CG Artist's Toolkit: Zeotrope Video

This is the video of the zeotrope in action. I am quite pleased with this as it worked in the way I hoped it would, although it may be a little too fast. However, I really liked making the zeotrope and I liked the freedom of being able to chose what we wanted to base it on.

CG Artist Toolkit: Final Zeotrope

Final Idea

I decided to continue with the "Breaking Bad" Zeotrope idea. I felt that the "Breaking Bad" and "Batman" zeotrope ideas were the best, but I couldn't quite work out how I'd be able to do the Bat-signal, so I opted for this idea.

I created this by drawing an RV on Photoshop. I drew it by continuously looking at images of the RV on google, and was trying to get as much detail in as possible, but was trying to still get the cartoony look that I wanted. I then printed out about 30 of them, just in case some printed badly or broke. I then cut each of them out and stuck them down, once I finished the background.

RV I made on Photoshop

I made the background by drawing similar hills that I did in my own Breaking Bad drawing, and used water colour paints to give them a wash like effect as I wanted the background to look a little blurry and not have any clear detail to them. The background has a cartoony feel to it with it's bright colours and lack of tone/detail, especially in the sky as it's just the same shade of blue.

My own Breaking Bad drawing

As I had finished this 2 weeks ago, I was able to test it last Friday, for the first time, which was a bit of a risky move as it might have looked awful. Fortunately the fast sped of the RV and background movement actually looks quite good and with the main characters in Breaking Bad being criminals, it looks like the speeding away from something and so the fast speed of the animation makes sense, even though I didn't create the background correctly.

This isn't a very festive idea, but as I am a fan of Breaking Bad, I felt it would get me more excited about making the zeotrope.

Apologies for the poor picture quality.

CG Artist Toolkit: Zeotrope Planning

Here my original ideas that I thought of for my zeotrope:

My thinking behind this one was that the footballer was volley the ball, it would hit the bar, go over the goal and it would fall to the player like how it did originally. Although I think it would work as animation, it would be quite difficult to animate the player's body movements and for there to still be enough frames for the rest of the animation. Also, it wouldn't make sense in the real world, unless it's a very long pitch that they're on.

The idea behind this one was that the UFO would drop the person off, fly away, then come back and pick him back up again. Like the first one. I think it would have worked quite well, but I felt it needed a bit more to it and was quite simple.

My final two ideas are the same with regards as to how they'd look. The car would be in every frame and the background would be the thing that would change.

The one above is based on Breaking Bad, as it has the signature RV and have the desert landscape of Albuquerque in the background. I think that as the RV is the main thing in the animation, it would have to be more detailed than the background, which the drawing shows. The background would need to be framed correctly, otherwise it may go too fast.

The one below is based on Batman, with the Bat-mobile, the skyscrapers in the background and the bat signal. The Bat signal is the only real difference between these two ideas, and  it would make it a lot harder to create as it would need to move around slightly in the air.

CG Artist's Toolkit: Animation & Character - Mini Zeotrope

During our first Animation & Character lesson, we were asked to get into pairs and make a quick animation, using a 10 frame disk and a zeotrope. A zeotrope is spun round and reflects the frames on the disk, and at a certain speed, it looks like an amination. I started off the frames. I did a small house and changed it a little each time, and in one frame I included a little character, then it was Marion's turn. It was quite fun making these and discovering another quick method of creating a quick animation.