Week 6: Animals

The last week came to a bit of an abrupt ending for me, had a bit of a cold so didn't get anything finished. The brief was for two animal movements. A fish, and either a bird or a snake. We started off by heading down to the London Aquarium, down by Waterloo. Spent the morning looking at and drawing fish, then headed back to the studio to watch the footage and get to work on animating.

I found this the most difficult of the three animals because there are quite a few different aspects to animating the fish. Firstly the path it takes, then the issue of adding the tail in accordance to the sinusoidal wave of the fish, then there's the addition of the fins and then the head details. A lot to take in.

Week06_2DProject_Animals_Fish_Ones from Karl Lawson on Vimeo.

Week06_2DProject_Animals_Fish_Twos from Karl Lawson on Vimeo.

Week06_2DProject_Animals_Fish_ Path from Karl Lawson on Vimeo.

I spent the best part of 5 days working on the fish but I'm still not convinced by my results so I think I'll have to go back to it a some stage.

Week06_2DProject_Animals_Fish_Draft from Karl Lawson on Vimeo.

I found the bird much more user-friendly. The hardest part in my opinion are the wings, and that's a matter of how you try to match up the feathers. The movement is quite fluid, though I've not attempted to do it banking round a corner, which might be a bit more problematic.

Week06_2DProject_Animals_Bird_Pigeon_Movement Test from Karl Lawson on Vimeo.

Week06_2DProject_Animals_Bird_Pigeon_Draft from Karl Lawson on Vimeo.

We also managed to squeeze in a bit of Flash, where we worked on Nesting Symbols (see below).

Week06_FlashProject_Nesting Symbols_Screwface from Karl Lawson on Vimeo.

I'm feeling Flash growing on my a bit more and I understand it's a time-saver, but I hope I dont' have to become that pragmatic in my approach just yet.

Anyways, I'll keep posting with updates.
Enjoy, and comment please.
Thanks.