Dance Cheshire, Dance!

Click and enjoy...

 Click on these too

I also did these two little animations to test how I could take what I learned from this part of the module and apply to my other work. These illustrations were done for 'Illustration Friday' and I decided to animated small elements of them as an experiment..

They are a little crude, but they're a good example of ways to further my illustrations...

Disney Animation- How is it done?

Watch this video! Its amazing and really interesting!

I have always wondered just how Disney made the animations back in the early 1900's. Today we can just use Photoshop or something similar to make a little animated sequence in no time as broadcast it to the world on the internet. More and more animated films are being 'chucked' out as if they grow on trees and its remarkable that Disney were doing this, but so long ago, and without the technology we have these days.
I never knew how they actually got the individual frames to move with each other, but it seems on this video that they take stills of each frame then run it through a camera. Much like the process were are doing.
Its to see how they layered up the frames, using a painted background and layering the characters over the top [who were traced and painted by 100's of pretty ladies of course] to create a complete scene. Its really cool and shows just how much work went into the films!

This has given me a great little insight and the processes and ideas will come in handy for sure!

Temperley London Circus Zoetrope

Temperley London Circus Zoetrope from LEGS MEDIA on Vimeo.

I love the looks of this Zoetrope contraption. It seems to work in a different way to normal zoetropes but uses the same principles. I love the vintage style photos used that give it a mystical feel, like the photos are coming to life.
This is something I tried to capture with my Cheshire Cat and hope it turns out the same...

Cheshire Cat Zoetrope Insert

These are photos of my the finished insert of the Cheshire Cat.
I made it by drawing the separate body part of the cat [head, body and tail] then photocopying 15 times.
I then cut out the individual parts [all 45 parts...] and began sticking them on the rectangles of paper that represented one frame on the Zoetrope.
I used little bits of card to raise the pieces slightly so that shadows will occur and highlight the cut-out aspect which I adore. I held the piece up to a light so that I could see through and therefore place the parts on the next frame in the correct place.

I then stuck the individual pieces together to create one lone strip. It was alot easier to do in small segments and Ive tried to make sure that as a long strip insert, it looks clean and professional.  

Overall I really like how it came out, and havent had the chance to test it yet, but it should look great!

Using the little bits of card to raise the head and body will make it slightly 3d and look more like a paper-puppet thing, like they use in Shadow Plays.

Im very pleased. It looks much cleaner and professional than the Llama animation, and the actual illustration is more refined and appealing.

 After testing out the insert in the Zoetrope, It looked quite good but was a little unclear to see because of the way I connected the frames, so that it bunched up in some areas. Also the lighting wasn't quite right so the big areas of white in the animation blended a bit much with the black lines making it hard to see.

However, it did actually work and his head definitely spun around. I decided to scan in individual frames and put them together into a GIF animation to see them at a better quality.

I think its really cool overall, and works well. The slight flickering adds a lovely vintage feel to it which makes the cat look more eerie and magical. 

Making the zoetropes and practice digital ones has really pushed my animation skills that I hadn't really developed much before. I feel animation could be more intune with my personal and professional work in the future and is something to look into further and keep working with. 

R James Healy- 3d Zoetrope

M16.2 3D Zoetrope from R James Healy on Vimeo.

I found this while looking for Zoetrope animations and It is wonderful!
The artist created a dairy style blog, looking at the production of the zoetrope as well as other things related. I really love the feel of 3d zoetropes and the seem much more magical. You get a real sense of something moving and it makes it much more real.
There is another one on the blog showing a bird flying and it looks just as amazing! Id love to create a 3d zoetrope but modeling 15 or so [almost] identical models would be extremely time consuming.
I can just imagine a 3d Chesire Cat spinning his head and such. It would have a very 'Burton' feel to it, and is something to definitely think about in the future.

Anyway, sit back and enjoy the 3d zoetrope!

Final cheshire cat?

After much designing and things, Ive decided to draw the Cheshire Cat doing a handstand, whilst his head spins round and his tail wobbles..

I feel this is something the cat would do and it minimizes the movement slightly by focusing it on certain small elements as apposed to the whole cat moving.
I really love how these little animations turned out, they have a great hand-made feel to it as if they are shadow puppets or something.
The style of them references the original illustrations from Alice in Wonderland, with the pen and ink lines. Im really happy with them and want to replicate this traditionally and make it into an insert for the Zoetrope in the studio.

The blue one was just to see how it may look if I had cut around edges like in my viking comic strips.. to keep the same kind of style going. I like the jagedy-ness of it.

More cheshire cats!

After doing the previous animation tests, I was inspired by some of the .GIFs I collected to make the face swirl as it it were going to disappear.
It was done simple on Photoshop and the outcome is really nice. The second one is better when the face gets smaller as it swirls but I think that this would be quite hard to replicate with traditional mediums.
(Im not sure if I have said this, but I want to make the final thing in a traditional way because I like the slight imperfections that happen.)

I also did another of the rubing out ones, but using a more stlyized way to draw the cat. I drew it more simply so I dont loose detail in the Zoetrope. It also has more of an identity.

Anyway, I still think there is too much going on and I should aim to restrict the movement.

Cheshire Cat inspirations...

Here is a collection of animated .GIFs from various versions of Alice in Wonderland each showing a different way they interpret the Cheshire Cat, particularly the way he might move or appear.

These first few are made from footage of the recent 'Alice in Wonderland' film by Tim Burton. They were all found via google image searches.

This one at the top is rather unsettling.. The cat's head just floating in and smiling with his huge eyes.

I just love the way he spins and his body just materializes on the one above. This would be fantastic to replicate but would be hard maybe with 15 frames.
I also love the look on his face here as he disappears. Its so human.

Here is my favorite animated .GIF, the way the cat swirls and fades into the surroundings it wonderful. This would be fairly easy to do digitally to a drawing of a Cheshire cat face, but using a distortion filter on photoshop.
However would be very time consuming and difficult to do traditionally   

This of course is from the original Disney animation of Alice in Wonderland which at the time would have been created with traditonal mediums much like I would do, but not be used for a Zoetrope.
I like how the striped of the Cheshire cat unwind as he disappears, its a very original idea and probably one of the first times an audience have seen a moving representation of the cat.


Looking at these for reference have been good to get my ideas flowing, and given me a little inspiration for how the cat will looks aswell as how he will move or be animated. 

Cheshire's smile animations

After making my Llama animation insert, I decided to have a little go at something else as I felt it didn't turn out as good as I had imagined. I was watching Tin Burton's 'Alice in Wonderland' and was inspired to make an animation centered around the Cheshire Cat.
It seems almost obvious, trying to capture the magic and mystery of his character with animation. The way he appears and moves around will be fun to play with.
Also when viewed in the Zoetrope, I imagine it will look rather magical. The slight flickering that happens with the device will add a really nice antique effect and echo the time of the Zoetropes creation, when moving images really were magical.

These are some initial ideas, playing around with the cats face and having it disappear and reappear. The first one has his eyes stay there as the face fades and the bottom has his whole face fade.

This is a kind of standard for images of the cheshire cat, the fading face seems to be very recognizable. Looking at the actual way ive drawn the cat, I don't like it. I've taken too much influence from the Tim Burton style [gothic and bit evil] and I really want to create my own version of him and make it really unique.
There is also too much dark colours and detail that would blur in the Zoetrope. 

This one shows the face fading slowly so that eventually it all disappears around his eyes. This is quite nice and works well as just lines.
I don't think it would be as successful with colour, which dosen't really effect much.

I did this one, trying to get a full body of the cat and do the same fading trick. [All i do is to rub out the cat and save every now and then as I go along. This would be easy to do traditional as I would trace over the previous image but draw less of it.]
I like this one alot and I prefer the cuter and plumper way I drew the cat.

I printed off this version and the one above to go in my little Zoetrope and although they were quite small and subsequently a little blurred, the animation worked well, if not a little fast.
I think that making the whole body disappear is a bit much to do in just 15 frames when put into a Zoetrope becuase the animation is way too fast.
Lest rethink what the Chesire Cat will be doing...

Revised Llama animations

Here is the final design for the running llama animation, again using the camel rotoscope as a base. It is a little crude and rough but i like that as it present a fun little edge and makes the llama look funnier, which is what Im going for. [I dont think a running llama could be taken seriously anyway!]

I printed it off small to fit into my homemade zoetrope and it moved rather nicely. Due to it being small though, it was a little hard to see but im hoping that when it is blown up and with cleaner lines it will move more smoothly.

I will replicate this traditionally using the digital form as a template. I think it will turn out quite well.

The one below is an attempt at putting a rider on top of the llama, however it hasn't turned out so well so I dont think I will pursue with the idea as it may distract too much from the motion of the llama.
Plus its takes twice as long to do, and dosen't look as nice.

Mini Zoetrope with running camel insert

Here are some photos of a mini Zoetrope I made to test out the digital animations and see how they worked.
I made it simply, with black card and cut out the slots and made strips along the bottom to keep it rigid.
I attached thread to the outside on the device so it can be held up, spun and viewed. Considering it is a little rustic, it works very well!

 I printed off the camel frames onto paper [each frame was 4cm long and 5cm high] and popped it inside the zoetrope and spun! The animation looked amazing! Much better then the digital version, because it was more blurred and so you didn't notice that some of the lines didn't match up to well and it was a bit wobbly.
It might also have helped that the zoetrope is in a small scale so it will appear more blurred. However for all the blurring, it was still clear was was going on and really looked like a camel running.The actual Zoetrope measures 20cm in diameter and the circumference is 60 cm. The insert was 60x5cm.
This makes my one about a third of the size of the one at the college.

Below is a video of the camel zoetrope, and also one with the 'Viking Portal' animation I made.
The videos are a bit unclear, but it looks much nicer in real life!
The Viking one is much too feint and so it is hard to see the details. It shows how the bolder the design, the better the animation.

 

Camel Rotoscope

 

This is a Camel Rotoscope, made my drawing over Eadweard Muybridge's stills of a camel running. I chose an camel as I felt it was closest to a Llama than a horse would be. 

Its quite rough and jumpy, but I think I captures the leg movement quite well, which was the point of the experiment. 

It is 15 frames long and loops rather well.

This might prove a good base to work ontop of with the Llama animation. I think I may just change it to the Llama running instead of jumping because It may be alot of work otherwise. 

 I then put the original Muybridge frames together to see how the actual camel would have run, and also make it easier to use for rotoscoping in the future. The looping is good, and the motion fluid. Good job Muybridge!

Digital Animation Experiment

 

Here is another little digital animation that I did to practise. It has about 13 frames and shows my little viking character from the comic bit, falling through some portals. The portal idea was from a videogame called 'Portal' in which you can create portals, one blue and one orange, that you can use to walk through.
The idea behind this is that hes made a portal on the floor, then one above him and is so falling for eternity.
It was a little complex in the end becuase I had to have certain parts of him poking out of each portal to look like he is continuoslly falling.
It isnt very smooth, and he jumps to the left at the end, but it was a good little practise. 

Llama animation rough

Its very crude and rough at the moment, but its a good idea of how I want my animation to look like!

Click on the picture to see it moving!

And here is an also very crude Rotoscope of a Llama walking.. Its so difficult to find a good video of llamas walking! Hence there is only 4 frames...

[The llama starts off facing you, then walks to the left..]