This is the finished Bandura model. It is as far as I have been able to take it during this course, but I plan to use the model to create a more interesting sequence involving other characters.
This is the beginning of that process where I take the models and manipulate them to create a scene. This scene will have Bandura strike the bobo doll and spin it around. I will then be able to use frames from this project to create others.
This is what the next stage looks like so far. The arms are on a separate layer and I haven’t finished them on the later frames, so they disappear. I have kept the same head, but I have changed the body in the later frames so that it twists as he follows through, this will need to be improved with shading later, but because I have already shaded it so that the light is always in the top left, the adjustments need only be minimal.
This is where my Bandura is now. This GIF is in a lower resolution. The progress is very slow. The changes I made since the last time include eliminating the dark, goatee-like shadow from the chin. I think I might need to do the same for the nose shadow, although this may just need to be lightened. The back of the collar looks a little flat, too. I have reduced the height of the shoulders in the front and rear views. They gave the image the sense that he was flapping his arms. I made his trousers less baggy and shorter at the heel.
The arms
O, goodness, the arms! They look rubbish right now, I know. They seem to get longer at certain angles. I anticipated that these would not go right at the first attempt. That is why I have done only the suit sleave. Once this in place, it will be easy to draw the shirt sleaves and hands.
The arms are on a new layer. This allows me to work on them without destroying the body. It also means that when it comes to animating another movement, such as walking, I only have to modify the arms and legs. In the past, I have overdone layers, giving each limb its own one. This was stupid and it made the whole thing unmanageable.
Update! – Arms sorted
I have fixed most of the problems mentioned above. I found that the reason the arms were so peculiar was that I had too many guidelines set up on my canvas and I was making my arms shorter except for the frames for the front and back. I have added cuffs, which are far from beautiful but, as they will mostly be covered when I add the hands, they can stay as they are. The hands are going to be hard, I suspect but, once the are complete, all that will remain will be shading.
I have decided to take up a project I had intended to do over the Christmas Break, but had to abandon. I wanted to make a pixel animation of the Bandura Bobo doll experiments that might be fun to include in our presentations in psychology. I plan to use Pixelorama, which is a free pixel-animation software that I have used before. The version I am using is v1.05-stable.
Previously, I have used this in my classes when I taught middle school students in Gwangju, Korea. Here are some examples:
This is a .gif I used to illustrate what a character might be thinking. I was teaching from the Rocket Girl series, in which the main character is a superheroine who conceals her identity from her friends. She excuses herself to the toilet to change into her costume, but leaves the school. One of her friends remarks on her long absence, thus this sprite.
I like to start characters by making a rotating T-pose. This gives me multiple perspectives of the character, which are fairly easy to modify. The Rocket Girl characters all started as spinning T-pose characters.
I then modified them for my classes. The .gif below was created for an icebreaker exercise. When teaching students for whom English is an L2, I find it is better to show them what to do with a minimum of text.
This one started as an illustration for the idiom, “When the shit hits the fan,” but I extended it and used it as a slide to introduce when we were to play a game.
For my Bandura .gifs, I am going to make the sprites of higher resolution. I also want to have a more 3D feel, with action happening in depth. So far, I have made a sprite for the Bobo doll. It only spins currently, but I am quite pleased with its resemblance to the original and the smoothness of its movement. The shadow, which is on a separate layer in the original file, is a little dark and not quite in line with what I have in mind, but I shall leave it for now.
