I began my project in earnest today. With the rough storyboard made yesterday, I had a rough idea of what I wanted to produce today – a simple walk cycle at the start of the animation. This would be before the audio clip begins. Of course I did not know how much work I could possibly do in a day so there were a number of crucial lessons that were to be taught today;
-Cat movement
-Work Rate
-Design
Working out the movement of the Cat in the animation was a somewhat tough task. Before I began to start, I recorded several movements of my own kitten as a reference material. This was a helpful ‘crutch’ in that should working out tough movements prove to be troublesome, that footage could be used as a cement hint as to where to go from there.
The general work rate was around 6 hours solid work equalling 20 frames. This was somewhat terrifying in a way, but hopefully I will be able to pick up the pace over the next two weeks. With a total of 6 seconds for the audio, plus the 2 seconds before the animation, this should mean less than 6 days’ work to finish the animation.
The design and work rate really went hand in hand. I chose to keep the design as simple as possible. Given the complicated idea that I hope to execute, combining that with a complex full colour design would be impossible to execute in the time frame that the project runs for. So I chose to very much model the cat design on my sketched out storyboard – a simple black and white silhouette. This means that I can focus any spare time on keeping the animation as smooth as possible, rather than colouring objects.
I was impressed with my final result. The only notable issue was the shadowed back leg’s movement as it ‘jumps’ through three steps and does not look fluid.
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