Ball Bounce
We started off with a ball bounce exercise. After a short presentation about how the bouncing ball was the ‘foundation of all animation’ we moved on to filming reference videos. We recorded some of our classmates dropping and rolling a basketball, ping-pong ball, bowling ball etc.
(The bowling ball was the most fun to drop because it was super loud.)
This exercise wasn’t particularly difficult, it was very straightforward. However, I did find quite a bit of difficulty with the bowling ball because I struggled a lot with showing the weight– it ended up looking more like a squishy tennis ball. But as i continued on with practice animations i was able to get a better grasp on how to show the weight. (Also, being careful not to add too much squash and stretch, that was a habit a lot of seemed to have picked up.)
Follow Through & Overlapping Action
After the ball bounce exercise, we continued on with follow through and overlapping action. It was still closely related to what we were doing the previous week with the bouncing ball. But now we added a string to the end of the ball and animated the follow through.
First I duplicated a basic bouncing ball three times and then animated the follow through on various lengths of strings. As expected, the longest string was the hardest the animated and it took more ‘thinking’ than the other two. But in the end I was still able to get it. After that, I went on to do the actual assignment which was the character bounce. I chose a bunny because I thought it would be fun to animate the flappy ears–also it’s cute. I didn’t struggle with animating the ears, it was a lot easier than I expected. The only feedback I got regarding the ears was to make the tip of the ears curve out in one frame before going completely flat against the bunny’s face. After such a small change I noticed a significant improvement. I was also advised to add more squash and stretch. The part I struggled the most with was the feet, I spent the most time trying to figure out how to make it look good.
Pull, Push, (lift)
I started off the next task with quick thumbnail sketches of a pull, push, and lift after we had filmed references.
The easiest to grasp was the push, even without a reference I would be able to have a good understanding. The hardest was the lift because the character was directly interacting with another object and I found the poses awkward.
Since I found the push animation the easiest, I started with that. In order to get that shakiness to make it appear like the character’s body is tensing as it pushed, I redrew the same frame. It was a simple technique I picked up from another person and I found it extremely effective. Thanks to that I really like how the animation came out, however, I don’t like the end as much. I first tried switching the legs, then changed it to the character standing up. Neither variation turned out as well as I hoped. But i’m happy with the start. :]
For the pull animation i used the same technique of redrawing the same frame to get the feeling of tension in the character. This character was more boxy and bulky so it took some trial and error to make it move in a way that worked. Compared to the push animation, i’m happier with this one, I like the timing and the movement of the character switching to grab the rope with both hands. As well as the anticipation before it yanks on the rope.
Mood Walk Change
Personally, walk cycles are the absolute bane of my whole existence. Even just the basic walk with the character moving in place took a fair bit of time. Mainly because it took a lot of brain power to figure out how the legs and arms worked. I would stare at it for so long it just looked more and more wrong, but eventually I did manage to it figured out.
For the mood walk change, after the keys were ‘okayed’ by the teachers and they said that the emotions were clear i went on to inbetween them. It took so long so inbetween and I would’ve cleaned it up a little more if I had the time–but I did not. My favourite part of this is when the character runs off and the arms are flailing up in the air. After doing these exercises I can fully understand why animators avoid full body walk cycles and I 100% agree with that decision and I will be doing the same.
Quadruple walk cycle
Unsurprisingly, the four legged walk cycle was more confusing than the two legged one. It’s double the legs, double the confusion. Before we actually started the assignment, we spent the whole class sketching three different dogs that came in. That way we could better understand how the anatomy works and how the dogs walk, run, sit etc. I took a lot of videos to look back on as reference–not only cause the dogs were cute. And having that full day of just sketching really helped when it came time to animate because I barely found myself thinking about how does this leg look like. Instead I was able to fully focus on where the leg should go in the frame.
Animating a run cycle was definitely the easiest to do. It only takes about 5 to 8 frames and since the animal’s movement is bigger, animating the follow through on the ears and tail is way easier too.
Animating the dog took the first 3 hours of class–with a lot of distractions inbetween. I’m really pleased with how the tail and head came out. At first the head was pretty static, but after receiving feedback and fixing it, it flows a lot better with the rest of the movement. Since I finished earlier I went on to try a horse run cycle. It’s harder than it looks. The anatomy of the limbs aren’t drastically different from the dog, but instead of the paws it’s hooves. And I spent quite some time on the movement of the head. For my first time ever animating a horse it’s not too bad in my opinion.
I’ll probably have to animate more animals in the future for projects or just to practice. But at the moment, whether it’s a human or an animal, if possible, I want nothing to do with walk or run cycles.
Body Acting
Out of all the animation tasks we’ve had so far, I struggled the most with this one. Especially the main action of the character ducking down, then falling over. The first animation draft was more stiff and felt more realistic because I closely followed the reference video I filmed for it. I ended up having to redo the ending sequence and added more of an arc to the movement, rather than going straight down, which added more dynamic.
Facial Acting
I enjoyed doing this animation the most. The facial expressions were really fun to do, and it wasn’t too difficult since it was half body. While working on this animation I sort of started to think about and understand my animation style more. I believe my style is leaning more towards a cartoony, sharp and quick movement.
Lip Sync
I couldn’t upload the video for whatever reason but the dialogue is “ni hao, wo de ming zi shi Wang Yixuan. Wo lai zi sichuan. wo xi huan chi la jiao.” Surprisingly, the part I struggled with the most was coming up with a character design–I struggle with drawing real people in a characterised way. With this task I learned that anticipation can be done with more than just the body moving in the opposite direction of the main action, for example blinking, or the eyes moving first and the head following after.
The dialogue in this animation is “Oh! Your graded need Jesus”. The animation itself wasn’t too difficult to do, it went pretty smoothly. The area that was more of a problem was the lip sync itself because in the audio the words use very similar mouth shapes. So, I had to emphasis certain vowels shapes more, to make the lip sync more obvious.