Post 01 - Looking back and ahead: Initial Research

Looking back at the Research Practice module, I have come to realise that although it was a good way of discovering what area/s I would be interested to explore; it unfortunately was more concentrated on writing an ACM report and left me with a lack of project detail / clarity (for example, I'm going to explore emotion in character animation, but do not know at this stage how many animations, which emotions and so on).

I want to point out that the 'Research Practice' blog has all of the information and research regarding the thought processes and steps which have led me to this stage. I have done a broad range of research so far in order to try and fully form my ideas as I want to explore something at the forefront of the games / animation industry, but I also want the resulting artefact/s to be used in a show-reel (1-2 minutes with a range of subject matter).

Thinking Animation

Another book I picked up when researching animation is Thinking Animation by Angie Jones and Jamie Oliff. This so far has been useful in breaking down the working structure of a CG animator. Chapters such as 'The Thursday Animator' analyses an animator's working week and offers advice from many artists in the industry. Where as the chapter 'Every Frame Counts' explains some of the software universal tools such as key frames and the Graph Editor (a tool which I shall be using a lot of).

Richard William's Animated Survival Kit 'Animated'

My research has started with watching (whilst making notes) Richard William's Animator's Survival Kit DVD series (16 in total). This has really helped me to begin to understand what animation fundamentals have already been established and what can be used to create believable, successful animations. Topics which are covered in these lectures include: animation structures, overlapping motion, breaking joints, dialogue, and work pipelines. I have also purchased the book (title as above) as it is a great reference book and one which allegedly any animator should not be without. As Richard puts it himself, it demonstrates 'the sophisticated use of the basics'.

Both of these books and the DVD set also mentioned in my Research Practice blog.