Homework: Flour Sack Animation
For this weeks homework we were tasked with animating a flour sack jumping. The flour sack/pillow is great for beginner animators to practice as its simple form helps to experiment movement by applying the ’12 Principles of Animation’. For my homework I wanted to keep it simple and just do the flour sack jumping across the screen. I started first by drawing the sack sitting on the floor and worked in the next few frames to show ‘anticipation’ in preperation for the jump. I did this by ‘squashing’ the sack down and holding it for a few frames and then suddenly ‘stretching’ it into a leaping pose. Elongating the form to show the built up anticipation being released. Mid jump cycle, I then added a frame where the sack bends in half, simulating that the force of the movement causes it to be dragged in an exagerrated manner. On the decending motion, I again stretched the sack towards the ground to show the fast motion once again. On impact to the ground I once again squeshed the sack to show the force of the landing, with all the weight being compressed. Finially, to add dramatic affect I held the next few frames before then streching the sack back into a relaxed sitting stance.
Overall I really enjoyed this exercise and it taught me how to manage the timing throughout and got me thinking about how my subject moves in it’s environment. For example the inbetween frames show the anticipation leading to the jump; slowing the movement and then speeding it up through the jump (this is known as ‘slow in and out’). Meaning, that there are more inbetween frames leading up to an action and less whenever the movement peaks, giving a subject more realist movement.
Floursack Storyboard Exercise
To start class today we did an exercise where we had to all use the same storyboard, with a ‘Mage Floursack’. I enjoyed this exercise and found it really fun coming up with how I wanted this squence to pan out. My favourite shots are 2 & 3. The hand was meant to be comedic, switching from a floursack to a semirealist hand then back to a regular floursack. Then in shot 3, I used the sacks mustash and pulled it upwards to make it seem like the sack was smiling sinsterly.
Again, this was really good practice and I really enjoyed it 🙂
Straight Ahead Animation Exercise
After the storyboard exercise we then tried straight ahead animation. This type of animation is a great warm up exercise and I really liked how spontenious it was. For my animation I start off with a little circle and grew it slowly, once I say a shape forming, I could help myself and started forming an Among Us bean floating, whilst rotating it around. This was really lighthearted but also challenged me to thing about its form from all angles and I’m actucally quite proud of how it turned out (First attempt: video-12-01-22-05-32).
I wanted to try some more so I started another one and once I started to see a fox head forming and went from there. I wanted to try something a bit more ambitious so I attempted to animate the rest of the fox’s body slowing appearing from the behind the fox’s head. I also wanted to animate the fox changing into something else, which you can see at the end where the fox starts to crouch down but in the end I ran out of time. I like how this one came out too (Second Attempt: video-12-01-22-05-32-2)
Spirit Sky Fish: Storyboard
During this week I finished up my storyboard for my scene. I think it communicates the interact between Amaka and the the Polar bear well but I’m a little wary that it’s a bit long and maybe a tad ambitious. I really want to challenge myself and see how I can stage all my shots and push myself to create something thats not too straight forward. Like with the shot of the fox jumping into the snow and the bear resting her head by Amka’s feet to comfort her. These two particular shots are quite complex for a beginner like myself but I think it would benefit the results on the animation’s storytelling.
During class, my group looked at each others storyboards with each other and dicussed if we were all happy with how it all looked as well as if whenever the scene transitions from person to person made since. Isiah was the scene before me so I wanted to have my scene start with Amka walking with the Fox and the Boba (Whale) following after her. Then at the last shot of Amaka and the Bear watching the lights together, we would fade my scene into Lyndsy’s Scene of Amaka riding the Bear.