Unit 5: Hand Drawn Bouncing Balls

Bouncing Bowling Ball





Bouncing Rubber Ball

Unit 5: Hand Drawn Animation Lesson 1

The first hand drawn animation for me this unit. and I have to say I think it looks good.
The video is running at 24fps (Frames Per Second) wich means 24 drawings per second. In the lesson we were split into groups and told to morph the object we had chosen for the unit into the persons object sitting to out left. For example I had the Lascivious Pepper Mill as my object which I had to morph into Steven's Concieted Fountain Pen and so on. Thanks to Nat for putting this video together :)

Meg Leslie - Gramaphone

Freddie Rolph (me) - The Lascivious Pepper Mill

Steven Payne - The Concieted Fountain Pen

Urvashi Lele - The Exstatic Spinning Top

Nat Urwin -  The Ebullient Toadstool

Unit 5: A Bit of Research

Be Our Guest

A bit of research around dancing kitchen appliances. Of course the classic Beauty and the Beast, "Be our Guest." There aren't any dancing pepper mills but there are some salt shakers get down with it and the general principal is the same, also the glass vases full of water and flowers are a good idea of what I want a secondary character to look like.

Argentine Tango
 

Phil also suggested I check out some Argentine Tango as it is a very lustful dance and is perfect for where I want to go with my animation.

Tango 


The begining 2 mins of this video, taken from The Moulin Rouge, are also Tango but it shows the strong, powerful, jealous, Alpha male that I want my character to be.

Paso Doble
 
Paso Doble is a traditional Spanish style dance quite similar in many ways to the tango but the paso dobel is more upbeat and uplifting whereas the Tango is about Passion and lust

Unit 5: Character Design

 I wanted my pepper mill to be male and after a talk with Phil It was decided that it would be funnier to make him kind of european, spanish/italian style to bring out an air of flamboyance to his "sexual nature."

I wanted to design my character around male flamenco dancers so I collected a few images for reference. I also looked at Matadors (Bullfighters) and fictional characters from film such as The Mask and The Mask of Zorro.

I started out just playing around and experimenting with different proportions but it wasn't really working so I decided to actually look at some of the images I'd collected. Using my influence map for reference I started to draw out certain poses that I wanted my pepper mill to stand in and then tried to fit the shape of the pepper mill over the top.

I've gone for the old style pepper mill with the hand crank as I feel it'll help me to show more emotion. I've turned the top of the mill in number 9 into a flamenco style hat and given him a classic spanish, chest out shoulder's back, pose. I like this one the most but I'm not sure if it's too humanoid to be recognised as a Pepper mill. I am also fond of numbers 8 and 7.

Unit 5: Influence Map

I pulled a few images together to try and get an idea of what kind of diversity the pepper mill offers an animator.

      The most instantly recognisable shape for a pepper mill is the classic "chess piece" shape which in the influence map above is the light brown one in the bottom right hand corner.

      The pepper grinder, which is the small silver one at the top with the glass bottom, has a squeezable trigger on it instead of a turning head which would allow for use as a limb for more of an expressive character but I'm not sure if it satisfies the criteria of pepper "mill". 

      The large squat looking one in the middle is a turkish pepper mill. It's turnable handle is it's main distinguishing feature and I think it could work rather well to express character as maybe a head or a limb or even a decorative accessory such as a hat or a cigar. Also being the least Penis-like shape of all the mills I've seen I think this one might be the right choice.

Unit 5: The Words

The words I randomly pulled from the envelope are as follows:

The Lascivious

Pepper mill

I have a few doubts concerning the coupling of these words. Allow me to explain my dilema.

 

las·civ·i·ous [luh-siv-ee-uhs]

adjective

1.

inclined to lustfulness; wanton; lewd.

2.

arousing sexual desire: lascivious photographs.

3.

indicating sexual interest or expressive of lust or lewdness: a lascivious gesture.

 

pepp·er mill [pep-er mil]

noun

1.

a small hand-held device for storing and grinding peppercorns.

2.

Looks like a phallus. . . . .