Animation: Skydiving Toadstool: Body - Update

I've added some more in-betweens, here's a before and after to show some difference.

Before: The test was just 11 frames per second

Now, 24 Frames per second.



There is a version where I added a lot more in betweens but I found it was too slow for this section of the story but it will be the ideal speed and smoothness for the waltz section.

Next I'm going to use photoshop to test the 'handkerchief cap' on top of the hand drawn animation. 

Animation: Skydiving Toadstool: Body

I wanted to see how my skydive turnaround would look on 24's, so for now I've drawn just the body of my toadstool. From this clip I think there needs to be a few more frames in the section where the feet are closest to the camera, I find this too clunky at the moment. Next I'm going to see how the 'Handkerchief' cap would look on him. 

Animation: Problem Solving Tests: Toadstool Cap

Today's crash tester, I've named him Monty.

I'm having problems figuring out how to make my toadstool's cap look like it's skydiving with him, so I've found some materials laying about the house, attached them to Monty, and filmed them in slow motion as they fall. The quality has not turned out as well as I'd hoped, but it's workable.

Figure 01. Monty

Clip 01. A4 Paper

Figure 02. A Disc of Paper


Clip 02. A Disc of Paper

Figure 03. Black Cloth


Clip 03. Black Cloth

Figure 04. Handkerchief


Clip 04. Handkerchief

Figure 05. Standard thickness Plastic Bag Disc

Clip 05. Standard thickness Plastic Bag Disc

Figure 06. Thin Plastic Bag Disc


Clip 06. Thin Plastic Bag Disc

From these tests, I think the best is the Handkerchief. I think it shows the most flow, question is - would it work as a Toadstool Cap?
I can only test it and see :)

Animation: Timing: Fitting the animation into 1 minute

I used a stopwatch and the reference footage wherever I could to work out how long particular moves in my animation might take, it took 3 attempts to fit the sections.

Figure 01 shows I tried to include the title sequence into the minute but found I still had a chunk of my animation that wouldn't fit.

In Figure 02 I took the title sequence out of the equation and shortened the first section of free fall time but I still didn't have the room for the few end sequences.

Finally in figure 03, I managed to fit the animation into the minute but sacrificed 4 seconds of The Blue Danube, so this will need to be revised incase those 4 seconds of music are needed. Overall, to make this animation work cleanly, I might need to add 4 - 10 seconds to the animation (not including the title sequence and end credits), resulting in slightly over 1 minute of animation.

Figure 01                   Figure 02               Figure 03

This is the particular link I used to select the music, the time written in red corresponds to this video

Animation: Skydiving Toadstool Turnaround Test

Since the last post i've re-drawn the figure as my toadstool. 

Figure 01

From thisI thought there wasn't enough wind movement, so I tried some squash and stretch on the cap.

Figure 02

After watching this test it doesn't quite look right, so I will try another way.

Animation: Skydive Turnaround Test

Here is some of the footage from my skydive. I have taken still frames from this footage and drawn over them to make a simple line test. I didn't draw the arms as they are not needed for my animation, so he's just an armless fellow.

This is the cycle of these traced drawings. I have included the horizon line to see what effect this gave.

Figure 01

Here's how this looks animated:

Then I tried the same images, but without the horizon line.

Figure 02

And the animation:

Next I wanted to see how I could loop this footage, so I mapped where the head moved, as shown in figures 03 & 04.

Figure 03                                                                          Figure 04

From here I decided to try smoothing the map out, I did this by drawing a figure of 8 then re-positioning each layer over the new map. This is shown in figures 05 & 06.

Figure 05                                                                          Figure 06

This is how the looped animation looks:

At the moment I think this is looking too smooth for an adrenaline filled free fall, so next I will try these images re-drawn as my toadstool, and the flapping inverted cap might add some more thrill. 

Animation: Thesaurus Results: Ebullient

Ebullient:

Agitated, bouncy, brash, buoyant, chipper, chirpy, effervescent, effusive, elated, excited, exhilarated, exuberant, frothy, gushing, high-spirited, in high spirits, irrepressible, vivacious, zestful, zippy

Effervescent:

Animated, bouncy, brash, bubbly, buoyant, ebullient, excited, exhilarated, exuberant, gleeful, happy, high-spirited, hilarious, in high spirits, irrepressible, jolly, joyous, lively, merry, mirthful, sprightly, vital, zingy

Effusive:

All jaw, big mouthed, demonstrative, ebullient, enthusiastic, expansive, extravagant, exuberant, free-flowing, fulsome, gabby, gushy, lavish, outpouring, overflowing, prolix, talkative, unconstrained, unreserved, unrestrained, verbose, windbag, windy, wordy

Elastic:

Accommodating, adjustable, airy, animated, bouncy, buoyant, complaisant, compliant, ebullient, effervescent, expansive, flexible, gay, high-spirited, lively, recuperative, resilient, souring, spirited, sprightly, supple, variable, vivacious, volatile, yielding

Enthusiastic:

Agog, animated, anxious, ardent, athirst, attracted, avid, bugged, concerned, crazy about, devoted, dying to, eager, earnest, ebullient, exhilarated, exuberant, fanatical, fascinated, fervent, fervid, forceful, gaga, gone on, gung ho, hearty, intent, keen, keyed up, lively, nutty, obsessed, passionate, pleased, rabid, red-hot, rhapsodic, spirited, tantalized, thrilled, titillated, unqualified, vehement, vigorous, wacky, warm, whole hearted, willing, zealous

Explosive:

At the boiling point, bursting, charged, consequential, convulsive, detonating, detonative, ebullient, eruptive, fiery, forceful, frenzied, fulminant, fulminating, hazardous, impetuous, meteoric, overwrought, perilous, raging, rampant, stormy, tense, touchy, ugly, uncontrollable, unstable, vehement, violent, wild

Exuberant:

Animated, ardent, bouncy, brash, buoyant, cheerful, chipper, eager, ebullient, effervescent, elated, excited, exhilarated, feeling one’s oats, frolicsome, gay, high-spirited, lively, passionate, sparkling, spirited, sprightly, vigorous, vivacious, zappy, zestful, zingy, zippy

Hearty:

Affable, animated, ardent, avid, back-slapping, cheerful, cheery, cordial, deep, deep-felt, deepest, devout, eager, earnest, ebullient, effusive, exuberant, frank, friendly, gay, generous, genial, genuine, glad, gushing, heartfelt, honest, impassioned, intense, jolly, jovial, neighborly, passionate, profuse, real, responsive, sincere, true, unfeigned, unreserved, unrestrained, vivacious, warm, warmhearted, wholehearted, zealous




http://thesaurus.com/browse/ebullient

Animation: Figuring out a falling toadstool: Quick Test

I drew a few simple frames to see if I could figure out how to make a mushroom look like it's falling. Now I think I've got the basics covered I can take it further :)

Animation: Figuring out a falling toadstool: Skydive Research

I did some sketches trying to work out how I could make my toadstool look like it's skydiving, for this I used some first hand reference imagery for different stages of the fall.

Figure 03 should give everybody a laugh :)

Figure 01                                      Figure 02

Figure 03                                      Figure 04

Figure 05                      Figure 06

Figure 07                                        Figure 08

As this is an animation where things can just be made up as they go along, in terms of grabbing equipment from the air, this could be useful with some of the landing gear, for example the shute could suddenly appear from the toadstool's back or the cap of the mushroom could suddenly sprout strings and be the parachute, or even a particular move and the cap could puff up and be the parachute. All these things I will be exploring next.

Animation: Animation Research: One Minute Puberty

One of my favourite shorts Phil suggested I re-visit it :)

Animation: Bouncing Toadstools 2

Animation: Bouncing Toadstools

Tonight's experiment : how to make my toadstool look like it's full of beans, using the soft bouncing ball method.

Animation: Character exploration: Stop-motion Toadstool

I've been having some fun with plaster scene again, I wanted to get a feel how I could get a toadstool to feel like a character. It's not in time, and it's simple, but it's just a warm up :P

Music: Fatboy Slim - Weapon of Choice

Animation : Influence Maps : Ebullient

Animation : Influence Maps : Toadstools

Animation : Research: Toadstools

In order to do a successful animation of a toadstool, I need to know about them. 

Figure 01

This is an image of the life cycle of a toadstool, the web page this is from is a study from the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology, The University of Edinburgh;

http://www.biology.ed.ac.uk/research/groups/jdeacon/microbes/basidio.htm

To put it simply, the spores of a toadstool disperse, they fuse, then disperse, then when the conditions are correct, they germinate and there the result of what we commonly know a toadstool to look like, and the cycle repeats. Of course it isn't that simple, but that's all I need to know of that. 

Toadstools and mushrooms are pretty hard to tell apart, some cultures consider whether the specimen is poisonous or not as the deciding factor for it to be a mushroom or toadstool but this is not the case for everybody.

Animation : Research: Existing animations of Toadstools / Mushrooms

I wanted to see what other animated of toadstools / mushrooms are out there, here are some from youtube....