Inspired by a NE Animators meeting last night that focused on sound creation, and some following discussion about bringing bits of animation into other scenes, I cut up some tracing paper and drew this, then put together some sound for it. You might have to turn up the volume for this one. I think the levels are a little low.
Felt inspired to try this after a bike ride. Done with blue ink, white crayon, colored pencil and watercolor pencil. Added water later at home.
While I’m in the process of posting movies, here is a little test shot I did sometime in the summer (?)… part of an excercise where I put together some little puppets as quickly as possible, using materials laying around my shop area, and then animated them in an exploratory way. This is my favorite:
Jar_Leaves_01:
Jar_Leaves_02_white:
2006_11_17
Animation Rough Sketch Notes
Jar Leaves
General Info: Leaves in a glass jar with water, lit from below and from behind. Restricted to spinning action. Tried adding paint, and later spinning wet leaves after the water is emptied.
Jar_Leaves_01:
Animated fall leaves inside a jar with water. Pretty much limited to spinning them around with a stick at different speeds and directions. Pressing them up against the glass to get clearer colors. As the dark leaves are added, I like the feeling of them piling up, moving in multiple layers –not restricted to a flat level. The mixing of fast spinning with stops in between works well.
Jar_Leaves_02_white
Was able to get some beautiful colors at the beginning here, out of the red leaves especially. Added paint to the water to experiment. Surprised by the swirling cloudlets formed by the paint water (white)… similar to smoke. I like the water more when the paint is still dissolving, than when it has all become evenly opaque.
Conclusions:
The leaves have potential, but are beginning to bore me already with their limitations. I think they could work well as backgrounds, or if integrated with other layers or with characters. I’m interested in further exploring methods of under-camera image distortion. Some possibilities: Mirrors, vaseline, shadows, water, gel ripples, colored and frosted translucent layers. Also more experiments with multiplane animation using translucent layers, with liquids, with natural objects.
Would soon like to get back into some character animation, even if mixed with the experimental. I looked at an earlier test with a single hinge, where in the middle, the hinge suddenly has eyes, becomes a character. This kind of thing affects me more than swirling leaves, so I should head back in that direction, but not leave the experimental tests behind yet.
2006_11_16
Animation Rough Sketch Notes
Red Leaves
Update: Before this test, I did some construction creating “Makeshift Multiplane v2.0″ I realized I needed more layers, and had nothing to attach them too, so I found some more wood and attached four verticle posts to hold up some plexiglass layers (yet to be ordered). This is a much more stable structure — could be better, but not as bad as before!
Red_Leaves_01:
Layers, from top to bottom:
- camera
- small thick plexi, wired to camera, supporting up close dark leaves
- gel ripples on transparency, rotating
- several free-floating dried leaves
- Chinese maple leaves (mostly), inserted into yellow folder, rotating
- backlight
Observations:
Had some difficulty with the red colors, because my image feed is from a video camera. The brilliant true reds showed up as brownish, but with some adjustments, I was able to get some bright colors out of the leaves –putting them close to the backlight, and surrounding them with yellow changed the red to an orange-red.
The movement in this clip is more frantic than the Water_Leaves test, looks harsher. I noticed that the gel ripples are clearer here and less distorted than in Water_Leaves, for a few reasons: Here the ripples layer is on top of the leaves and on top of the yellow transparency, instead of underneath, so no distortion, Also, this gel layer is not as thick as the previous one, so even less distortion from thickness. Having the layers positioned like this gives the feeling of looking down on leaves spinning in glowing water, from above, as opposed to Water_Leaves, where I get the feeling of being submerged in the water, watching the leaves from below (which I prefer). I’d like to try further tests to push the submerged feeling, which will require reordering the layers and playing with distortion. In Water_Leaves, I also prefer how the leaves are at first close enough and moving slow enough that you can observe them and take note of their details. In Red_Leaves_01, there isn’t any opportunity for that.
