Let's~ Go~ Fly A Kite~

Another thing I've had absolutely no experience animating before is a flying kite, so once again, plenty of research was in order. I wanted to keep my kite design as simple as possible to avoid over-complicating the animation, so I settled for searching for the basic diamond shape kite, as well as any references I could find of kids frolicking and generally having fun flying them.







Looking at these images made me realise that I couldn't really get away with animating a kite without a tail as the tail affects how well it flies, so I need to ensure I include one even though it'll mean more work...





The above images are screenshots from the commercial Good As Gold by Ian Emes (follow the hyperlink to watch). I took special note of this as it's one of the rare pieces of footage with a kite which is actually shot from the angle I need; that being from above with the kite filling the screen before the child appears underneath. It only happens vey briefly at the end of the advert, but I still found it to be a useful reference.













These videos are my personal primary sources of kite flying footage, again taken during my weekend trip home to Lancashire. Unfortunately I had to choose the one weekend with barely any wind, so trying to get the kite to stay in the air long enough for me to film it was tricky to say the least... But I think I managed to scrape just enough decent footage to make the endeavour worthwhile. If nothing else I think it helped to try flying a kite myself again, as I have't attempted to since I was a little kid and had long since forgotten how it feels.

Video References

Videos of me acting out various scenes from my animatic, substituting the bottle with a vase and (in the cases where I feared the vase getting broken) a sweet tin. As always I found acting out these scenes myself crucial to understanding the movement I wanted to give my character, even the simple things like her expression has she turns to look behind her.

You Got An Empty Bottle!

I do love my references, don't I? Even something as simple as bottle doesn't escape my research! I always feel I understand how to animate something better if I can experience it myself first-hand, and that includes something as simple as how to correctly hold a bottle in various circumstances. Here are the photos taken of the empty bottle I bought especially for the project, which the bottle in my animation will be drawn from. I went for a simple design with a cork stopper, much like the bottles that originally inspired me from the Zelda video games. I took multiple photos from the same angle with different flash settings so I could see how the different flashes reflected off the glass.

Pylon Photo Shoot

Pylons, pylons everywhere! ...Okay, so maybe not. In fact I found them surprisingly hard to locate here in Birmingham (at least without travelling outside the main city which is difficult to do without a car...), so upon returning home to Lancashire for the weekend I decided to go out pylon hunting! Luckily I found one in a field not too far from where I live, so I took the opportunity to get as many reference photos as possible, right down the the "Danger of death, do not climb!" sign. Naturally I intend to simplify the pylon design a lot for my animation, both to fit with my character and because pylons are very complex structures, but these photos should hopefully prove to be good basis for me to do so.