** My Date With The Robin Hood**

Few weeks ago I went to see Nottingham castle, than my manager find out about it, joking he asked me if I had a date with a Robin Hood? Well I didn’t, but I saw his statue from the distance that was all wrapped up in golden paper-that made him shine. I don't think it suited his stereotype of robbing gold from rich and give it to a poor while looking at his statue all wrapped up in gold it made me feel, that he actually kept all the gold.lol. Anyway it’s enough about Robin let’s go back to exhibition

Nottingham castle, c.1500 (model by P Dixon and D Taylor).

P.S. I haven't put original pictures, as i have difficulties of uploading it into my PC. Apologies.

Nottingham Castle is a 17th Century Ducal mansion built on the site of the original Medieval Castle.

Have to say that apart from spectacular views across the city from the top of the hill I haven’t enjoyed my trip at all. As most of the castles it hosts a museum and gallery and housing collections of various daily usage things. It’s all interesting to see, but I think the poor layout of the museum destroys the feel between the viewer and exhibition. There is no flow of the time line either and a contrast between rooms is to strong. As in one room you can see little spoons and jewelery and you all happy and admiring things than the next room brings you to war and suddenly you have to forget about the beautiful necklace you saw just a min ago and still admiring it into your head and concentrate on war theme. Or like one of the picture galleries you can see all those great paintings and works of great artists and than just in the middle of the galleries room is a set up of 3-4 year old kids drawing that was displayed messy and didn’t have any function in national museum of the history.

So I didn’t even try to go to see the ceramic room as i was scared to see the elephant poising near the big 13th century ceramic pot or something like that. lol. Fortunately I saw one thing that interest me, it was at the beginning of the exhibition, while I still had interest in it.

This magnificent ivory chest set is made from Indian elephant tusk-I hate this idea about killing animal because of art (money), but trying to ignore this fact it is a beautiful and attractive peace of art with it's subtitle details and various patterns."The words for chess in Old Persian and Arabic are chatrang and shatranj respectively — terms derived from chaturanga in Sanskrit, which literally means an army of four divisions ." more info HERE. Apparently this chess set was carved in china in the early 19^th century made specially for sales purpose, that was Europeans. Very expensive and high quality. It was purchased by museum in 1933 from and cost £65 that was a lot of money those days.

The chessman are supported on ball stems.Each ball contains a series of other balls.of ever decreasing size,each enclosed by another.

I do believe it would be possible to develop some ideas to adapt the idea of chess set in animation. It might even be a good exercise try to model one of the chess figure. Good luck with that. lol

>>Computer Animtion<<

Character Animation

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Basic animation principles to make character look more realistic and believable for the audience.

1. Squash and Stretch - defining the hardness and mass of an object by tranforming its shape during an action
2. Timing and Motion - spacing actions to define the weight and size of objects and the personality of characters
3. Anticipation - the preparation for an action
4. Staging - presenting an clear idea
5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action - the termination of an action and establishing its relationship to the next action
6. Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action - The two contrasting approaches to the creation of movement
7. Slow In and Out - the spacing of the in-between frames to achieve subtlety of timing and movement
8. Arcs - the visual path of action for natural movement
9. Exaggeration - Accentuating the essence of an idea via the design and the action
10. Secondary Action - the action of an object resulting from another action
11. Appeal - creating a design or an action that the audience enjoys watching

More information found HERE

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Tricks of Animating Characters with a Computer

KEYFRAMES:

• Work down the hierarchy of the model.
• Create separate keyframes for the different controls at each level of the hierarchy.
• Have a clear idea of the action you want to achieve before you start.
• Plan out the action with thumbnail sketches and plot timing ideas on an exposure sheet.

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WEIGHT & SIZE:

• Think of how you want your character look like, when it is in motion

• Think about timing of the movement of an object as it defines the weight of that object.

• Than animating think of how the object behaves in real life. (ex: Heavy objects move slower than light ones)

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THE THINKING CHARACTER:

• Every action must exist for a reason
• Connect character actions + hes thought process.

Walt Disney said, "In most instances, the driving forces behind the action is the mood, the personality, the attitude of the character—or all three. Therefore, the mind is the pilot. We think of things before the body does them."

To convey the idea that the thoughts of a character are driving its actions, a simple trick is in the anticipation; always lead with the eyes or the head. First you would move:

Eyes (few frames before head)->Head->Body->Main action

• Think first before you do action.

• Understand character's thought process and how long it takes.

The only time that the eyes or head would not lead the action would be when an external force is driving the character’s movements, as opposed to his thought process.

ex:if that character was hit in the back by someone the force of the impact would cause the body to move first, snapping the head back and dragging it behind the main action of the body.

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MOVING HOLDS

• Instead of having every part of the character stop, have some part continue to move slightly in the same direction, like an arm, a head, or even have the whole body.

• Even the slightest movement will keep your character alive.

• The motion should match the design of the character and the world.

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EMOTION

• A character would not do a particular action the same way in two different emotional states.

ex: if a character is happy, the timing of his movements will be faster. Conversely, when sadness is upon the character, the movements will be slower.

• To make a character’s personality seem real to an audience, he must be different than the other characters on the screen.

• Discover the personalities of your characters through contrast of movement.

• No two characters would do the same action in the same way.

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READABILITY OF ACTIONS

• Proper timing.

• Make sure the audience can follow what is happening.
  

The action must not be so fast that the audience cannot read it and understand the meaning of it.

• Make sure only one idea is seen by the audience at a time.

• Each idea or action must be timed and staged in the strongest and simplest way before going on to the next idea or action.
  

"The animator is saying, in effect, "Look at this, now look at this, and now look at this.""

• In most cases, don't stop action completely before starting another action; the second action should overlap the first. This slight overlapping maintains a flow and continuity between whole phrases of actions.

A STORY TRICK

• Time the ideas and actions, so the audience’s understand the story at any point in time.

• Keep the audience guessing about what will happen next in the story.
  
• Time animation to stay either slightly ahead of the audience’s understanding of what’s going on with the story, or slightly behind. It makes the story much more interesting than staying even with the audience.

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ASK WHY

• In every step of the production of your animation, the story, the design, the staging, the animation, the editing, the lighting, the sound, etc., ask yourself why? Why is this here? Does it further the story? Does it support the whole?

• To create successful animation, you must understand why an object moves before you can figure out how it should move.

Character animation isn’t the fact that an object looks like a character or has a face or hands. Character animation is when an object moves like it is alive, when it looks like it is thinking and all of its movements are generated by its own thought process. It is the change of shape that shows that a character is thinking. It is the thinking that gives the illusion of life. It is the life that gives meaning to the expression. As Saint-Exupéry wrote, “It’s not the eyes, but the glance - not the lips, but the smile...”

• Every single movement of your character should be there for a purpose, to support the story and the personality of your character.

>>30 sec animation

Fallowing the breath I had to to 30 sec animation of my character expressing mood,I tried to do it on 3d max, but I lost my patient, as i was doing something wrong and couldn't work out the time line on 3d max, so i thought to myself before i get any help, i just try to make some screen shots and make kind of a story board of possible animation. The idea was, that Peepo is exercising, abit bored, than suddenly he sees something that scares/angry him.

>> Peepo Evolution 07- 08

Instead of writing it all down the process of creating Peepo in 3dmax, (as it's 2 boring) I thought i'll make even more boring movie, of the creation, changes and mistakes I've made.
I've realized it's very important to fallow the original drawing, or you can loose the track very quickly, that's how my 1st result of Peepo was rather scary. Anyway if you watch you shall see it all yourself.

>> Meeting Peepo <<

PEEPO is the live test toy, which in the future should be used for kids as a learning device for foreign languages.

He use his headphones to record all the sounds he hears (including languages, that has been recorder in lab ) and the big head is used as massive memory to storage all the records. Also he can record other peoples voice and play it back by pressing his belly button.

He is a cute looking creature, who appears in the story falling from the sky in the glass ball package. He is very clumpy, cause of his big feet and addictive to sugar.

Stage 1 - CHARACTER STUDY <<

•Thinking about: Mood

•To do: Plan and produce a 30 second animation of one character expressing one of the following states: Anger, Excitement, Desperation or Satisfaction

•Presentation: To evidence your work you will be expected to show:

1. A Story Board: In your journal
2. A written character study: In your journal
3. A 30 second animation [On a CD 720x576 DVAVI 25f/s]

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If you have a chance read this book: Bancroft, Tony.: Creating characters with personality : for film, TV, animation, video games, and graphic novels

It's useful of getting understanding about how to start creating original characters for visual media and what is the main principles of process ( like script, story, scene, etc.,). Also it's not boring has got loads of illustrations, so even if you don't like books I'm sure you will enjoy reading this one.

Though it's much harder to create original character than it looks like, espeacially if you never done it before and skills for the software ( 3d max ) are just as a beginner's.

I had to think about who are my audience ( in my case most probably - kids, maybe some soft adults lol ), about my characters functionality and a what part he plays in the story. Talking about the story. i've tried to write a script, but got only the very beginning and kinda stopped, just lost the inspiration and i'm short of time, hope i can finish it some time...

>>Horror<<

Filmed in the old "Clarence Hotel" basement, that connects to tunnels, which has been used during the war for escaping. That tunnel goes from the castle up to radford road. The filming crew was bore and got tired quickly as of strong lightening ( as it weren't any inside) and air shortness. Killer ( Clive ) was one of the customers at the bar. But I can say his acting was better than mine ( no one gave me a second chance ) lol .. uh-huhuhuuu- i'm soooo scared... anyway was good exercise x