Responsive - Cute LoopdeLoop

After making sure the motion for the bird was believable, i then began colouring in the frames. To do this i created a layer underneath the linework and used the magic wand tool to select the area i wanted to apply colour to. Then i coloured the frames on that layer.

I found this process very easy on Photoshop and will definitely be making use of this method on future projects.

Underneath is the coloured animation and the final finished animation. I got some peoples opinions of it before i thought of it as finished. The majority of feedback i got was to add some texture to the colours to give it a greater depth. I did this by adding a fur texture over the colour layer with the colour layer set to multiply. I also added some simple sound to the finished animation because i thought it could use just abit of ambient sound instead of being completely silent.

For next time i would try making the linework thinner because i think it looks fairly messy and amateur with thick linework. I would also maybe add some simple background elements to make it more interesting but not too much to take away from whats happening in the scene.

 

 

Below is my animation on the loopdeloop website for proof of submission:

Responsive - Cute LoopdeLoop

Once i had a good idea of the way i wanted to sequence to play out i began animating on photoshop. I began by drawing out the essential key poses that tell the viewer what the bird is doing, i then worked out some inbetweens for simple transitions between key poses but for the more difficult and fluid transitions i chose to animate straight ahead. Combining pose to pose and straight ahead when animating is a great way to have solid animation but still make it vibrant and exciting. The section i found hardest to animate was when the bird pecks a berry from the branch, i struggled to get the quick sharp pecking motion of the bird right but i eventually got it looking right after altering the timing and exaggerating the motions.

Below is the rough linetest for the animation, i was happy with the movement of the bird but i thought the branch is too static because when the bird pecks at the branch the branch would move. Implementing this in my animation would make it seem alot more natural and believable.

Responsive - Cute LoopdeLoop

Seeing as i have no way of proving i submitted the last months loopdeloop i am going to submit again this month. This month the theme is cute, at first i didnt like this theme very much and had no idea what to do to fit the theme but then i saw a bird pecking berries from a branch with very quick motions and i thought an animation of a bird doing something similar to this could fit the theme well. I began thumb-nailing ideas

 

I blocked in the character design, which i kept simple. I used reference from images of small birds on google images to produce my character design for the bird. I then visualized and played around with some of the concepts for the sequence i had in mind.

Responsive - Breakfast LoopdeLoop

After painting some the simple backgrounds of the toaster and the inside of the toaster i proceeded to draw the frames and then colour the frames, this didn't take too long as i re-used frames quite abit.
I got used to animating different parts of the animation on different layers, i found this a really nice feature.

Below is the finished animation, i submitted it to loopdeloop but it didn't appear on their homepage and i didn't screenshot the submission so i will probably just make another loopdeloop animation another month. Regardless of whether the final result successfully got submitted or not i learnt alot from this animation. I thought the core of the animation such as the story and base animation was good but the cleanup process was not thorough enough and the result just looks messy. Also i feel like the arms aren't clear enough, a few people i sowed the animation to thought they were horns. I do however like some bits alot like the end scene when the toast pops up from the toaster and gets swept away, i like the way the viewer can easily tell the toast is annoyed because of the toasts body language and expression. Although i am entirely pleased with this result at least i know what i have done wrong.

Responsive - Breakfast LoopdeLoop

This is my final storyboard for my breakfast loopdeloop animation, i am confident in my idea because i think it is simple, easy to understand and amusing. I have made sure the animation is fairly short and loops back to the beginning because that was specified in the loopdeloop competition brief.

Responsive - Breakfast LoopdeLoop

For the LoopdeLoop competition theme of 'breakfast' i came up with an idea of a piece of toast relaxing in the toaster until he is left in too long and gets burnt and isn't happy about it. I began by visualizing this idea in my sketchbook by doing some rough drawings of what the animation could look like. I though about doing this animation 2d on Photoshop because I'm not that proficient with Photoshop and this is a good opportunity to work to resolve that.