Week 2: Flipbooks and the 2 Second Animation

Week 2 had a much more hands on approach to work, after the general admin work of week 1. Week 2 started the first taste in to the world and working of animation. This week had us looking at movement in animation. In particular, the principle of squash and stretch, this principle involves the exaggerated constricting and stretching of an object when it is animated to bring the object to life.

Task 1: The Flipbook

The brief of the flipbook task, was to make 3 (using what we had learned about the principle of squash and stretch) flipbooks. One, with a ball bouncing up and down in place, the next, bouncing up and down, but arcing off to the side and bouncing away, and the third, to create one of our own, based on the principle of squash and stretch. The one I chose to do is a small cat like character bouncing up and down, after a few failed attempts at other things. It took a few attempts at the first one too, with the original bounce, due to me overcomplicating things for myself, so I restarted and was able to manage all 3.

What I could have done better:

All in all I think the flipbooks went well, however there was obvious and somewhat simple mistakes which led to restarting a couple of times, and changing ideas for the third one. Often what was happening was I was squashing the objects down, however I was not stretching them back up again, so it always felt like their was a frame missing from what should have been a fluid animation, I also struggled to properly flip the books which probably didn't help.

Task 2: The 2 Second Animation

We were taught about the use of traditional animation, and how to pull this off, and were given a task to make a traditional animation using a pendulum swing, just to test the ropes of how to make this look fluid and with proper physics. We were then given the brief to make a 2 second animation, with an object going from one place to another, within the 16:9 window which would make the animation compatible with a regular screen view. With my general interest being in character's. I just to do a character running and jumping, however, this caused me a lot of problems. I was struggling to keep the same proportions from one frame to another and I was overall unhappy with how it was turning out, which brought about the first change of idea. I decided to do a small egg character falling down and hatching, but after a while I felt this idea was uncreative, and I wanted to push myself more, which led to the 2nd change in idea. From here I decided to go back to the idea of a character running, but zooming in on the top half of a character to make it easier on myself, however again, I was struggling to keep the proportions from frame to frame. With the hand in coming ever closer, and having changed my idea 3 times over, I decided I needed to make it simpler, and bring it right down to the simplest possible thing, so I changed the idea to a small circular robot, which would launch up and fall down, I wanted to show a lot of emotion in his face, so that even though the idea was very simple, it would at least show some technique. The idea worked, and the animation came out fluid and simple, however there was definite problems. which I would definitely change given the opportunity.

What I could have done better, and what followed:

I could have added in more realism to the robot, and had his antenna on his head move with the movement of his body, which would have added some extra depth to the animation. Overall, I am unhappy with what I produced, I could have made something more complex. and the idea was far too simple. I am now working on a new one in my own time with a character walk cycle, although I met the brief to begin with, I, myself am unhappy with how simple and overall unimpressive the idea is, and how it was pulled off. I am hoping the character walk cycle will work out better for me.

Week 1: Introduction and the Principles of Animation

Week 1

Week 1 had no animating per say,  we were given an overview of the course, with some small tasks here and there, but the main takeaway I got from the week, was the principles of animation, as well as being shown some animations from the past years to give an idea of what I can achieve by working hard for the next 3 years.

Principles of Animation

1. Squash and Stretch

This is exaggerating the bounce of an object to make it more alive, the best example is using a bouncing ball, the way it squashes down and stretches with making contact with another object.

2. Anticipation

This is the communication of what is about to happen, and the thought process of the movement that goes into an action. This is the stage that sets up the action of a certain character or object and how it is about to move.

3. Staging

This is "setting the stage" like in theatre, when you are setting about the general mood of a scene or a specific character by communicating the idea through imagery to the audience

4. Straight ahead and Pose to Pose

Straight ahead animation is animation frame by frame from scratch without the use of key frames. Usually a spontaneous action which cant be mapped out, such as smoke dissipating or very exaggerated movement.

Pose to Pose is mapping out the key frames first, in order to better relate the idea of a scene through specific action,

5. Follow through and overlapping action

This essentially is the way an object or character moves after the main action has taken place. To make the action seem more believable, in that the body should not stop moving after an action has taken place.

6. Slow out - Slow in

This is the reaction of the human body of slowing down and accelerating for certain actions , this is affected buy the amount of frames in an animation, with less frames in a faster actions, and more frames for a slower action.

7. Arcs

Most actions in animation will follow an arcing  motion

8.Secondary Actions

A secondary action is an action which supports the primary action, basically an action which follows on from the main action to make the first action more realistic or exaggerated.

9. Timing

Timing, in my opinion, is the most important principle of animation, the timing of an animation could make or break a successful movement and it determines when and how the animation is going to fit together. It is helpful to use references from real life to help with the timing of an animation.

10.Exaggeration

Exaggeration is another important principle in my opinion, exaggeration is a property of animation which you often cant get in real life, making the animation bigger, faster, with broader actions, to make the animation more imposing and more visually interesting for the audience.

11. Solid drawing

It is important in any art form to make the drawings solid, this will give more life to the animation by making it clear to the audience what is being animated.

12. Appeal

The basis of any animation depends on whether the animation is visually appealing. The animation has to have colours relating to the subject matter and appealing characters which will hold the audience's attention.