Animation Test- Old Man

I made an animation test of the old man character. Here it is...

I've tried to produce three different walks for the old man. The idea is that, as he gets further from the city and closer to the hills, the old man will become more agile and find a bit of a new lease in life. So the mechanics of the three walks are actually different from each other.

• In the first, excruciatingly slow, walk the man essentially has three legs. He takes a step with the right, a step with the left and then a step with the cane. He needs the cane for support during both of his steps making for slow going! (I think it may actually prove to be too slow when applied in the actual animation).   
• In the second he has become able to link together a continuous walk cycle (not the stop start technique he used to use). He only needs his cane to support the step with his left leg (that's the knee that has always given him jip since he came off his trials bike in the woods when he was a teenager... oh no wait that's me!.. maybe it's autobiographical).
• By the third walk he's really feeling good! He doesn't even need the cane anymore but is enjoying swinging it about anyway. He's actually only planting the cane every second cycle of steps now. The fact that we are going to see the old man get to this state, in which he doesn't actually need the cane, hopefully means that we'll find it easier to understand when he eventually forgets it and walks off without it after finding the antler. 

I also made this mock up of the scene in which the three walks would be shown, while he is making his way through the arable farmland between the town and the hills. The three 'panels' would play simultaneously although appear one by one from top to bottom. They're also all supposed to have crops in them like the middle panel (although different styles of crops to highlight his progression) and the test is not indicative of the final colour.

It's a pity the quality of video goes down the drain as soon as you upload to blogger. You can't even make out that the action takes place within three seperate framed 'panels' in the second video... you'll just have to imagine it!
I've also tried to make the quality of line seem hand drawn even though it was made digitally and the lines of the character are actually vector based. But there's no hope of scrutinising that in these vids! Oh well.
Another also- spot the wacky first step taken in the first walk! Not intentional.

Update- Hart's Desire Comic etc

I have not posted in a while so I thought I better do some updating! (I've been writing my essay and being really productive in other ways... honest).
So what have I been doing?

I finished a colour version of my Hart's Desire comic and made a prototype. Which was exciting. There's still a pesky page showing a close up of the antler that I think I want to redraft.

I finally made an animatic which was the first step away from being consumed by this comic and actually getting on with the animation. I actually found that, having produced the comic, I was able to fairly directly translate its narrative and imagery into a coherent and readable animatic. I wasn't sure how much I would be able to do that but I'm pleased that I found I could because part of the comic's raison d'être was to inform the composition of the animation: to liberate the way in which I was going to tell this story out with the confines of a 16:9 aspect ratio. This is not to say that I have simply 'cut and pasted' the comic book panels into a timed movie file (well... with some panels I basically did). I found that I had to add bits and cut bits that had been present in the comic for the pacing and narrative of the animatic to satisfy and, more importantly, be understood. One of the problems with an animated film that does not exist in the reading of a comic is that you're locked on a "treadmill of the now" as Scott McCloud, author of 'Understanding Comics', describes it (in an interview you can watch by clicking here). As the audience has no control over the pacing, it's up to me to decide how much information I need to give them and, on a really basic level, simply how long they need to be looking at something to understand what I'm trying to tell them. It's something that I worry about because I find it difficult to detach myself from the role of creator in order to forget that I know what's going on and check that what is being played out in front of me does indeed make sense. It's far less of a worry when making a comic because, as McCloud says, when you read a comic you can “rise above that landscape of time and you're looking at past present and future all around you in these different moments spread out on the paper”. Anyway, Will thought that the animatic was good and he's a BAFTA winner so it must be OK! (haha). 

I've submitted Hart's Desire to the Edinburgh International Film Festival, my first ever film fest submission! So fingers crossed.

Oh!... I drew a pheasant.