Google - Martha Graham from Ryan J Woodward on Vimeo.
I posted about Ryan Woodward's work in May 2010 (below)
Once through for entertainment. Oh, OK, twice through for entertainment because the first viewing is quite stunning. Then study this animated music clip. Note the animation principles. Do you think he used video reference? Note the hand drawn appeal. Ryan Woodward is making a making of documentary. Find out more here.
9 comments:
I like it!
Ryan Woodward's reply: Dudok De Wit is one of my greatest inspirations. No wonder you noticed that. Really glad you liked the film Frank."
Yeah, he worked with a choreographer and dancers, filmed it, and used for reference. He posted a 5 minute documentary on it; it's pretty awesome.
This piece is so well done, it's so inspiring. It definitely makes me push my self more...
Off to do some 2D sketching!!!
Wow, this is absolutely beautiful. Really nice subtle effects in some parts, I love the ethereal quality the white lines give the girl.
Damn I was just in the middle of posting this! Lucky I check here before I did.
Very impressive. I'm going to ask a naive question but.... It's rotoscoping but as I haven't done it yet I'm wondering what program it's run through - is it Flash (via PS optional)?
Hi everyone! No it isn't rotoscoping, Jasen, it's all hand-drawn, not traced! Pretty amazing huh! Your question was good because his animation is so good, so fluid from years of his experience as an effects animator and as a fantastic story-board artist that it LOOKS fluid and real! He has a professional way of clearly capturing the human figure and he knows the potential arcs and volumes and limits to extended movement backwards. He knows the animation principles backwards. This work is his move away from the professional slickness/proficiency (I'm not using that word in a deragotary way)that is necessary to be an employed storyboard artist and animator where clarity is paramount. This work comes out of a perfect marriage of his working discipline and professionalism infused with his love of his family, his dancing daughters and wife and a need to express his emotional response to the song which made him think of them, as they are his :stability in a " spinning world". I'll have to look again but he may be using Toonboom because there is a Toonboom product like Flipbook....but you could do this in Flash. What does everyone else think? It may seem incredible to us now that someone is this good at depicting movement but it is possible and we can all trust that as we animate more and more and we start to get a feel for movement and develop a professional practice: and read lots of animation info readily available on the web such as on the ARC, we can trust our brains that if we put in all the right stuff, sooner or later we'll start to get a clearer sense of animating.The reference he uses would be to create Key poses.
He would then be like any good animator and also a choreographer, experimenting and creating a succession of key story-telling poses that began to express in their sequence the emotion he wanted to express. Some of his Key poses would be Extremes and he would use them to emphasise an extreme of an arc of movement at a point where you'll notice the body becomes a fluid or transforms. He would space the keys then with a bit of a fore-knowledge of where he wants the breakdown images...he'd space them to match the music AND the feeling. So don't think linear like rotoscoping, think of a moving painting where he must match the key poses to the feeling he wants to express, he experiments and changes until he gets the right feel. From then on with the right spacing of the keys he can draw breakdown poses which may be straightforward or may be points of change between movements. He'd go over the sequence multiple times to get the feel right and he might change the timing to suit. Your question really got me exploring so it was awesome. Now I'm looking at this again and really questioning how much more life drawing I need to do and how much more I need to grasp how the human body moves, so I really appreciate you guys making me think more and explore.This is how you'd explain his animating process Frank? Isn't it? What do you think? And what program?
I thought he was working in Photoshop, or a program similar. You can see a glimpse of it in the making of clip. But the tool dooesn't matter, he could probably produce the same at a light box with pencil and paper.
Yes, it could be attempted in Flash with video reference planning and a strong understanding of Animation Principles.
The 'Animation Type' is a mix of pose-to-pose and straight ahead animation. The straight ahead animation particularly well applied in the effects animation.
The spacing is noteworthy. Holding back on that scooping lift, applying Exaggeration to the spacing by pushing the ease-in and ease-out between the key poses, heightens the impact of the animation.
Michelle explains it much more poetically than me.
So, no, Michelle, despite the fact we speak the same truths and observations, it is not the way I explain the process. My explanation would tend toward the science. I much prefer to read your observations.
Michelle writes with much better lines of action than I could hope to. Her description is perfect.
He worked in Flash using a Cintq.
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