Most of my inspiration comes from playing games - and most of the time, these games include some zombies or mutants or just absolutely ridiculously crazy characters. While I was trying to figure out just HOW a mutant like mine is supposed to walk (Troy had said, "draw from life!", but this is actually impossible in my case), I came across this video one just another night of searching the web for info on awesome upcoming games.
This video is from the upcoming game "Dante's Inferno," a game based on Dante Alighieri's famous Italian masterpiece "The Divine Comedy." I could probably ramble on and on about why this game is going to be AWESOME, but thats not really the point of this blog, is it?
Aaanyway, as I was saying before - I was kind of having trouble trying to figure out how a mutant, especially my mutant should walk... but then I stumbled across this video and I got some inspiration!!
When the character jumps off the massive fiery demon's back and has to battle Baphomet-like demons and these pale, naked hunched guys. You can especially see a few good examples of how these naked hunched guys walk in the last minute of the video:
I especially like the way that these characters seem to shuffle along quite slowly. However, I think that I'd still prefer to have one of his legs bigger/thicker than the other one - so that this leg shuffles along and the other, more normal one has to move faster in order to keep up. I think this will make the walk-cycle look all the more painful, and then the reaction of the audience will grow.
Also, I want to make his spine bend noticeably with his movement to further enforce the fact that he is having trouble walking and that it is very painful for him. The zombie-like characters in the Dante's Inferno clip don't seem to have a lot of movement happening in their spines when they walk.
Other than that video, there wasn't much else I could find to help me with this project, apart from a few really nice pieces of work on youtube:
This one shows really nicely how one leg larger than the other one can work in terms of it shuffling limply along and the other leg having to work harder and faster to keep the character from falling over. However, I will probably just make the 'limp' leg fatter so that it can still somewhat walk, just not very well!
I really like this piece of work. The zombie also has a limp leg, but the same deal as above -
I'd rather just have one of my character's legs fatter than the other one. Also, There needs to be
a lot more movement in the spine. I'm thinking also that my character's arms shouldn't move as
much as the zombie in this video, because it'll make the walk-cycle seem too corny. I'd rather
my character seem depressed and in pain and show that in his rather limited amount of movement.
I decided that since we don't have that long to do this project, and I think I've set my goal way too
high and possibly out of reach, I should start playing around with my character and the way he
should walk.
I found and used this as a guide for the basic steps in a walk-cycle. I figured that if I could make my
character walk in a very normal and generic way, then it would at least be a good start and I could
spend the rest of the time trying to figure out how to make him look as though he is in pain and
having trouble moving along at a reasonable pace. I also think that this is when I can really try to
emphasize the shift in his weight, which should be made quite obvious to the viewer as this shift
would be rather dramatic with the amount of weight on his back, his posture and his busted leg.
This image was found on: http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml/
FLASH!!!
I have never ever ever ever used flash before in my life, and I am very very very nervous about having to do it now for such an important assignment. Despite being shown for a few lessons how to make a timeline, how to make keyframes, how to do classic tweens, I found it very hard to absorb this information and use it. I feel like I am constantly asking for help for the seemingly simplest things... Flash has really put me outside my comfort and confident zone!
With the last project (Character Design), Suren had told us to draw our characters in Flash, converting each part of the body into a new symbol in order to make this animation stage easier. However, Troy said that he didn't mind people using a program they're more comfortable with, such as Photoshop or Illustrator. I decided to stay in my comfort zone for the time being and use Photoshop. Suren had said that we might not be able to use these files for the animation and that we might have to redraw them in Flash for project 4.
Stupidly, I had decided to still draw my character in Photoshop. Aaand now, with all the stress already on us, and all this work to still start doing, I have to redraw my character in Flash!!!! I think that this is the worst program I've ever used for drawing... none of the tools work the way I'd expect them to, and they seemed to have a mind of their own at times, turning certain lines into boxes and making each stroke separate from the overall object... ARGH, it is so painful!!! Hopefully this means that some of MY pain will be shown in the walk-cycle!
Anyway, having had trouble redrawing my character, I decided to stop for the moment in trying to make him somewhat resemble my character from the previous project, and just draw all his limbs, convert them all to symbols and to use class time for trying to animate rather than to redraw. I figured that if there was time left over after I had animated him, then I'd spend that time redrawing him. Suren told us to draw the character in a star jump-like pose, but I don't really know why, when I'm going to have my character walking in a side-on position, but he IS the animator, so I just did what he told me. Here is a screenshot from that stage:
I think I'll definitely need to at least redraw the head, chest and stomach now to be able to put the character in a side-on position for the walk-cycle. The rest of the limbs I can maybe skew a bit to make them have a side-on appearance.
Before I tried to somehow put the character into the side-on position that is required for me to make him walk, I decided to just quickly to a mock-up in Flash using different coloured circles as each separate, individual body part to see how he would look side-on:
I don't think this turned out too bad, and I definitely feel a lot more confident in now somehow making the character in the image above stand in a side-on position... I'm just completely overwhelmed by the amount of separate limbs/body parts he has!!!
I think that the head in relation to the slouching back works really well, and maybe I can have it nodding or bobbing slightly with each step to show that he doesn't really have that much control over it or that he is just sore and tired from the effort of walking.
This next image is a screenshot of the character with his head, chest and stomach redrawn, and the rest of his body-parts skewed:
I think that this is a good outcome so far... You get a much more accurate idea of what the character is going to look like when he walks now. Still, I don't really like the way that certain body parts look in their skewed manner, but I'll have to wait and see if I can change this all a bit later on.
I also asked Suren whether there was a way to erase the black lines at the joint where one body part meets another, but he told me to ignore it for now and deal with it later. I tried later on to erase them myself, but for some reason, flash won't let me!!! I just don't get it!
Anyway, I am reasonably happy with this so far - I think the legs need to be a bit more bent though, and that I need to figure out what to do with all those arms!! I think that the back looks really good though!
I also have to make one of the legs fatter than the other. I thought, maybe the leg further from to the audience's view should be the bigger one, as it would take away too much from the other leg's movement if it was placed in front and would block the other leg from view most of the time.
This is an image of what the character looked like when I was getting ready to start animating, or rather, trying to learn how to animate:
You can see that I made his left leg fatter than the right one.
Also, I started him off in pose that seems 'mid-walk' so that I'd at least have a place to start where I can continue to make him seem like his walking... if that makes any sense!! Basically, If I made him stand in a position where he's basically just standing rather motionless, it would be absolutely too hard to know where to go from there!
I decided that I'd make the higher/upper arm on the right side of his body limp, so that it just moves when it is pushed by the other arm which is doing all the work. I thought that this might be a nice effect, but I guess we'll have to wait and see whether it will be successful or not!
The arms on his left side are moving in relation/opposition to the moving arm on the right side of the characters body - but a few paces from each other. One arm is always a little bit behind the other one. I don't know, but I'm guessing that if you had 3 working arms, one of them would be moving at a slightly slower pace and the two 'main' arms would be doing most of the work.
I also drew a line for this trial version to help me keep the feet in basically the right positions.
(
This clip above shows my progress with my animation after about a week's animating. As you can see, it is terribly jittery, and the character walks incredibly fast!!! Sadly, it's a very short clip, but you should get the idea!
I'll have to keep tweening it and find a way to slow him down so that it actually looks like he's having trouble walking!!!
Finally getting somewhere...
After a lot more hard work, I got the character's walk-cycle basically finished, and decided to spend some time making a quick background so that I could get help in class to learn how to loop it and put it all together. Here is the clip of my progress up until the end of that week's class:
As you can see, the character walks a little slower (though not slow enough!!!) and the background moves with him (though maybe out of time). Also, you'll notice that after a couple of steps the character and backgrounds stop moving. I have been considering including a clip somewhere in my walk-cycle where the character stops walking to shoot a laser out of his eyes. I thought, I probably won't have enough time to do this, or the skills, but I should at least know where to begin. I don't know if I'll be able to possibly pull this off though as I still want to redraw my character to make him seem a bit slimier and more similar to last assignment's version of him, and I still have to actually decide on and create my background.
Redrawing the character:
BY FAR, one of the most confusing things I had to face in this project was trying to redraw certain body parts of my character. I would start by double-clicking and therefore entering the particular body part, but sometimes, for some reason, anything i drew or erased would simply vanish when i let go of the mouse...
When I finally figured out how to avoid this problem, I came upon more. It was possibly the most frustrating weekend I've ever had (yes, it took me an entire 2-3 days to redraw my character, and he still doesn't look very good).
I found that when I erased and redrew lines, these would make themselves a different symbol to the rest of the body part, so when it came to wanting to use the paint bucket tool - well this was impossible! I had to manually sit there and draw and colour in every part of my character's body again from scratch.
When this was done, I decided to go back and add some basic rendering (the mid-tone purple I used in my last project) in an effort to make him look a bit more 3D and less clean. Again, this proved to be a most impossible and frustrating task. Each individual line or bit of colour I had drawn had somehow decided to make themselves separate from the rest of the lines and colours that made up that specific body part, so using another colour wasn't as simple as simply painting it on where you want it and there it is and there it stays, it meant entering each of these separate bits (and there were thousands of them!) to change them a little bit.
Maybe I need to read a book or two on how to draw in Flash, because I'm sure that I struggled this much just because of my own lack of knowledge and stupidity, but I still think Flash is a stupid program to draw with.
Furthermore, I had NO idea how to add subtle gradients to the characters, and the more I saw of Flash created works, the more I began to accept that there would be no blending tool or change of opacity levels to help me render this character to look more like he did in the last project, where I'd used Photoshop. I just have to accept and be happy with what I've got, which is a relatively 2D character.
Here is a screenshot of my final character rendering:
I don't think that this is too bad overall, considering the terrible time I had to get it looking anywhere close to this. I am a bit disappointed that he looks to 2D and so different to my character from the last project, but time is running out and my lack of knowledge and skill in using Flash won't permit me to change him much more.
However, looking at other people's work, I think that most of everything I've seen also looks pretty 2D. Perhaps these are just the limitations of using a program such as Flash.
I'm happy with how his limbs look, now that they are redrawn and the black lines I complained about before have been erased.
I'm also very happy especially with how the feet and head look.
Also, notice that I have finally added in the strange 'bones' in the areas behind his knees and from his ankle to his heel. I had previously forgotten to include them, but hopefully I remembered! Now I'll just have to animate them too!
Since the redrawing of my character, as well as his animation is now complete, I have to spend the last 2 days before this assignment is due in drawing his background!!! How stressful!
The Background:
I had been trying to decide between setting my background in the outside, town/desert like landscape where my character lives, perhaps walking past a few bomb shelters - or - inside his headquarters.
This was a difficult decision, as I had thought that placing him into the world I had designed in the first assignment would be wonderful, with several background features moving at different paces to give a sense of background and foreground...
However, sadly, I realised that I only had two days in which to make an entire background, and that this would be basically impossible to achieve - as it was, I'd have to stay up for those two nights till I literally passed out to make any kind of background.
So, after much thinking, I decided that it would be the smartest idea to place my character indoors, therefore making the foreground less essential and the background seem a lot closer and more important to the viewer. I could put him inside and probably get away with not having too many layers - if any - moving at different speeds.
As Murtagh is the leader of the Rebels, I decided that he'd be perfectly at home walking through the hallways which I could cover with elements such as windows, doors, photographs etc which would give the viewer a better idea of what he and his Rebels do and what their world is like from their point of view.
I thought that since the world is only a few years/months/weeks/days etc away from their hypothesised apocalypse, most other aliens would not be on their more rational-thinking sides. Therefore, I thought, his headquarters should be somewhat in ruin to show a lack of government funding for their cause and perhaps also to show that everything in the world is falling apart due to its extreme chaos and destruction.
Anyway, here is a screen shot of my background:
As you can see, hopefully, There are cracks all down the wall to show that the warehouse is falling apart. Also, there are stains on the wall and doors from water/liquid coming in from the outside, which is supposed to make the building seem even more run-down.
The first door is a door leading to a "Rebel's Conference Room" - the location of a lot of planning and discussion about the possible steps that they could take in helping their world.
Next to that door there is a window which shows a portion of the polluted, irradiated and jam-packed landscape of the world they live in.
Next to the window is a group of three photographs to show the Rebel members what their world used to look like as well as the iconic Mayan Temple on their planet. These are meant to contrast strongly with the image of their world in the window. These photos are meant to motivate the Rebels into trying to bring their world back to such a pristine and beautiful state - each photo even has it's own motivational caption:
Top: "Lest we forget"
Bottom left: "They will come for us"
Bottom right: "Preserve the natural"
Next to these photos is a notice board, littered with many notices. It is slightly askew to highlight the fact that the building isn't stable. Maybe this is also supposed to play into the viewer's emotions, to make them feel even more sorry for my character. This is also supposed to show that the building has a business-related purpose.
Next to the notice board is another door with a label reading "Nature Restoration Laboratory." This is one of possibly many labs where the Rebels and Murtagh experiment with erasing pollution, growing plants, cleaning water, restoring resources and other things that involve providing some sort of future for their world if their Mayan Doomsday passes without event. Therefore, it is a pretty important room!
And last of all, next to the door leading to the lab is a strange clock which reads "27." I thought that this would mean that there are only 27 days till the supposed end of their world. This would mean that the world and its inhabitants would be in an extremely chaotic, desperate and terrified state.
Lastly, before I begin to animate my background, I'll just show you a screenshot of my final piece - the character and the background put together at last:
Overall, I am relatively happy with all this progress so far. I sadly completely ran out of time and couldn't do the laser eye scene, but I will try to incorporate that into the next project instead.
I will put up the final animation in a new blog soon.
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