Birds - Noah's Ark Zoo Farm
Here are two videos showing all of the footage of birds that I got when we went to Noah's Ark Zoo Farm. I have also slowed down some of the footage in order to analyse and watch the action much easier, being able to convert actions into key frames at a later stage.
Bird FlightThis image focuses more on birds in flight as well as taking off and landing movements.All of these clips are from a birds of prey talk that we went to, allowing us to get very close to these trained birds. The 25% speed of the first owl clip, is very interesting to look at how the owl prepares it's body before taking off, turning it around and lowering it. The wings of the bird in the second clip is good to analyse when the bird lands and keeps it's balance by using its wings a lot once it's landed. There's also a good preparation section before it takes off again, when it opens its wings before taking off.
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Birds 2Here is a wider variety of different birds and movements, including interesting walk cycles. The first clip shows a good close image of a bird taking off with a lot of action in the wings. The last clip with the big bird opening its wings is very good to watch as it shows how the wings are folded and used to make the bird appear much bigger and therefore more aggressive.
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Slimbridge
Here are several videos that I took at Slimbridge, which was a great opportunity to film lots of birds in a natural environment. Although there were loads of birds around, I still found it very difficult to capture good actions because they happen so quickly, therefore the videos below are a small selection of a lot of original footage.
Birds LandingThis is a video of mostly birds landing in water and on land.
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Birds Taking Off
There's an interesting clip on this video with a bird taking off over water with it's wings ripple the water as it skims across it.
Birds in Flight
This is mostly a collection of birds flying high up in the sky and so the birds are quite small in the video but you can see the main wing movements in order to see an average flight cycle.
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Stills from Video Footage
Here are a series of still that I have taken from each of the videos to be able to analyse all of the movements. From these I can make some thumbnail drawings to work out key stages in the movements.
Close-up Video of Birds in Flight
How do Birds Fly?
Below is a PDF document that I found on how birds fly. It has a lot of very useful information in it such as details on the landing and taking off, different feathers on the wings and what they're used for and different types of inflight movements. This has been a very big part of my research into the flight of birds.
Wing Shapes
To begin with, I looked at the simple wing shapes in a flight cycle of an albatross. This helped me to see how much the wing moves during flight and gain an understanding of the timing of each stroke.
Profile Bird
I then went on to study the wings from a different perspective and to compare the flight cycle of a different bird. This bird was smaller than the previous one and therefore beat its wings quicker than the bigger bird.
Albatross Flight Cycle
After watching the BBC video of how an albatross flies at http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/life/Bird#p00m8shb, I drew some more accurate stills and frames from the detailed video. This helped me to understand the flight cycle much better because the whole bird was clearer and drawing each frame in more detail meant I had to analyse the bird in more depth. After this I was then able work out the appropriate keyframes and the timing of each stroke to determine how many inbetweens would be needed.
Landing
I also then studied the landing of birds, again analysing the high-speed camera videos of the wood-pigeon and coal tit landing. These videos showed how the birds use there wings and bodies to create drag to slow down, but also have smaller feathers called alulas to maintain some lift, preventing them from 'stalling' and falling straight down.
This is a drawing of the coal tit landing on a perch which was very interesting to watch as it turned on it's back whilst still flying. I think this was to create more drag to slow down as it was approaching the perch quite quickly. |
Taking Off
After analysing the flight cycle of a bird, I decided to study the taking off process. When studying several videos closely, I have found that taking off requires the bird to create enough lift, mainly by using the powerful downward thrust of their wings, to be able to carry the bird's weight off of the ground. The high-speed camera video of a wood pigeon taking off was great to watch as I could clearly see how the wings work and understand the different forces that are used.
I created this image using charcoal as when I printed off these photos from a bird show that I saw, the motion blur was very interesting, indicating some the movement of the wing. Therefore I wanted to try and re-create this sense of movement and thought charcoal would be great to use.
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Bird Flight Cycle
This is a flight cycle that I animated by using my research drawings from the BBC video of the Knot.