The Daily Wray: animated skateboarding

[Antwan]

Man, that sounds like a long process haha.
I'm shocked to read that you don't watch anything.
I often watch skateboarding videos, interviews with skaters and famous artists just for inspiration's sake.
I don't set out to copy anyone's path but often find myself relating.
A bit out of context but I think it can still apply.
Were you a skateboarder at any point?
Just seems a bit out of place that you would be so good without study.
Not to degrade your work, it's top notch.
I just see skating now as an endless resource to grab inspiration and ideas from.
There's the legends, the incredibly technical skaters, the creative skaters, the Hollywood stunt men skaters (William spencer) yeah I found that out, dude does stunts for movies.

[wrayayrton]

don't get me wrong, I watch skate videos, but really just to get an idea for how tricks are done so I can later animate them and combine them myself. I like to think of animating as playing skate 3 but with much more finite control and limitless trick possibilities. That's why I so desperately want to be a part of a skate game. since I got kicked out of college I kinda gotta find a dayjob or prove to the art industry that I deserve a career, and a fairly popular slenderman fangame along with one not-so-popular original horror title, albeit a good start, does not set me apart from other applicants at robomodo's THPS5 department :P

a dope indie skate game would though.

I suck ass at skateboarding but attack it with unrelenting enthusiasm anyway. I ollied a 3 stair one time. best day of my life. I am pretty good at getting the board to do the flip with my feet but not so good at landing on it all the time (or even some of the time), which leads to pain, and sometimes I'd rather just apply my technique to a 3d rig and watch it play out perfectly

also, I have been animating since I was 13, so I have a pretty good knowledge of the biomechanics of movements and whatnot of a bipedal character, as those are my favourite kind. that maybe why I am good without study

[PoppySquidJr]

don't get me wrong, I watch skate videos, but really just to get an idea for how tricks are done so I can later animate them and combine them myself. I like to think of animating as playing skate 3 but with much more finite control and limitless trick possibilities. That's why I so desperately want to be a part of a skate game. since I got kicked out of college I kinda gotta find a dayjob or prove to the art industry that I deserve a career, and a fairly popular slenderman fangame along with one not-so-popular original horror title, albeit a good start, does not set me apart from other applicants at robomodo's THPS5 department :P

a dope indie skate game would though.

I suck ass at skateboarding but attack it with unrelenting enthusiasm anyway. I ollied a 3 stair one time. best day of my life. I am pretty good at getting the board to do the flip with my feet but not so good at landing on it all the time (or even some of the time), which leads to pain, and sometimes I'd rather just apply my technique to a 3d rig and watch it play out perfectly

also, I have been animating since I was 13, so I have a pretty good knowledge of the biomechanics of movements and whatnot of a bipedal character, as those are my favourite kind. that maybe why I am good without study

You should watch some of the weird dudes like Mullen, Richie Jackson, Kilian Martin, It'd be neat to see some animations of weird creative tricks that people don't really do :P

[Antwan]

@Wray
So you do have a skating background. Good stuff.
I used to be heavy into fliptricks and all of those modern things. Been reverting lately to try and expand from the fundamentals of skating. So I'm right there with you Haha. I can break down those tricks in grave detail but I don't do much more than an Ollie these days. I'm not saying you should do animations differently, just saying there is more you could do if you wanted to. Thanks for sharing man.
If this starts getting too crowded let us know. I often hop in after I've had some coffee and the brain is at full speed haha.


@Poppy
That's what I was thinking haha.
I've watched a few interviews with richie, doesn't seem to be a ton. He is a product of the people he skates with. He has his own ideas aswell but there are skaters he feeds off of in sessions. It's an incredible growing collective thought process.
Which makes me think about these skateboarding animations. To have no limits and come up with things that would seemingly be unthought of or un attempted. You could do so much more than grinds, manuals and fliptricks but I do see why it would be satisfying. I grew up with the Sega Genisis and taught myself to make sprites, eventually I was animating them. I've never gone beyond the 8-16bit realm, but seeing it come to life was sick.

[wrayayrton]

there is no such thing as a forum thread that is too crowded. I love forums.
also rodney mullen is my favourite skater. others I take influence from are daewon song, luan oliviera, chris cole, leticia bufoni, evan smith, JP from majer, chris chann, stevie williams, matt berger and lacey baker (there is nothing sexier than a woman who can nollie inward heelflip :P). Each one of these skaters has such an immediately recognizable style and bodyshape, and I like to see how different shaped people control a skateboard differently and represent that in animation. It's like 3d caricatures lol

I've done a lot of street stuff and grinds and manuals since that's my favourite style of skating. I had done some cool mini ramp stuff on my laptop but I was living in a trap house for a while and got robbed and they took that, so my next order of business is probably more miniramp/half pipe/funbox stuff. The way I see it, that's god telling me that I could've animated it better :P. I'm kinda hesitant to try to animate mega-ramp stuff simply because I've never skated a mega-ramp and would be way too pussy to try so IDK if i'd be able to make that look as convincing as some of the street tricks I actually understand, but I'll give it a shot at some point I'm sure.


ANYWAYS HERE IS TODAY's AOTD: Hippy Flip

I made this a few days ago for tintachi6, who hit me up after I joined the forum and asked if i'd make him an intro to his youtube channel. I did, and here's the animation I made for it (the one for his channel stops when the board graphic comes up for a moment)

[saunders420]

yeeaahh hippy flips allday

How many frames are rendered for these animations 30/60/120.... Im just realizing how smooth everything is.

I have no clue how the process goes; but it seems incredibly smooth. that slight motion blur is sweet too.

[wrayayrton]

for motion blur it does 5 passes on one frame, so usually 400-500 frames for 1 3 second clip even though it's only 30 fps. for slow motion ones I do no motion blur but quadruple the frame rate.