This module focuses on the use of the animation principles to create a scene that focuses on acting and staging, we’ll be focused on using several characters to create animation that has an action and reaction.

For this project the characters Tom and Jerry have been chosen as their rigs are flexible and allow for a lot of acting choices, like smears and squash and stretch across a lot of the body. More subtle details are whiskers and hair fluff that have the ability to be used for overlap and follow through

(Animation / Cartoon Animation by Preston blair)

Another reason for choosing these rigs is that Preston Blair’s original version of his Advanced animation book has a lot of references to Tom and Jerry as they best showcase the ideas of fundamentals he presents with animation and even though the rigs are 3D hopefully the ideas of his work can be translated to 3D with success.

The first thing done was finding various Tom and Jerry cartoons and finding examples of the two characters actions in their original works, this helped figure out what best works for the two.

Going through example of classic cartoons and finding examples of actions I’d like to recreate was the starting point, slapstick violence requires a lot of sharp, fast timing and spacing as well as using squash and stretch to feel the impact of an hard object against another.

Taking screenshots of Tom from a Tom and Jerry episode using a bat, his anticipation and Arc, mixed with some overlapping action. Brought together to create the idea of weight being lifted, and the arc for a clear understanding of where the bat is going. A smooth C shaped arc and then a hard straight line for when it reaches the peak the release of the hit is also a similar C shape arc even the settle is an arc so in total 3 C shaped arcs to create the hit with the baseball bat.

Another part is timing, with easing in and out, the bat has weight to it with the use of easing hanging on the bat for slightly longer creates the weight, its not a light object so there has to be a moment to show that there is weight to it.

The initial hit of the hat has secondary action with spike being hit and his face squashing and stretching, this helps push the idea of the weight against his face as well as a way of quickly identifying the impact of the bat. Taking these factors into consideration when animating the bat swing will help create the illusion of a heavy object affecting the world around it. Action and Reaction is an important factor to also consider throughout.

(Cartoon Character animation with Maya, Mastering the Art of Exaggerated Animation by Keith Osborn)

In Keith’s book about Maya animation he expresses his desire to create a cartoony characters and begins this process with breaking it down into 4 sections, the Confident walk, Antic, Smear and “Vibration” these together create the idea of his animation. Firstly the breakdown of the keys to help understand the entire action is useful technique in figuring out the important parts of the scene, secondly he always ensures the character has a clean easily readable silhouette to understand everything that happens and lastly isn’t afraid to completely break a character in order to push the exaggeration of the character with the smears. These rough sketches are the foundation of the entire animation and thus several iterations are done to figure out the strongest poses.

Later in the book he shows off his method by using Tween machine and creating the breakdowns with it as well as discussing how to exaggerate the character’s movement to create a toony way of moving, this is similar to that of Tom and Jerry and thus shows just how flexible the method is.

This part of the book describes his need to input another breakdown before the final settle and helped understand that sometimes adding more in-betweens can benefit the movement this was a problem that was occurring frequently in the previous animation specifically limiting amount of in-betweens rather than potentially adding/removing some to help make the animation snap more.

A large factor in creating quick solid movement is the use of smears as it makes up some of the information that gets lost during a transition, its similar to motion blur too as it smears details that have a similar look in real life. Richard Williams shows examples of how t o use it for transitions, smearing the faces and parts of the body even if it looks off it works and feels good in motion.

Breaking the Joints is another property that Richard Williams discusses and gives examples of, having the arm and hand drag in a way that the elbow is leading the action so that it creates a flow, even if realistically it doesn’t work like that. Drag and Overlapping action follow similar ideas as they don’t always follow the main action but have reactions based on them.

Taking these elements from the books helps create fundamentals of creating an animated scene as well as using the principles of animation to help create the illusion of life.

Once analysis has been done for Tom and Jerry, what was next was considering an idea to create, this involved sketches and thumbnails to understand where elements of the screen and what the characters will do.

The initial sketches of Tom and Jerry, extremely off model but rough to bring out more ideas. It’s about quantity over quality at this stage and thinking what sort of way the principles can potentially be utilised throughout.

Posing expressions and trying to be somewhat more on model. Line of action and thoughts on perspective, staging/appeal and some dynamic movement were being considered.

The storyboards for the short scene, it depicts Jerry holding up a block of cheese and then devouring it becoming a block of cheese.

The shape is a reference to an episode of Tom and Jerry were Jerry is depicted swallowing a whole block of cheese and becomes a similar shaped piece.

Then Tom shows up, showing off a smug demeanor which is the start of the conflict as Tom wishes to dispose of Jerry. However he’s unable to due to his own overzealous behaviour he ends up hurting himself in the process however he has his revenge and Jerry is smug knowing that he’ll fight back.

The boards here have an extra scene of Jerry fighting back however this part was ultimately cut due to time constraints and the focus was what we originally had which was just up to Jerry being crushed.

This was a practice piece of just the two posing, getting acquainted with Jerry’s Rig and seeing how the two balance off of each other. A lot of Jerry’s Controls weren’t turned on or adjusted as much as Tom’s which made certain poses awkward to place with him compared to Tom.

The key poses from the storyboard taken and posed out into the scene, aiming to keep them accurate while also adjusting parts to try and keep the staging as clear as possible.

Posing being as clear as possible is the ultimate goal as later on in the process the animation will become easier to read as the poses will be clear.

Once the keys were done the inbetweens were next,a lot of anticipation, drag and overshoot to use of Arcs. The Arc’s felt like they were the most important as legs, arms, thighs, head all follow some form of Arc.

A pretty common element used throughout was smears, this was used whenever parts of the body moved extremely fast so it helps read better where parts of the body are going. Squash and Stretch was a fairly common way of achieving this, with drag as the palm is what’s pulling the entire motion forward.

Squash and stretch was applied to the face to help with fast motions too, a way of adding a bit more life to the animation as the speed can cause parts of the body to shake or wobble and this was the way to achieve that.

These two screenshots show exaggeration, (Touch and foot) to help push the idea of “Pain” hitting him and to highlight the area in which he is in pain. Pushing the expression can help quickly identify what emotion the character is feeling and what will happen next.

The second screenshot is of the arm, even though it isn’t exaggerated the arm is bent back to follow the ideas of Richard William’s proposed in which it can help push the animation’s flow by not always following the rules of the world.

These two screenshots show two parts of the body that had a lot of overlapping and secondary action as they both almost followed their own path while the body and head were moving. The tail swings around to follow Tom but also can have a mind of its own, the ear can change depending on emotion too but is more dragged around by the head. These two properties were considered throughout.

2 weeks into the project there was a showing on the progress we had made throughout and some helpful reviews were done a lot of the changes with this specifically relating to timing, and it was just to hold some poses for longer the two above are the movements that most requested to “hold” this would help read what the animation was and overall the feedback helped create a clearer understanding of the poses.

The first pass of the tom scene, all keyframes were in and timing was tweaked constantly to try and achieve a clear emotional and flowing animation. The timing of the hammer hasn’t been refined yet here and thus has a light feeling to it, it’ll be adjusted to be heavier and weightier throughout. The swing of the hammer is also too fast feeling like a light item and not something with weight, slowing it down and adding some easing in and out would help achieve that as well.

Video reference footage taken to help understand the movement of the heavy object from lifting to putting it down on the shoulder, the arcs, anticipation, easing were all considered when analysing the footage as well as general timing as reality can help understand that.

Another important thing was the overshoot and impact the heavy object has on someone when it hits their body, what the body does was considered like the thighs shifting weight and parts of the body that were impacted shift to help react to the object.

Lastly was the second part and that was the hit, even though later on in the scene the hit was a lot faster this one was considered with the intent to be a slower and heavier feeling also how someone would hold a hammer over their head and the swing is brought down as well as how the hands and movement happens. A sharp strong arc as well as overshoot, overlapping action and some secondary all help push the speed and power of this.

Another video reference this one to help with the idea of weight and how people position themselves, however this wasn’t the main focus it was mostly the easing in and out as well as general feeling of weight throughout.

In future the changing of the pose to focus on the realism might help with having a stronger pose that follows a realistic way of moving however the goal of the entire project was to focus on more exaggerated cartoon-like animation and not realism.