32 frame walk cycle

This one is a blog for my animation students primarily.

In 3d, frames 1-17 of the left limbs can be pasted over  the right limbs on frames 17-33.

Frame 9 and 25 are passing positions

(whether you emphasise the  “Down”* and “UP” positions or not, it is essential to focus on the movements of the foot as it follows from the passing position to the contact. As the leg moves forward – this would be the “UP” position” (12/28) and as it moves towards the contact (14/30), this helps to give the impression of weight – but we will look at this more fully next time!)

The principles of the walk are the same for 3d and 2d

Here is reference from Muybridge:

and another from Muybridge:

modern Female walk cycle reference:

 

modern Male walk cycle reference:

*the Down position -5/21- gives you the widest arm position in the conventional walk, incidentally, which is why the “DOWN”/”UP” positions are important, but I think it is the movement following the passing position which makes the walk cycle believable!

 

like a virgin

I am writing this on the way back from a month’s lecturing in Moscow. During this time, I relied on my Virgin phone to keep me in contact with things in the UK. I had a russian phone too, so, managing the two handsets, I felt a bit like a rather dodgy trader. But needs must.

tom mockridge

Just before I returned, I got a message from Virgin mobile to say that I had exceeded my credit limit. Strange, as I had renegotiated this just before I left the UK when access to my online account had failed for the umpteenth time. I was told then, in October, that I had fallen foul of some sort of systems’ overhaul that routinely upgraded the credit limits of more recent customers but, as a long-standing and loyal Virgin devotee, I had been overlooked, as had many of my vintage. A temporary correction was applied to my account. That appears to have failed in practice.

I rang up the international number on the text they sent and tried to pay off the outstanding debt. My phone, it seems, had been suspended for the last three days. Worrying. And then the real drama began.

I was speaking to a lad called Jack who was based in Manila. He was quite affable though he spent slightly too much time telling me how honest he was – when someone tells me he is honest, I generally suspect something is amiss: “The lady doth protest too much”. Rather like starting a sentence “with respect” something that prefaces complete verbal abuse. Jack was unable to process my payment because my phone was apparently flagged as fraudulent and blacklisted. That was monday.

robert dunnNow once again, there is history, because this had happened before- no fault of mine, and I was told it had been corrected.  I assumed, therefore, that the so-called correction on 13th October had not, in fact, been effective and I had been living in a fool’s paradise for 5 weeks. But that turned out to be untrue. Instead, an entirely new fraud error had been generated by Virgin. It was explained to me later by a man called “Much” who inhabits what is called the CEO office for escalated complaints, but no doubt it is just another call-centre. “Much” was very reluctant to give his real name so I am respecting his wishes in this account.

I cautioned Jack on Monday that I worried our call might be expensive. He insisted that, despite the fact that I was calling from Moscow, the call was free. He had me on hold at various times and the call went on in fact for an hour. There was a second and third attempt to resolve the problem: another two hours or so.

tony hanway

On Wednesday, I spoke to the CEO office who had finally lifted the bar on my phone and offered to pay the £250 there and then to gain access to my phone, but instead, they said the sum had increased to about £400. We may well ask how that happened, because, other than calling Virgin on a free line, I had not used the phone at all. And therein lies the rub: the line to Jack was not free after all. (the number, if you are interested is +447953967967)

PeterKelly

When my case-handler finally got round to talking to me on Wednesday evening, he explained that the call to “Jack” in Manila was no longer accessible as a recording and so he was unable to verify whether Jack had, indeed, assured me that calls to that number were free. (In any case, “Much” could provide documents to explain that such calls are not free but charged on a standard overseas tarrif). “Much” told me that he was “only being honest”, like Jack before him. Somehow, Jack seemed more credible. As a “goodwill gesture”, and because “he did not dispute my story of what Jack was alleged to have said,” “Much” was, however, prepared to offer me £70. He also assured me, note, that he believed my story about Jack’s claim – so the offer seems a bit odd, and I feel a bit short-changed. No apology, incidentally, also for the fraud error, which he admitted was Virgin’s- an error produced he explained because of the considerable advances being made by the implementation of new software, but the second such erroneous fraud flag on my account this year! And no offer of compensation. It is a case of “Much” wants more!

maurice daw

I asked for a PUK code so that I could leave Virgin and take my phone number with me, but should I do this – Mr “Much” was very clear- then I would no longer receive the “goodwill gesture” he had been offering me. Astonishing and slightly threatening.

This £70 is not compensation, it is not a refund. It is, in short, a bribe by a company that is quite happy to lie through its teeth to extract as much as they can for a service that falls far short even of the term”shoddy”. I wonder if, indeed, what I have experienced is a form of “misrepresentation”? It comes fairly close to what American gangsters in Chicago would have called “protection”. I am paying for services they themselves have forced me to accept!

brigitte trafford

In the social media age, customer service should be efficient and effective. A quick survey of the internet shows very clearly that I am not alone in being frustrated by Virgin’s duplicity and aggression. One of the problems that I would identify here is that customer care and marketing or sales are divided into two completely different (and arguably conflicting) offices and neither has much care about its effect on the other. Beyond that is the infuriating habit of agents refusing to provide surnames and assuming they can use my first name too. This is not just an Oldie whinge about due respect- it is about basic honesty because, when pressed to identify the various people called Val, or Cherie or Jack, the evidence of their existence seems to flush away as quickly as the recordings that betray whatever errors they have inadvertently or deliberately made. Virgin is the harpic of mobile communication. I should add that I also spoke to a lovely switchboard person called Chantelle who was charming enough on 3 occasions to remember who I was and what the issue was. But, as a rule, what is agreed with one person is then denied by another and an appeal to the evidence of the “recording” meets with the response that it never took place or is lost. The fact, therefore, remains- shoddy customer care will eventually have an impact on sales. It is just a matter of waiting for the whole house of cards to collapse.

mine hifzi

And who has a Virgin phone after all, these days? Come on! Virgin is simply a larger scale version of Easy Jet- it’s mobile phone service is an offshoot. The Virgin company began in the Late 70s and was properly registered in the late 80s: a 40-something year history, and it is time for some pruning.

Because I look after a number of students in the UK , and have phones on account for them to use, I have oddly now used almost every phone company in the UK. None are really honest or a pleasure to deal with, but Virgin’s deceit in this instance really takes the biscuit.

branson

I will certainly make an effort to produce some cartoons about this at a later stage. (**22.11.15: now completed, see above for images of current board of directors) But now, I must board my flight! (I am NOT booked on a Virgin flight)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mormons in outer space

News today that the Mormon church in Utah has made a pronouncement about the children of same-sex couples. Apparently, they must remain unbaptised until they are 18, have renounced same-sex unions and have left their parental home. (The dead, on the other hand, are enthusiastically baptised by Mormons- whether they know about the faith or not. In this practice, incidentally, the Mormons follow the Marcionites)

The result is a mass exodus from the Church in protest, “the first mass resignation in LDS history in response to a specific policy”, said John Larsen. The backlash has been so huge that some of the senior figures from the church have now been wheeled out to “explain” the message…

elder christofferson

I have no real problem with a backwater heretical sect making sweeping pronouncements about morals as long as it is about the morality of one particular so-called sinner. It is their church after all. But I find it abhorrent to read that the children of such a person must equally suffer effective excommunication and to be accepted at all, after their childhood, they must spurn their parents. This is Moronic, and we cannot be silent when children are attacked like this. This takes us back to the Mediaeval period, a period incidentally that the Church of the Latter Day Saints has missed as it was only founded by Joseph Smith in about 1823. Would we still be silent today, would twitter be mute if the innocent were burnt as witches, if illegitimate children were abandoned or chastised for their parents’ behaviour?

If you want a proper history of the Mormon Church, it is available through “south park” or indeed is summed up nicely in the musical currently in the West End called “the Book of Mormon”, (Parker, Lopez and Stone) without a doubt, one of the best shows playing at the moment.

This is how the Guardian summed it up:

Hundreds of members of the Church of Latter Day Saints mailed or handed in letters quitting the Mormon church on Saturday to protest against a new policy barring children of married same-sex couples from being baptized until they are adults.

Leaders of the church approved the policy last week. It added same-sex marriage to acts considered to be a renunciation of the Mormon faith and thus subject to church discipline, including excommunication.

“This is about compassion and supporting our community,” A protest in a Salt Lake City park one organiser, Brooke Swallow, said: “No longer are we going to keep our mouths shut.”

About 1,000 people showed up at the park across the street from the headquarters of the Utah-based church. Long lines of Mormons handed resignation letters to Mark Naugle, an attorney who made sure the forms were complete and promised to mail them the next day.

Others joined a procession to a downtown mailbox and then twice circled Temple Square, home of the faith’s flagship temple.

“I resigned today,” said Paul Pratt, one of the protesters. “I haven’t been active for 17 years. It’s time to separate. I don’t need a bunch of [church leaders] telling me what to do.”

The church has more than 15 million adherents and 85,000 missionaries around the world. A church spokesperson was not available for comment on Saturday.

I have always had a fairly soft spot for Mormons, and was friends with some very hard-working and much abused lads in Athens who were regularly marched into police custody for attempting to Proselytize, something forbidden in modern Greek law. One of them, an ex-catholic from a good Italian family, showed signs of strain. While the theology is based on cod-KJV english and anticipates some of the madder fantasies of the Scientology people, there is little doubt that most Mormons I have met are committed and good people. That is what makes this pronouncement so frustrating – because suddenly, it exposes the whole cult as vicious and mean, a nasty savage, spiteful dictatorship that punishes the young and the innocent. It is one thing to condemn gay people. It is quite another to condemn their children. And it is wrong.

I made a video about the theology that underpins the strict Catholic, Orthodox and Jewish point of view about Homosexuality, and I think there are some serious flaws in the stricter interpretation. However, it is also clear that, in practice, there has been tolerance as well as condemnation in all these religions, and often today, spokespeople err in favour of compassion. Even in Islam, for all the hellfire quoted (or mis-quoted) by fanatics and the barely literate, there are today a number of “gay Mosques” and a growing number of wise scholars and imams who recognise that compassion and culture both play a vital role in this debate. Not so the Latter Day Saints! Not now.

And yet surely, last year or the year before, Donny Osmond (“lollipops, lips and lipstick”, “love me for a reason”, “Puppy Love”) was on the Graham Norton show? In that interview, incidentally, Donny explains that it was Walt Disney, not Andy Williams who discovered the Osmonds. It was I recall an interview of great charm -what else can one ever expect?

Here is something more ad rem that Donny said a while ago – he was very careful,

There are many gay individuals that are members of our church. I know many of them. In fact, some of my best friends are gay. I am grateful for my associations with them, and enjoy working with many of them.

We all determine for ourselves what is right and what is not right for our own lives and how we live God’s commandments. I am not a judge and I will never judge anyone for the decisions they make unless they are causing harm to another individual. I love my friends, including my gay friends. We are all God’s children. It is their choice, not mine on how they conduct their lives and choose to live the commandments according to the dictates of their own conscience.

But can this same loveable Donny Osmond really now support the pronouncement of unadulterated hate coming from the mouth of Utah that children must be punished for their parents’ lifestyle? This simply revives the smear of illegitimacy. The call of “Stand up for bastards!” rings through the theatre once again…of course in King Lear it is the nasty one, Edmund, who has that line…but does it matter? We should no longer distance ourselves from a bastard, or from the children of a single-sexed marriage.

These mormons have lost it. No doubt we need to go into space to find out what the scientologists think.

all terrorism is wrong

hollande

The Paris attacks are horrendous

and all terrorism is always wrong.

One of the problems we have today is that we are still distinguishing between one form of violence and another. We have, in other words, taken the saying that “one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist” a bit too seriously. Any form of terrorism is a statement against civilised behaviour and, therefore, by definition, to be condemned. Frankly, what James Bond is doing in films would be as horrendous if it happened in practice as what was done in Paris last night. None of this violence is acceptable.

There is no need to go into details here, because there are plenty of examples. But while societies champion any form of black ops activity, they are also in effect giving some licence to the terrorists to defend their own despicable behaviour. This is no defence. There is no moral credibility in killing, maiming, or terrifying another. There is no such thing as “collateral damage”. There has to be an understanding that there can be only an absolute condemnation for all such activity.

The ISIL/ISIS/Al Qaida campaign and response can only stop when there is a clear understanding that terrorism is unanimously wrong. This needs to be clearly established in the West and in the Islamic world. It is a moral and a religious issue more than a political one. Politicians will always adopt a pragmatic goal, but we need to establish and re-affirm some absolutes because the rhetoric of retribution can sometime confuse the issue. These absolutes are already in the key texts but they need to be repeated because of the damage done to the texts by revisionists like, for instance, Khomeini: suicide is always forbidden in Islam and the death of any innocent is always forbidden in any conflict. These two statements alone rule out most of the acts of terror we have been witnessing recently. There can be no way to challenge this and we badly need a pan-Islamic council recognised throughout the Muslim world to champion this fact. Everything else is a footnote to this.

Then, we have to undertake as civilised societies to stop the secret war- to reign in the assassinations and the abductions. Bond might make great entertainment, but it is not the way to conduct international business or to fight this campaign. It is time to draw a line.

the refugee crisis – in Japanese

難民危機 – 子ども達を守れ
Refugee crisis – save the children

今日、私の頭は、ある「人種差別的」だと言われる日本の漫画イラスト画像のことで一杯だった。最初は、ジョー・サッコ(Joe Sacco)のような”天才的な”アーティストが描くような差別的な描写なのだろうと思っていたが、その漫画イラスト画像は、明らかに元の写真では笑みを浮かべていない少女がベースになっていた。だがイラストの方では、ニヤつくような描写があった。これは何か独特なスタイルなのかと思っていた。

My attention was drawn today to a Japanese manga image which had been described as “Racist”. I thought initially it was no more racist than something by the brilliant artist Joe Sacco, though the manga picture is based on a young girl who is clearly not smiling in the original photo. There is, though, a hint of a smirk in the manga. I assumed this was style or something.

そのイラスト画像は、この記事の一番最後に載せてある。

The original image is at the bottom of this blog

後になって、イラストの日本語のテキストを翻訳した記事を読んで、嫌悪感で一杯になった。あまりに一杯で、自分のメッセージとともにイラストを自分で描き直さずにはいられなかった。
その結果がこれである。

Later, I saw an article about this which translated the Japanese text and I was appalled. So much so that I have re-drawn the image and added my own text here:

Refugee girl_jpn translated

Screen shot 2015-10-12 at 20.05.57

このイラストは、6歳の女の子ジュディ(Judi)の写真を元にしている。漫画らしいスタイルを残そうとしたが、元の[写真]により同調的な仕上がりになっていればと思う。
このとても小さな女の子は、テントの街にいる。彼女がそこにいるのは、彼女の家族が、彼女を戦場から離そうとしたから。彼女自身がそう選んだからではない。彼女には、同情や憐れみ、そしてリスペクトが寄せられるべきであって、ハスミ氏が行ったような無粋な嘲笑の的とされるいわれはない。

14356161837_6548231bbe

In Glasgow, the Scottish MP Humza Yousaf regularly talks about welcoming Refugees.

グラスゴー(スコットランド)では、スコットランド議会のハムザ・ユサフ(Humza Yousaf)議員がよく、難民を歓迎すべきだと主張している。

私には、これは私たちの道義的な責務であり、文明国としての責任だと思える。それ以上に、EUでの国民投票が、前回の選挙の時のように、移民問題に落とし込まれないようにしなければならない。

It seems to me that this is our moral duty and our responsibility as a civilized country. More than that, we must ensure that the Referendum on the EU does not get bogged down, as was the last election, by a debate on immigration. The refugee crisis is set to continue for many years whether we are in or out of Europe and we will miss the opportunity to effect major change and reform in Brussels, or indeed to quit the EU project and forge alliances across Europe independently.

難民危機は今後、何年ものあいだ続くだろう。これは、私たちが欧州の中にいるか外にいるかの問題ではなく、またブリュッセルで大規模な改革を実施する機会を失うからだとか、EUというプロジェクトを棄てて欧州各国で同盟を作ろう、とかいう話でもない。

私たち [欧州市民]は、(1)差別主義者や偽善者に議論を支配させてはならず、(2)戦争の被害者に対する適切な対応を主導し、(3)救いを求める人びとに対して常にオープンでなければならない、ということなのである。

1) We cannot allow racists and bigots to hijack the debate. 2) we need to lead the way in promoting a proper response to the victims of war. 3) our doors must always be open to people in need.

オリジナルの宣伝(advert)では、こんなことが日本語で書かれていたらしい。

This is what the original advert said in Japanese apparently:

“I want to live a safe and clean life, eat gourmet food, go out, wear pretty things, and live a luxurious life… all at the expense of someone else,” reads the text on the illustration above. “I have an idea. I’ll become a refugee.”

Cartoon

アーティストのハスミトシコは、Change.orgのキャンペーンを受けて、画像を削除した。だが、本当の侮辱は、イラストよりもその文の内容にある。文の内容を把握すると、イラストの存在意義は全く異なるものになる。女の子の表情がはっきりしすぎているし、にやつきすぎている。きわめて失礼な描写なのである。

The artist, Toshiko Hasumi removed the picture after a campaign by a Change.org. It is the text that really causes offence here, rather than the image. But once the text is clear, the image itself takes on a new identity- the girl is too aware, she smirks too much. It is deeply disrespectful.

「それでも私は、何があっても謝りません」

と、ハスミ氏は言う。
「日本とは違って、海外では自分の過ちを認めたら必ず法廷闘争で負けるからです。」

 

“But I will not apologize no matter what,” she said. “Because unlike in Japan, you’re destined to lose in a court battle overseas once you’ve admitted to your fault.”

ハスミ氏はさらにこう主張する。
「このイラストは、全ての難民を否定するものではなく、本当に救われるべき難民に紛れてやってくる、より安全でより快適な生活を外国の地に求める偽装難民を揶揄したものです」と。

She went on to say that the image was an attack on economic migrants who are “pursing a safer, more comfortable life in a foreign land under the guise of pitiable asylum seekers.”

一方で撮影した写真家は、「シリアの人びとの窮状を貶める恥ずべき誤った表現だ」とし、「無垢な少女の子どもの肖像が、このような邪な偏見を表現するのに用いられたことに衝撃を受け、深い哀しみをおぼえる」と述べている。

The photographer said it was a “shameful misrepresentation of the plight of the Syrian people” and that he was “Shocked + deeply saddened anyone would choose to use an image of an innocent child to express such perverse prejudice,”

日本はシリア難民は受け入れないが、シリアやイランの難民支援のため8.1億ドルを拠出することを約束した。昨年難民申請をした5000名のうち、認定されたのは11名だったという。

Japan will not accept Syrian refugees but has pledged $810 million to aid refugees from Syria and Iraq. Of 5000 asylum seekers who applied last year, Japan accepted 11.

これはただの[支援の]始まりであって、私の日本の友人たちの多くは、この危機を打開するためにもっと為されるべきことがある筈だと感じていると思う。勿論、日本がもっとも影響を受けている国々を支援しようと考えることは間違ってはいない。

This is a start and I know many of my Japanese friends are keen to see more done to help in the crisis. Also, of course, Japan is right to support the countries most affected.
しかしハスミトシコには、疑問符のつく行動が見られる。とくに二次大戦中、日本に訪れた朝鮮人女性について、相当ネガティブなことを書いてきた。

Toshiko Hasumi, however, has a record of questionable behaviour and has apparently written fairly negatively about Korean women who came to Japan especially during the 2nd World war.
救いは、日本でこのことに対する怒りが爆発したことだった!

Thank God there has been outrage about this in Japan!

(here is another Japanese counter-image)

Screen shot 2015-10-12 at 20.07.21

Original post by: Tim Wilson

Translated by: Office BALÉS

Meanwhile here is another image that I am working on – The owl and the pussycat, having travelled in the Pea-green boat for so long, seek sanctuary in the land where the bong tree grows.

I am a bit cautious about using the image of the small girl, even in an attempt to refocus the debate or to undo the nastiness of the original. I think this debate should have its own mascot. Any ideas welcome!

campaign 1528a

owl and cat full flat

Reprinted from other posts on the internet:

Screen shot 2015-10-12 at 19.53.17

Screen shot 2015-10-12 at 19.55.24

Update on The Mikado project

Cartoon opera

yumyum

Gilbert and Sullivan is about as cartoony you can get- though Offenbach comes very close. I think animation probably lends itself to music that has distinctive rhythms and an interesting orchestration. The words seem to me to be less important than what is happening musically. Though of course the words tell the story. When the Disney people were animating “Fantasia”, the better animators trawled the score to identify the incidental tunes that lay under the main melody. There is a sequence in the Chinese dance in the Nutcracker where Art Babbitt has talked about “those nasty little notes underneath”. But Babbitt uses those “nasty little notes”! It is precisely this fact that makes the sequence stick out as something remarkable. Culhane references this in his book on Fantasia. It is worth looking at the dance in detail because the perspective goes all over the place and it still seems logical. In the same way, the instruments used to orchestrate a particular sequence will dictate a particular image.

Eric Goldberg animates on the beat and repeats a rhythm with the Carnival of the animals in FANTASIA 200o and Andreas Deja does it too in the same film with the barrel organ in Rhapsody in Blue. But I think Babbitt’s mushrooms still have the edge precisely because they take note of the intricacies of the orchestration and the repeated visuals (a visual ostinato) are not necessarily based on something obvious…

Here is a scene from Topsy Turvy which probably reproduces the original rehearsal process. certainly the story of miss sixpence is well-documented. It shows a nice instance of the move from caricature and implicit racism to something that draws its humour from observation of real life.

Here is the final product as done in australia:

I was playing around with the Three Little Maids from School piece at the beginning of the MIKADO.

This is the text: “Three little maids from school are we,Pert as a schoolgirl well can be,Filled to the brim with girlish glee–Three little maids from school.” David Watson has done a very clever arrangement.

I will post more on this shortly because it is an excellent example of a tune that does a great deal. The three voices (Yum yum, Pitti Sing and Peep Bo) are quite distinctive and the whole thing gallops along at quite a pace. Here are some sketches mostly of Japanese hair-styles…

3 little maids
Below is a page from the notebook on Trial by Jury the storyboards for which move slowly forwards…

trial by jury

Here are some backgrounds for the film. some of them are not yet coloured. All are based on prints of the period, though at the moment they lack appropriate kanji and I may change some of the details.

interrupt

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