493 Progress

Week 2

 Dragon Ball Fight Scene 2/5/23

This week I spent doing the animatic for my project. I added audio to get timing right and there are still some shots to add. It took a while to get the guides to match  and reference character sheets of the series. After I drew the guides I went to tie down the drawings but the guides I used didn’t match up with the style of the show. So I am re-working the guides and roughly tying down at the same time to get the style pinpointed before I do in-betweens. I received some criticism on some shots where characters are facing too front-on, awkward compositions, and some added shots to keep flow transitioning shots. I think after I roughly tie down these shots I’ll render them cleanly and then worry about in-between the week after this one.

Week 3 

2/12/23

My goal for this week was too fix the beginning shot and the kick shots. I couldn't figure a good angle for the front facing kick, but I found a nice introduction to the beginning. I think during next week my goal is to fix the next shots and start tying down so I have more time to actually animate. I went through a few poses and settled on an arm stretch which then turned into a shot from the back and zoom out in order to fit nicely with with fly in. I think the next problem I'm going to run into is translating these to more crisp drawings, so for that I'll use either clip studio or adobe animate.

 

Week 4 

2/19/23

This week was a tough week since the shot keep getting re-posed. I started by making the first sequence more solid and applying actual anatomy to the rough outlines up to where it was necessary. The parts that take the most time is getting the anatomy and perspectives right since they're anime characters with different proportions. I switched out the head but hard cut into a spin toward the camera and i cant figure out how to compose the shot afterward. I want it to flow with the hand going from right to left diagonally, but  i cant figure it out even with reference that I shot. A big help has been reference from the show.

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/R_OsW0aSyYo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlVtQDVrNns

2:08

It has helped me with transitions and how to sell a punch/kick. I think my goal for next week will be to make the headbutt look more polished and get the transition from the headbutt spin flow into the two consecutive kicks then punches.

Week 6

3/5/23

This week I started to draw the actual characters. I got stuck for so long trying to figure out the anatomy that I restarted and drew Goku with clothes on. For reference I googled character sheets and followed those closely. I split the shots up and will be doing different files for each one as to not get too confused and to have something to show for each week. I plan on of this shot done (as in ready  for the cleaner line art and shadows). I think I'll settle on two tone shading get this shot with all its inbetweens ready and the next almost finished by the next blog post. Unfortunately, i wasted a lot of time going over the anatomy of the back just to cover it up with clothing since I couldn't quickly improvise the the muscle placement and deformations.

Week 7

This week is basically me finally trying to finalize the shots .I think I made a mistake by not making sure everything was done in the rough drafts before finalizing. The hands especially. The timing I thought wouldn't matter since I could just import the frames, but it made me waste a lot more time than I needed. Otherwise I think I'm hitting another stride in so far as the animation coming along. I have guides so I can  draw over them and only focus on making the characters look on-model to the series and less like fan art. I have been worried about what I'm going to do with for a background, but I think the characters are most important. This first video is the rotating-camera-arm-stretch shot and the second is the dash to a headbutt. The third I really want to get down in roughs and focus on the 1st hit and how I will transition to the next hit. But these two first.

Week 10&11

This week and last week I had a few corrections to proportion, but the animation looked choppy. I figured if I added and redrew some more frames that would fix the problem and it didn’t. I figured out that I’ve been animating on three’s this whole time and when I changed the frame back to twos it was going to be so many more frames that not only was I going to have to draw, but evenly space out what I already had across the 40 frames.I decided to go back to threes and now I just need to add one more frame and just do a clean lineart on the rest of them so I can fill them and green screen them to key out in premiere. I also just need to fill the rest of the blank space with a copy and paste then shrink and rotate. It’s not done yet because it wont let me copy and paste across frames for some reason. I’m confident there is a way though I doubt there isn’t.nThe background is already sourced and has been tested the only hiccup is getting a blue here to overlay the video once editing. I also deleted frames since/redrew them since last time since I felt they were lacking volume and consistency.

Week 12

This week I’ve been paint filling and getting the line work down for the second half. The third part has been cut due to time constraints. I put a green background so I can key it out in premiere for the actually background. Referencing the layers did not work So I had to duplicate the layers and then specify them as cels and paint on those ones. I also added more frame ins the second part and should be pretty far along by next week. I still need to shrink his head in one of the frames, but I’m saving that for later just until I get the second part done. I still don’t know if I should add the effects here or if there’s a better way for it. I’ll probably do the auras in the program just so I don’t have to learn a new method or add a new program to the workflow.

Week 14

This week I had 2 big assignments so not much time was put in yet. The first sequence is finished and the big assignments are almost close to their due dates so I will be able to make a lot of progress this time. for some reason the green screen isn't keying out as smooth as last time. I think it was because I exported it from my Ipad so hopefully I can figure that out. I also did some research on anime compositing and I think it will make it way nicer when it's all added in. I also need to re animate the background and render it out so it isn't so choppy and low quality. 

Final Animation

Over the course of these 15 weeks I was able to finish my animation project. I was a little overly ambitious in the beginning leading me to cut the third shot entirely and focus squarely on the first two. MY goals this semester was to try my hand at 2d animation for once. This is technically my first animation that I have done and I wanted to dive head first into what that process might be just from an outsider looking in perspective. My secondary goal was to make this look as good as possible as if it could be compared to official works.

 I think achieved the goal that was most important which was to get my hands on something I haven't done before and break the inexperience barrier to be a beginner. I don't think I reached the goal of making it look as if it were official. I came to realize that there is a reason animators are given two shots at a time for months at a time, while background and coloring are delegated to other people. It gave me perspective and a new found reverence for the effort that is put in to make these type of shows.

I think what worked out for me was that the I had experience in different programs so I was able to delegate different aspects to different programs that I would not be able to do on my own such as backgrounds, and compositing. Although I think it looks out of place I think using Maya to animate the background was a nice workaround rather than drawing the background and figuring out the perspective which I am not good at yet. The compositing is a nice way to make the character fit in to the background which is why I used Premiere to compile and edit everything together. 

What didn't work was the workflow I was developing. I made a very loose animation, which was a good thing, but after that I kept making more and more rough passes and then pushed off fixes for the final drafts. Since I didn't iron those kinks out in the very beginning I ran into problems such as frame rate inconsistencies, ragged drawings due to lack of a proper foundation, and frame additions and subtractions due to the animation feeling rigid. Now I've learned just how important figuring out exactly what you need to do as early as possible is the key to a smoother progression.

If I were to approach this project differently I would have spent more time in the rough stages in terms of effects and movement. This way all I would need to focus on was tracing over my old outlines. Also I would have stuck with a program I was more familiar with. I saw big animators used Clip Studio and thought that's how I achieve that look when in reality I need to focus more on the composition and animation in a place I could approach without a learning curve holding me back. So I would have done it in procreate and did a bunch of animation without worrying about color and more about skill and showing off the principles which would have gave me more experience and more to show. Other wise I'm glad I decided to do it this and now I am not afraid of jumping back in when I have more free time.

My Final Post Slideshow