CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Show us your drawings and animation made with the TVPaint technology here !
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CartoonMonkey
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by CartoonMonkey »

A little run cycle done as practice..
runrunrun.gif
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Paul Fierlinger
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by Paul Fierlinger »

Is this an oversimplification on purpose, Chad? I am asking because this sort of scissor-action isn't what I would necessarily call a run cycle, which should resemble more the action of peddling a bike.
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by CartoonMonkey »

Yes..sort of. For one of the first times I tried following an example by Richard Williams, from his book. But the result does seem weirdly stilted.
Have a better more interesting one around somewhere where I winged it.. and those always turn out better for some reason.
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by Paul Fierlinger »

Cycles are traps, particularly short ones. If you overlook a single pixel dot somewhere, it's going to flash like a red light, once it shows up in the same spot every 4 frames. I stay away from cycles in general but right now I happen to be working on a clip that features a bunch of horse riders so I resorted to cycles.
HORSES CYCLING-01.zip
(1.69 MiB) Downloaded 1386 times
I added non-cycled manes to the horses after I merged their cycles, to hide the cycling effect a bit, and it also helps to have a lot of text to read through so that the viewer won't be concentrated on the action to catch on to the cycling -- and there is plenty to catch on to, even though these are 12 to 24 frame cycles. Another trick I used was to have the riders ride into the scene from behind a sand dune. I have at least one, maybe two more horse riders to add to the group and might keep them clustered which should further hide the cycling.
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by CartoonMonkey »

Very nice! These horses convey a great sense of the weight they are carrying. This animation brings the Muybridge exhibit I saw at the Tate when I was in London to mind.
I have yet to try many four legged walks / runs.. phew!
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

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Muybridge is my survival kit and I have learned over the years one useful rule of thumb, which is that the hind legs walk like a person and the front ones like an ostrich. I have never quite figured out what the rule of the head bobbing would be, except that it seems that anything works out as long as there is a rhythm to it.

BTW, I once had to work on an educational film about insects and had a wonderful advisor from the entomology department of the University of Delaware who explained to me that their gate is a tripod system; they alternatively keep two legs on the ground on one side, and one leg on the other side, while two legs on that side are in the air and moving forward and only one leg in the air on the other side.

And just from my own observation of walking people on the street -- best from a second story window (first story in Europe) I have figured out that in most cases one arm swings far more than the other. This is why I find William's book unhelpful -- he won't tell you that. It is also more fun to learn from personal observations rather than formulaic book descriptions. I learned from a musician friend once that he never stops counting in his head... well, I have my quirk too; I never stop observing locomotions of people and animals; far more than their facial expressions. Have you ever noticed that dogs are always watching us -- they hardly ever turn their heads away -- well, I am always staring at them back, also without even thinking of it. This is what animators turn into after a lifetime of drawing... :mrgreen:
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

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No no, I find myself looking all the time. I think it's essential. I actually do think Williams' book is a bit stuffy and stilted in it's teachings for my style. Also, another quirk I've gotten from studying motion all the time is rather quick reflexes, on a strange subconscious level. If a pen is rolling off the desk, or a receipt floats away on the wind, I often find myself plucking it from the air neatly, as if I can see all the 'frames' in advance.

My wife and I have a cat, who has very dog-like tendencies, and therefore I've taken some old advice you gave me, and I'm working cats into my latest film.
I think people can learn quite a bit from observing the pure way animals see the world, and the various ways they move through it, to be sure.

On Muybridge, one thing I hadn't realized about him, that I learned at the exhibit I saw, is that he was actually a murderer! When his wife Flora fell in love with another man, and she admitted that in fact their son was not his own, he hunted down and shot Mr Harry Larkyns. Muybridge was acquitted, with the jury finding that it was an act of saving his honor. Those were different times! :-)

But what a resource he left us with.
Found my run cycle that I just did on the fly, without taking instruction from any book. Think it's more interesting than the last one, but with these looping cycles..I think they always look better actually moving through a scene, rather than in place.
C
runcyclex.gif
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slowtiger
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by slowtiger »

A cycle in place reveals any weaknesses soon, as every observer is trained to spot the little aberrations from "normal" movement. (Seems to be part of our carnivoric heritage: the predator always spots the weak or ill individuum in the crowd.) A cycle in movement doesn't draw that much attention to detail.

I use cycles a lot, particularly for background characters. It also might be because I'm a more mechanic type of guy, as opposed to, say, a dancer.

Last weekend I did a short film about my vacuum cleaner for a certain competition. If it gets selected, it will be online and I'll post the link. Only 4 cycles and some other stuff with just a few drawings ...
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

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If a pen is rolling off the desk, or a receipt floats away on the wind, I often find myself plucking it from the air neatly, as if I can see all the 'frames' in advance.
Then you see like a dog! Dogs' eyes flicker more rapidly than human sight; they see more images in a second and absolutely no blurring at all and that's why some of them can be so good at catching things in mid air. Apparently, since they see more frames, it is easier for them to gage where a flying object will be further down a trajectory.

Your second cycle is just looser in design but I see little difference in the animation. I think you should concentrate less on having the two stretched out extreme poses matching each other so accurately, which is what creates the scissors effect. In a cycle with so few frames, no two frames should be alike -- yours are. Slowtiggr sees his world as a system of mechanics but he also matches his drawings to that vision of accuracy, so it works because the motion together with the design come out looking quirky. You, on the other hand, are making the unfortunate choice of combining mechanical motion with loose drawings. Try changing that and see if you can bring a looseness to your animation that will match the looseness of your design.

Since you want to spend little time on your design, you should also try to spend less time in calculating and matching your poses. Try as an experiment to not use the light table at all; just draw your poses from mere memory and see what happens. Not that one could make an entire film this way, but an excersize like that might loosen your vision of motion up a bit -- which is what I think you need to do.
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

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I think you're right. I often re-use the animation from one limb to another using a motion I've already drawn once a 2nd time. So I see what you mean about duplicated motion creating that scissor. I'll try some stuff straight ahead, sans light table, and see what I get.

I'm a bit like Slowtiger with my mechanical approach that has suited much of my flash work.. but as I concentrate more and more on fully hand drawn animation, it's tips like these that keep things interesting. Thanks!
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by Paul Fierlinger »

Aren't you both bones proponent guys? :|
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

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I am, in favor of having bones or symbols in any modern animation software.
Sometimes in my work, the bones are necessary to get a job done on time, or sometimes, the style suits the need for bones, symbols, cutouts..etc. Or as a tool to help automate a set of motion, that isn't character based.
It doesn't mean I don't practice hand drawn animation all the time..It's something I enjoy doing, even if the clients can't always afford a 100% hand drawn treatment. I still tend to lean toward hand drawn stuff for my own personal work. (More and more so actually) The way things have gone recently..I've been getting away from Flash / cutout style work, and my last few projects have been fully hand drawn in TVP actually. So it may be that I'm getting faster at drawn animation as I get older and more practiced. In short.. I try bits of everything,
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by slowtiger »

I use bones in AnimeStudio, but that's all. In TVP I prefer the good ol' way of drawing, although I always struggle to maintain length of limbs.

As of CM's cycle: I took the liberty of drawing on top of it, applying some basic "repair" techniques:
run.gif
run.gif (54.5 KiB) Viewed 32119 times
First I changed the vertical position of 6 drawings so that a foot on ground followed a straight line. After that I noticed that the character somewhat levitated higher - that should've been caused by the leg on ground, with the body's highest position when the ground leg is nearly vertical. I changed all other vertical positions so they slowly declined from that point on. After that I stretched the two vertical ground legs, and changed the foot position after that to have just the toe touch ground while the bottom stays at same height as before. Some minor changes in foot rotation to get nicer follow-through, that's it. I didn't change anything on body or arms.

(And that's also an example of my crabby drawing style. I'm just not able to draw a single straight line ...)
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by CartoonMonkey »

Ah very nice! It's cool to see little changes that make a big difference like this. I'll pull this down for study. One of the coolest thing about TVP is the connection to other artists. Something I don't get enough of, working on the computer in my studio.
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Re: CartoonMonkey's Gallery

Post by slowtiger »

Glad you didn't mind my intervention. I remember once in the studio we had some guy who got into a supervising position, so he criticised our animation - but he had a habit of sketching directly into the drawings of others, which was considered very bad attitude by all ... Fortunately there's no danger of that with digital drawings!

When working on my own stuff I often start with a very rough first cycle, then try to gradually clean it. Most of the time I loose the initial effect, so I have to go back and analyse what I've done, or sort out the part which was good (always a very small part). I can experiment endlessly, adding or removing frames, shifting positions ... Usually I keep different body parts on their own layers, which gives me a chance to experiment with delay on some movements, or try different combinations of arm and leg movement.
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