Virgil Mihailescu Animation - Animation Blog

Discovery Channel Time Warp

Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:20:29 +0700

A bunch of really excellent videos made by Discovery Channel (for their Time Warp show) showcasing lots of weird actions recorded at high speed. You also get to learn about things like throwing knives (I always wondered how that's done... never actually spent much time researching it... but as a kid I got frustrated many times over failing to understand how this works :D ) or brushing your teeth... Not really in depth explanations of the mechanics of these actions, but the videos are great and speak for themselves!

Woodcutter - pass 3

Sun, 24 May 2009 08:08:38 +0700

Added inbetweens and made a few changes. Now the hard part comes... I'm not too sure about the final look and how to deal with cleanup...

Woodcutter - pass 2

Sun, 17 May 2009 13:13:03 +0700

I cut the animation in half, it was getting way too long (over 20 seconds), and the second half was only slow movement which is tough in 2d. I think the idea is still the same. Anyway, check it out - pass 2 - rough animation. It still needs some inbetweens and polish, and then real drawings on top of sticky dude.

Woodcutter - pass 1

Sat, 09 May 2009 13:20:24 +0700

Sooo... this is my first "serious" 2d animated shot. The first pass is just the keys (golden poses), and the character is for now a stick figure - Jason Ryan style. But the real drawing has the same proportions, so on top of the 'sticky' dude I'm just adding clothes and details - the limbs just get thickness and clothy deformations, the face gets details, and the wire-hands become the real thing, but all is built on top of this stick-figure pass. I want to post a few passes, like the breakdowns and then the inbetweened animation, and then the real drawings, and then the cleanup. Here's the drawn woodcutter, so you can get an idea.

Yeah, he's not the brightest fella' :D But that's not important. What is important... is... well, watch the animation!!!

Planning Man strikes again

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:21:14 +0700

Kung Fu style, of course.
And this time is war!!
Well, ok, maybe just showoff...

More Kung Fu 2D planning

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:19:26 +0700

Continuing the last post, here's some more kung fu!! :D
Rough sketches of course, but the animation is fairly complete - most of it on twos, some of it on ones. The "cleanup" and polish will be done in 3D.

Planning-man greets his invisible opponent (from that movie, "The Invisibles"...). Two gestures, although I think the second one is not used (the bowing down thingy):

Planning-man knows some moves:

2009 Kung Fu Style

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 15:12:59 +0700

Happy 2009 everybody!!! Long time no post... but... here I am again, back in blogging business :D

This year's New Year's Eve I wanted to hide away from the world and animate... eh, so what?
So I wanted (for a while now) to draw some more 2D animation, as planning for 3D, Jason Ryan style. This is a first shot, and I think I want to animate some more kung fu these days. Kung fu is keeeeewl :D

That's it, Happy New Year!!

Click the play button now!!!

Extremes and Subtleties

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:50:20 +0700

More extreme body poses usually happen in more extreme movement... It might sound more than obvious, but it can be overlooked. I found myself posing the character and twisting its limbs and body in too extreme ways, without a reason, just because I thought it looked cool... but it ended up looking and feeling unnatural. If the character is sitting or just standing, or doing something that doesn't involve much effort in doing it, it should have a more relaxed pose, and there's a difficulty in making a simple relaxed pose natural... you still need to twist and offset things and make the pose look organic, but you have to do it in a subtle way, which is always tough.

On the other way, if you don't deform the body enough in extremes, the animation doesn't have enough punch, or vitality. This can be seen in live action as well, not only in cartoon animation - frame-by-framing though live action reveals a lot of weird, contorted, sometimes horribly deformed poses, when stuff is in movement - you know, like if someone takes a photo of you when least expected... and you look at it and go "ugh, I look like crap, throw it away!!" :) So anyway, the idea is - mutilate your characters' poses and expressions during fast movement. :D

About childish pose-to-pose

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:49:23 +0700

Pose-to-pose animation is "the thing" in animation, it's what everyone does, because it allows the animator to work easier and be in control. It's structured, it's the way to see your final animation in an embryo, and it allows you to control the look of your animation by building carefully planned key poses, with the role of pillars, or skeletons, sustaining an entire architecture. The whole construction relies on them and they can define it more or less clearly. Clarity though, too much of it... I think is a problem. I think a lot of animators take this pose-to-pose concept too literally, or childishly. I'm not the first one to observe this, but I just though I might write about it too, why not.

OK, maybe animation that goes from pose to pose, where you can see the poses clearly, can be cute, cartoony, and it can work in some cases. But I think, for the most part, when you see an animation that goes... pose, zzzzzip, pose, zzzzip, pose... it just looks cheap. There should be life in between those poses, and around a pose, not just a zzzzzzzzip. Anyway, I'm sure anyone would agree with this, it's pretty basic.... but my main comment and the reason I'm writing this here is in fact a different one.

I keep seeing weird acting shot breakdowns, with cool looking poses, that in fact don't help describing a natural, believable flow. The animator goes... OK, let's illustrate "thought"... OK, now that'd be a niiice "thought" pose. OK, let's move to the next second of animation... and let's illustrate fear, the character will zzzzippp into a fear pose because he just realized something... OK, that looks niiiice, let's move to the next pose, which will be more like a question... the character doesn't understand what just happened... OK... niiiiice, let's pose another pose, let's make him look like he's "thinking" again... [and each pose is unique and shockingly unrelated to the others]

What was that?? [quoting Ruby Rhod from 'The fifth element'... "it was baaaaad, it had no fire, no energy, no nothing..." ] :| [I do prefer Ruby Rhod's exaggerated acting to most cartoons btw! He does have the real fire and energy! Cartoons can be more energetic, no problemo, but the detail... the visceral impact of reality... that's hard to draw on paper.]

Does that have anything to do with a breakdown that could lead to natural, believable acting? Of course, I can't really know exactly what some other animator is thinking, with precision... and I've also exaggerated a little (or have I?)... But that's what a lot of animation looks like.... Clean, clear poses that are inbetweened more or less well. That's more like illustration, and less like acting, and definitely not at all like an "illusion of life". The idea is, the animator sets an illustration as a pose, and uses illustrations as breakdowns, instead of thinking of that shot as an actor, instead of trying to describe a real/believable situation with poses... Illustrations are cool, they might capture the intensity of a moment, of a gesture, but... but... but... they're illustrations. Real life doesn't unfold as illustrations. I think the intensity of that moment should rather be captured with timing and spacing (and an understanding of real facial functionality), not with illustrations.

Andy hugging Andy

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:48:47 +0700