Flapper Dance

Wow, its been a little bit. But I'm happy to post an update. I've been working a whole lot which leaves little time for me to work on projects and practice animation. I've been trying to make more time to keep working at it. I'm planning on buying a scanner soon which will make daily updates much easier. I can't wait to put up pages of my sketch book and little doodles and ideas I come up with at work.

So on to my current project:

I saw this gif-

And was inspired to do a little animation of it. I'm having a lot of fun with it so far and its making me think a lot more about animation. I'm working on it now, but I'm still pleased with it so far:

I'm really excited to work on the secondary actions, but before I do that I'm what to work on this a little bit more. I want to add a little more motion to the body before I move on to adding in other things.

I also want to design what she'll look like in the colored version of it. I'm thinking either black and white like the gif or more like the "Almost There" scene in "The Princess and the Frog"

I'll post more on this project as I work on it. I'm really excited to be working on animation again.

Face Animation practice

I had a day off today, so I wanted to do some animation practice. I haven't done too much work with squash and stretch in the face so I animated a little face changing expressions. This practice was really fun and taught me a lot about how stretchy the face can be.

I really miss having more time to animate like I used to before I started working. I was so immersed in this I really didn't notice the time just passing by. Hopefully I'll be able to do more soon.

Font facing walk cycle

I wanted to practice animating a walk cycle facing the front of the character. I just made a simple little character and concentrated on the leg movement. I'm thinking of exploring more of this. I'm researching female walks, so I'll try it next time with a female character.

smoker work in progress....still.

Ok, so I've been trying to add a cough after her inhale, but to me it looks like she's eating something. I think I'm going to change it so she's drinking something instead. It wouldn't be too hard actually, I just need to finish the animation, and replace the cigarette with a straw in a cup.

Since it doesn't look like she's enjoying the drink, I'll make it an energy drink. Although I love them, they don't always go down so well...

But yeah.

Since I already did the smoke effect, I'll still use it somehow. I'm thinking of adding a little cup of tea below it, and just make it an effects animation.

Smoke effect

So, I've been tinkering around with effects lately, I need smoke for one of my pieces, and after a few test I finally got a result I liked.

Here it is.

Smoke fx from Regine Francois on Vimeo.

Monster Walk Cycle

So here's yet another walk cycle I've completed. About this time I'm pretty much sick of doing them, thankfully I only have one more to upload. I'm going to put all three together in one piece for my demo reel, but for now they are separate.

I have the same stagger issue I had with the other walk cycles with this one. Does anyone have any tips to fix this?

Monster Walk Cycle 1 from Regine Francois on Vimeo.

Pregnant puppet walk cycle

Here's the pregnant character's walk cycle. I keep having issues with exporting, so it staggers at bit at the end. I'll fix that soon.

Pregnant puppet walk from Regine Francois on Vimeo.

Finished Lip Sync

So here's the finished version of my lip sync with my human and robot characters. The clip is from the movie "Wedding Crashers". I had a lot of fun with this one.

Finished Lip Sync (I'll Find You) from Regine Francois on Vimeo.

Oh look, a background!

Now, I've never been really good at backgrounds or perspective but this one didn't turn out too bad. Maybe because I got to make it in flash. It was supposed to be based on a short story "The Life You Save Might Be Your Own" by Flannery O'Connor.
It ended up morphing into more of a spooky scooby doo thing. Well, at least it's Halloween, almost.

UPDATE!

Ok, so a new quarter of school has started, so of course I've been busy. I want to post a little of what I did last quarter. (I'm still working on Blair work, but I'll post that when I get to a scanner.

So further down on my blog, I have an animatic of a little story I had to make for a class. Here's the character:




Here he is with 3 different ink and paint options:




I picked the third for my final project.

I'll post that in my next post! Feedback would be awesome!

Assignment 1-more on egg shape

So I worked more on lesson 1, I'm having so much fun doing the first lesson that I'm forgetting that I have to start moving on soon. I can't wait to start the next lesson.

Here's what I've done since yesterday:









ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive: Meta: The $100,000 Animation Drawing Course- Lesson 1

Name change!

So I was thinking about changing the name of my blog to something shorter that will be easier to type in. My whole name is kinda long, and when you add in the .blogspot part, it makes it even longer so I'm going to go with something a little shorter, and slightly more catchy. Probably RegineFAB. Not FAB for fabulous, but for Francois Animation Blog.

I like it.

So I've been looking at what other people have been doing with the first Preston Blair lesson and I think I might be doing it wrong. Everyone else is actually trying to duplicate the example heads given, so I'll get on that this afternoon so that I can be sure that I get the lesson before moving on to squash and stretch.

I do have a question about it though.

Squashing and Stretching of the head seems to work best when the head is made in two parts, a smaller oval shape and a larger shape beneath it. Preston Blair says that the cranium doesn't move but the jaw does. If I draw my heads as regular circles, where is my jaw?

Assignment #1-2

OK, so I haven't been able to finish up my egg shape practice the way I want to because of my schedule, but I plan to practice a bit more then start on lesson 2. I can't wait because I haven't been able to do squash and stretch of the face on my own. It always look off when I try it. But for now this is what I have, hopefully I'll be able to post a little more soon.

Animation Lessons! Step 1

So I've been lurking around on JohnK's blog and have been really intrested in getting his advice on how to become better, he likes to refer to the Preston Blair book and thankfully I have it! I'm going to start from the very beginning and learn classic principles. I'm going to start tonight and post what I've done tomorrow!

So much to learn, so little time

So its been "New Media Week" at my school and I've been going to a lot of lectures from animation professionals and I've just been so pumped to learn new stuff. Only problem is I'm already swamped with what I'm already learning in my classes. I've decided to start learning how to use Flash, Ilustrator, and Photoshop better.

I try to learn things online, but I think I do better with books and visual aids. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Animatic assignment

I've been working in my Digtal Ink and Paint (pretty much a class in Flash) for a few weeks now. So far we've created characters, painted them in 3 different styles in Flash, and created a storyboard for a 15-30 sec movie. I'll post the character in a little bit, but I do have my finished animatic now.

Feedback would be GREAT!



(I feel like its a little rushed and the pictures could be better, I'm also pretty new at looping music for a soundtrack, but it should be ok if the video doesn't loop)