The amazing shapeshifting bird
I’m an animation student, and this is part of a little experiment involving a flying eagle… vulture… goose??
So, I’m working on a very short project in animation school. Part of it involves a bird flying. The bird is supposed to be an eagle, and I’m trying to get it to rotate its head as it looks around. Anyways, these are the first close-ups sketches of the head I did today. I figured you could at least laugh at my ineptitude here.
First of all, the profile, since that’s the starting point.
Profile: Eagle
Not too bad. It’s supposed to be a bald eagle, I guess.
Then, 3/4 profile. This is the end point of this movement, btw:
3/4 profile: Vulture
Here’s where it starts going wrong. I mean, it turned into a vulture somehow. What the hell, I’ve never even drawn a vulture before. Clearly I haven’t drawn many eagles either.
Now for the end. In order to try and get the structure right, I did a front face sketch, and I got…
Front: Goose
A goose. Yeah, I don’t know either. The lesson here: always get some references when trying to draw sh*t you’ve never drawn before, specially if you’re a lame artist like myself.
I like your sketches
I am jealous
I would love to go to an animation school
but I live in Belfast Northern Ireland and am not aware of anything like this available
I feel that my Super-AL character would animate well but I do not have the software
Thank you, you really are too kind!
I know what you feel. Sometimes I’m a bit jealous of the younger kids in the school – when I was their age there was nothing like this school around here, and so I’m way behind of what I could be by now.
Nevertheless, I think the secret is to keep trying. With time and effort anyone and do well or at least improve significantly. That’s what I’m trying to do, anyways.
As for software you should look into open source alternatives. Check this out: http://www.osalt.com/after-effects
Even so keep in mind that animation begins with a pencil and some sheets of paper – see those sketches above!
I think the sketches were cute…. No they’re more funny! I loved it when you critisized your work!
I spelled critisized wrong… Didn’t I?…
Hehe, it’s cool (though the software should have allowed you to go back and edit your comment… didn’t it?) Anyways, glad you liked the sketches. I’m always critical of my work – as you can see I have lots of reason to do that – but these days I kinda keep it to myself, on the premise that my readers can probably see my shortcomics by themselves, and my whinning about it only serves the purpose of making me seem lamer than I am