"O" BIRD ANIMATION UPDATE 1

After working during animation, experimenting with shading, using different brushes, and making bird animations, lots of progress has been made. The bird animation sequences have been rendered out, and puffy clouds are now clearly visible in the blue sky.

CLOUDS

Designing clouds took some creative thinking strategies I've never used. The clouds were constructed using several reference pictures from drawings or photos. Each cloud started out as a rough sketch of jagged edges or natural curves, then got shading with lighting sources based on where the sun would be in the sky in accordance to each scene. Several cloud types were experimented with different brush strokes and resulted in their puffy textures below.

Cloud Rough Sketch

Worms Eye Altocumulus Clouds

Realistic and Cartoonistic Cumulus Clouds

Cirrus Clouds

BIRD SEQUENCES

The black birds of this animation will be flying from many perspectives-our perspective mostly. From up above and from side to side, a flock of black birds will fly in a uniform triangle. Take a look at the sequentially birds and note their details: how they fly, the way their wings flap, their main body's position.

Back View of Flying Bird

Worms Eye View of Flying Bird

Side View of Flying Bird

TREES AND GRASS

Mulberry and Oak Tree Mix

The most important part missing besides the blue sky and flying birds is a natural part of the scenery-trees.Trees were created to fill in the large blue skies and form a natural environment. I focused on two types of different trees and adjusted their size by length and height so no two trees have the same height dimension, despite their only being two tree prototypes.

Eastern Pine Tree

Two tree prototypes have been constructed, one similar to the Eastern Pine, the other to a mixture of an oak tree and a mulberry tree. They were constructed to have leaves connected to branches, and shaded based on where the leaves are located. Leaves were also included in the front of the bark so the whole tree is coated with leaves, and made visible with each layer of leaves having an adjusted opacity.

Complete Tree Scenery

Various grass bases were also added for a natural base for the trees and will be implemented for their appointed scenes. Light stroked brushes and low opacities were used to have noticeably crisp grass blades of 

Diagonal View of Grass

Side View Grass

Now that you have reached the end of today's blog post, I want to point out something. Have you noticed the big picture? Slowly scroll down this blog post, focusing on each section, and what they all add up together to when combined together... It may take a while to put together, but the result will shock you. The surprise is that you have been seeing it this whole time.