After refreshing our minds with storyboards and showing our pitch videos/audios, we moved onto making a rough of our pitches/previs this week in hopes of experimenting with references we collected and putting in key frames from the start to finish with significant poses to showcase. Once I showed both of my pitches to my lecturer Sarah, she thought my second pitch which featured audio from steven universe with Steven and Spinel involved the characters mental breakdown more than the other and better acting. I acknowledged her option and went ahead to work on an animation that conveyed emotion more than the physical actions in one shot with the body and posture. So once the choice was made I recorded myself for reference of movement between two characters this week to aid me in the animation sequence for staging and to experiment with my movements put into the rough sequence with secondary action included while remembering the principle Staging for a quick recap.
But to understand the breakdown of the characters sadness and rage I went back to animated shorts, shows and movies I had watched before excluding steven universe to glimpse at different mental breakdowns and collided them together to come with their emotional collapse with overthinking and over flowing emotion act first than the physical. Also watching the breathing patterns as they try to breathe with the anxiety/fear they feel and the shaking of limbs from each different scenario of losing hope and filled with anger.Β
Taking my pitch idea and references I’ve moved onto my previs/animatic immediately and starting going through the process of animating the characters through pre production using the principles of animation and the skills I’ve developed from the last assignment. I started with the simple item of the prop which in this sequence is thrown to the ground in a fit of anger by Character A. For this I added an arc to the moment the plate is lifted and thrown like a ball to the ground but breaks on impact to help guide Character A’s throw and function of the arm going down. I added in more arcs for the characters rotation of the body, head, arms and the positions of the mouth, eyebrows and expressions after adding in the roughs and frames.Β I got references from other sources such and worked on the prop/item with Character A throwing and smashing down in anger to the floor, using an arc to help with the direction of the throw. I then focused on Character A’s rough sequence with head turns and adding a nose and mouth (but no lip sync yet).
The rough animation was fun and interesting, taking time to focus one task then the next with arcs, line of action and timing for sequences. Even when I couldn’t see myself filling in the colouring, clothes and appearance details for the characters in the next few weeks but I plan for at the end of this pipeline to make it clean and clear once I get the roughness out of the way after the final video is done.