This week is the first week of practical animation practice, and to begin with we are doing Timing and Spacing. This is one of the 12 Principles of Animation and it is used to show the speed of the animation. This is done through the use of different frame speeds such as drawing on every single frame (1’s), every other speed (2’s) or every three frames (3’s). Animation will most likely use a combination of speeds depending on the subject. Another way is by the distance of the subject in each frame. In other words, the closer the distance of movement the slower it will appear to be, while a bigger distance will show a faster movement.

The task that we were given was to animate different bounces of balls that are varied in weight. In this task I also took the opportunity to practice with the frame speeds. I decided to do a normal ball bounce, a rubber ball, and a bowling ball. With these different types I feel like I can achieve the right speed of motion for each.

This the my completed animation showing the different ball bounce types. I think I achieved the look I was after for this task.

Below is a screenshot of my work screen for this task. I went for a 3 in 1 look for the task as I thought it would look best if I wanted to show a comparison. The only difficulty with this was timing each ball’s bounce right so it would look off compared to the others. This really only happened with the bowling ball as it starts later than the other too. Saying that the rubber ball finishs much sooner than the others so it isn’t as pleasing as it could be.

Below is a image of the layers and frame speeds that I used for each ball.

Along with this work the final groups are to have a discussion about the chain animation project that we will work on. I am looking forward to working with my group, they are really fun people and they know what they are doing.

My group consists of eight people (including me). The others are Amber, Jodie, Joesph, Neave (Neab), Una/Jake, Thomas, and Leticia (Tish).

In our discussion we noticed that we had an even amount of people to the number of areas that there are in the world which are; City, Jungle, Mushroom forest, and Ice. Therefore we were able to split up with two to each area, with one person doing an entrance animation sequence and the other doing an exit animation sequence.

There were some people in the group who were quite particular about which area they wanted to do. I was one of these people and I felt like the city area was my best shot at in this world and I chose to do the exit portion of the city.

The story we are going with this is that the main two characters are going to go to each area where the meet up with a friend for a short time before leaving to go into the next area. The order of areas is City, Jungle, Forest, and then Ice. The group have already got ideas about the start and ending of the project, it is just the middle part that is up to each individual to animate.

For my part I have the idea of the two main characters running out of an alley coming towards the camera, a view of the character’s perspective, a side profile of one of the characters, then a jumping sequence coming down to the camera. I may do the jumping part in freeze frames as I think that will look kind of  dynamic. If I’m wrong then I’ll attempt a more flowing animation. I will also have to check up with Una/Jake about what the ending of their animation part will be.

This is a rough storyboard that has my idea planned on it. I haven’t yet drawn the characters yet myself so I’m going to need some practice with them before I can actually do this properly. May need to see if there are offical designs of these characters yet so I know what kind of style to go with.