The theme for my animation will be recycling.
Here are some concept sketches. They were to get across the theme and tone of the animation, as well as work on ideas for shots. They show different perspective and movement drawings, such as through the last drawing, which captures the moment he’s hit by the bottle and his reaction/expression.
Here is the storyboard showing the outline of the story. It shows a character who doesn’t care about recycling. He throws a piece of paper into the bin, but when a bottle he kicked misses the bin, he doesn’t care. The bin spits the bottle back out and hits him in the head.
Here is the character design. I designed this character to be a top heavy, athletic bully. The character doesn’t care about the environment as displayed by the drawings of him kicking the bottle. His actions show an act of defiance. As he doesn’t care about the environment, the sketch shows the bottle he kicked coming back to attack him. The last 2 drawings were to work on my anatomy, perspective and to convey movement.
These are clips that will show what the finished animation will look like through small segments and how they will look before they are put together. These clips are presented chronologically of when they were made, rather than through the story of the animation.
– For the beginning scene, I am planning on implementing a spinning camera shot. This is my first time doing something like this, so it’s a bit patchy. In this first scene, I wanted to convey this character’s disrespect of the environment by grimacing at stories at the awful things happening to the environment.
– This next scene also conveys this through his body language (expression, actions). He spits out a cigarette to show this as well. The animation in this scene has some layers (the newspaper and it’s pages) added on top of the animation. I had some difficulty aligning his actions with the layers.
– In the next clip, I changed the angle in a profile shot. He’s in a standing position ripping apart a newspaper. In this instance, I wanted to display the joy he derived from ripping apart the newspaper. I tried to add some perspective in the animation through the arms. I had some difficulty with it, but I think it came out fine. I also tried to add some effects animation with the ripped paper flying in the wind.
– In this scene, the character gets hit with a bottle. For this segment, I decided to do it entirely in watercolor. I did this as the change in style would be more impactful for the scene. It used less drawings and the animation for the bottle was only 2 frames, but I did this as a way of showcasing speed. The impact of the bottle had a frame with the character’s colors all messed up. I was inspired by a scene in Ed, Edd n Eddy for this choice through the exaggerated facial expression. The change of colors helped with the impact frame for a more dramatic effect and gets the impact across in the frame. The scene ends with a watercolor painting as I wanted to experiment with another medium in my animation. This is referred to as a Harmony cell. This was inspired by the work of Osamu Dezaki, as one of his directing techniques was to have a more detailed animation frame cap off a scene to give a sense of impact.
(This is an example from Space Cobra (1982-1983) episode 6, which Dezaki directed.)
This was my favorite part to animate for this assignment as it allowed me to try out new things with the visuals and to experiment.
– This part shows the character tossing a piece of rubbish. I used smear frames for his arms in order to make the arm movements look faster.
– This sequence shows a bin coming to life due to the incompetence of the main character by having him throwing a recyclable item into a non-recyclable bin. The bin shakes violently and becomes angry with the main character. The shaking was rendered by first having a solid drawing of the bin tilted on both sides and when it becomes faster, it’s rendered as a linework to indicate speed.
– This is the ending sequence that I made as a reference to the endings of classic cartoons like Tom & Jerry or Looney Tunes. The character was done in permanent marker to look like a silhouette in the distance, with each frame of the character becoming smaller to visualize the distance.
I created the hole by drawing a circle on a piece of paper, rendering the outside portion in ink and cutting out the circle.
I cut out the circle by jabbing a pencil into the paper and using scissors to cut around the hole to make a circle. I made 4 of these pages with each circle becoming smaller with the final one lingering for a bit longer than the previous ones to further replicate the ending of Tom & Jerry.
– This sequence shows the character crumbling up a piece of paper while noticing some bins. In the scene, the character stares down the bins and then 2 black bars appear to mimic the aspect ratio changing. I drew these bars by inking an entire page with a black permanent marker and cutting the page in half vertically.
The black bars appearing and covering everything but his face is a homage to action movies when a character meets an opponent, as the bars give a dramatic effect to the scene.
– This is a paper ball flying through the air due to being thrown. I took multiple pictures of a crumbled bit of paper from multiple angles to make it look like it’s spinning through the air, then drew them and cut them out.
We follow the ball into the bin where it turns completely black. I used a marker to render the inside the bins to make the ball easier to read when it lands inside the bin.
– This shows the character staring at the bins and then digging into his pockets to look for a bottle. I did a smear frame for him putting his hand into his pocket.
– This shot has a bottle falling down and then getting kicked back into the air. With this segment, I tried to experiment with the way I draw perspective. While the bottle is falling down, I drew the bottle at several angles and sizes to replicate the look of it spinning and falling down from a high place. I also did this by having the perspective of the character from showing to the top of his head to a full body shot while the bottle is falling. The frame of him kicking the bottle is done in permanent marker and is completely in black except for his foot and the speed lines behind it to give more impact to the kick visually.
– This is the character’s hand tossing a bottle in the air so he kicks it when it comes down.
I referenced the hand from my own, as well as having a photographed reference of me holding a bottle.
– Here is the character after getting hit with the bottle. He runs away after getting freaked out by the bin coming to life. The injury he received has been visually exaggerated through his goofy expression and the details such as the missing teeth and the broken finger.
– Here is the bin turning into a cannon to fire the bottle back at the guy. I was planning to have the bottle blast out of the top of the bin, but it wouldn’t make sense with where the bottle was fired from, so I decided to for something more surreal and funny. It looks like the bin is powering up through the animated sequence through it becoming smaller, rumbling and then shooting out the bottle.
– This shows the bin getting angry at the character for throwing the wrong item into him. It shows the character silhouetted walking way from the bin.
– The main character is flying through the air due to getting hit by the water bottle. For this animation, I tried to emulate speed by taking the shot with camera while moving it in the opposite to the direction where the character is going (character is flying towards the right, so I moved the camera left). This gives the movement a motion blur effect so it looks like he’s going really fast. When he flew off the shot, there is a crash effect with some dust particles as a way to give his injury more impact.
– This is a shot of our main character noticing some bins after ripping up a newspaper. I had the most trouble with drawing this shot, because I could never get the perspective right with him having his hands in front of him.
– This is the final shot that I did for my project. It shows the character putting his hand in his hoody pocket to pull out a bottle. Like one of the previous shots, I used my own hand holding a bottle as a reference .
These are various sketches I drew while animating to get a feel for what each pose would look like as well as to sketch out what the movements will look like.
