This video below shows all the animation exercises I handed in for this module. The first three parts are the animation assignments we had to complete (push in maya, lip sync in flash and pull in stop motion) and the last part are some extras I did myself.
For the stop motion, for my first effort I started drawing some stick figures to work out the different positions. Or actually, I tied a scarf around a tube and pulled it, then tried to translate that pose on a simple test puppet armature that was laying around, and then drew from that. I annotated it with everything specific I noticed to clarify the action in the drawings. Actually, after I animated this I was doubting if it was right. Because it seemed like the puppet was using more weight and therefore applying more force while he is leaning backwards, while he has more success in pulling the rock now when he bends forwards. It does look right, and it doesn't at the same time. I'm not sure about it.
For my second pull I used video reference, or I started using the reference of where I filmed my housemate pulling a box. (see video on bottom of this page) Or at least, I started using this reference, first quite closely, looking at which leg went first, how he moved his hand over the rope reaching for better grip, etc. However, I also built in some elements I had not referenced. For example the rope movement (I looked at the original rope movement, but it was a much thinner and lighter type of rope, and the exact poses and actions of my character also turned out to be a bit different.) Actually from the part where the character starts to lean backwards a lot I entirely deviated from the original footage, and mainly improvised or worked out some little things by acting it out at that moment. I also didnt really have reference for the rope falling down so I tried to imagine and predict how the rope would behave. It does not look entirely right to me, I think it should have collapsed quicker. The second throw works better for me though. I can see that I used less reference for the last part, as I saw afterwards that the character is for how unbalanced he was, finding his balance to quickly when he gets back upwards again, and the animation is a little jerky here.
The last pull effort I used another bit of video reference, where I filmed myself. I wanted to try a different kind of action for the pull. Now I just see it was not the exact footage that is shown in the video below. I had a short fragment where I was pulling, and then changed position, swinging my head around (swinging my hair out of the way, which this puppet obviously does not have). I am quite happy with the poses and the weight, only I think the rope is moving too much at the start. It seems to be a living thing! At the end it gets better.
For the lip sync I first made up the dialogue of the characters. As you can see in my initial idea some of the phrases were a little bit different. When recording I tried some different things and choose what I thought worked best. I drew a very rough storyboard to get an idea of the composition of the different shots I had in mind. I used these quite exact apart from the one before the last one. I sketched some ideas for mouth shapes, but later mostly worked these out along the way in flash. This seemed to be quite an easy process in flash, because you can import the audio and make symbols which you later can copy. I struggled mainly with getting the audio in sync at the separate symbol layers. And well, with drawing with a drawing pad and the limitations in animation in flash using symbols and motion paths. I did not really enjoy working in flash...
Because I did not really like flash but do like stop motion a lot and know I want to continue in this, I started an effort for a lip sync in stop motion as well. I made some very simple plasticine figures without any armature and made plasticine replacement mouths. Because you have to plan things out a lot more for stop motion the preparation for this took me quite a bit longer. (the characters are booklings, inspired from a book I love 'city of the dreaming books' and have as a life task to memorize all the work of a certain writer. So these characters are citating Edgar Allan Poe and Lewis Carroll, in the book it would have been non existing writers living in that same fantasy world, but I used existing writers. Quite ambitious maybe for my first stop motion lip sync...) I therefore didn't finish this extra exercise before the hand in. I hope to continue with it soon. The first results of the line 'oh Lewis, hear this!' are in the video on top of this page.