a bounce of any kind it simply just dropped and hit the floor. This was possibly due to the ball weight, as I remembered the weight of the ball impacted the bounce.

Using this video I translated this into the animation and it did seem a bit basic and boring without a bounce in the ball. However this was what I was working from for this exercise. This was then saved as an AVI file to be converted later and the animation exercises and remakes that I did for this session were complete and so I saved my work and left.

Animations: Bowling ball lens cap 

Clay/Plastercine ball: 

Squash and stretch 2:

Feelings:

When doing each animation one by one I was feeling nervous as I wasn't sure that this issue of the video not playing could impact my animations that I decide to submit for the project. However my worries faded away when I tested and rendered my film in the encoder and I was relived that the issue had passed away. In terms of the clay ball squash and stretch exercise I was feeling confident that I could refine and improve upon my first attempt and not have it bounce off the screen much like my first attempt. This gave a sense of relief as I figured I wouldn't have to redo the piece again if I got it right. When videoing the reference for the clay ball I was felling surprised as I thought there would be at least one bounce within the ball but there was none at all. This got me nervous as I thought Joe would possibly say that there was a bounce in this. However I realised that this could be due to the weight of the ball so that gave some reassurance. Upon completing my animations I did feel a bit uneasy about my work whether the animations that I selected for submission would be enough to get the suitable grades for this module, but all I could do was hope for the best as I had given it my best work and time.

Evaluation:

Looking back on the experience I would think the good thing was that I did take the time to revisit some of my ball bouncing exercises before deciding on what to submit for this module. One thing that I was pleased with was using my head to first record the ball falling and then with this information translate it into an animation in stopmotion and bar sheet. One thing that I could note as a bad element of the exercise was the lack of bounces in the clay ball but this was due to the amount of plastercine in the ball. Another thing would be the lack of lighting in the room being that I was working with one light intstead of two and had to alter the camera lens for the best possible luminosity and this caused issues with setting up the other animations.

Analysis: 

Looking at the animation of the clay ball bounce I would think that the decision to first record a reference video of the ball to see what I was working with was a good choice to make as I didn't want to get the bouncing position wrong or miss any bounces in the arcing. However one of my judgements regarding the squash and stretch were called into question as looking back I saw that some of the bounces were out of synch and the first bounce seemed a bit too low. In terms of the lens cap animation I followed my first attempt and deciding to render the piece straight after the completion was the best thing to do as that way I would be sure that the animation worked and wouldn't need to re render it again.

Conclusion:

In conclusion on this exercise I would think that I had done the best that I could for these animation and hoped for positive feedback but before deciding on a final piece I would possibly try some of these in Maya before coming to a decision on the final selection for the module. Looking back I would possibly have asked for a second opinion on my animation process to see if I was making the right approach and see what input and feedback that I would be given for the animations. Otherwise I was pleased with the work that I had done and hoped that come the submission day I would get good grades and feedback on my final submissions for this module.

Action Plan:

In the future I would possibly try and seek a second opinion when doing my animations if tutors from the course if they were passing through the room to see what they thought of my current progress and get feedback if needed to further refine the ball bounces in clay or the lens cap.