Ideation
The original concept for my 10-second short started with a simple idea: a waiter carrying a plate of jelly. The goal was to showcase the animation techniques we had been practicing, particularly ‘squash and stretch’ and ‘follow-through motion’. However, as I began brainstorming, I realized that while the jelly could demonstrate these techniques, the premise on its own lacked a strong narrative hook. I wanted to add some suspense and humor, so I shifted the focus to a food critic waiting for her plate of jelly, only for the waiter or chef to drop it before it reached her table. This added a bit of drama, but the food critic still didn’t feel like a fully fleshed-out character. So, I revamped the idea again: now, a cleaner who had just finished mopping the floor would be approached by a chef carrying a precariously balanced cake. This final concept felt more dynamic and gave me the opportunity to explore both timing and character interaction in a way that added depth to the story.
Storyboards and Character Design (since this was hand drawn and I wasn’t using puppet rigs)
For the character design of the chef, I aimed to use soft shape language to give him a friendly, approachable presence in the scene. I chose a pear-shaped body to emphasize the squash and stretch principle, allowing for a bouncy, fluid walk that would help convey a sense of liveliness and warmth. This shape also reinforced the idea of the chef being amiable and a bit comical, as his body would compress and stretch with each step, making him feel more dynamic. Since he was holding the cake prop, the design also helped demonstrate the follow-through motion technique—his body movements would cause the cake to tilt, further adding to the playful nature of the animation and bringing extra visual interest to his interaction with the environment.
For the cleaner, I wanted the design to evoke a sense of relatable exhaustion, so I gave him an arched, lanky body, almost like an adolescent part-time worker. His posture—slouched and slightly deflated—captures the weariness that comes with a monotonous, menial task like mopping the floor. This body language not only adds a layer of humor, as the character’s physicality contrasts with the livelier actions of the chef, but also introduces a bit of pathos. By embodying the tired, unappreciated worker, the cleaner becomes a figure the audience can empathize with, even if just for a moment. His exaggerated lankiness emphasizes the effort he’s putting into the task, making the moment of him being interrupted by the chef with the precariously balanced cake both amusing and, in a way, endearing.
Storyboarding helped with refining the pacing of the short, as it allowed me to break down the action into specific moments and experiment with timing. Initially, I had envisioned the scene unfolding from a single, static angle, but storyboarding revealed that the shot composition could be more dynamic. By adding extra shots, I was able to explore different perspectives and focus on individual aspects of the scene—such as the cleaner’s tired movements, the chef’s wobbly cake, and the tension building in the scene—without feeling rushed. This gave me more breathing room to emphasize key moments and created a more engaging viewing experience. Shifting between angles also helped maintain the flow of the animation, preventing the action from feeling too repetitive, while still keeping everything within the tight 10-second window.
Animation Process
I began by animating a bouncy ball for the chef, as this simple shape would provide the foundational motion for his walk. The bouncy, fluid movement of the ball helped establish the overall rhythm, which I then applied to his walk cycle. To refine the movement of his feet, I referenced a 3D walk cycle of Kirby, as both characters share a spherical shape and large feet sticking out beneath them, which made their movement mechanics similar; https://youtu.be/eJvLtLWonSg?si=parCDQrT_FKEF1JE
To emphasize the chef’s weight and the bounciness of his walk, I drew his waistline as a line with a sloshing wave motion, reflecting the shifting energy in his body. When it came to his arm swing, I initially struggled with how to rotate his hand to make the movement feel natural. However, while animating, I found watching Gravity Falls helpful for understanding hand shapes and the transitions between them, which gave me a clearer direction. Although I was pleased with how the final walk turned out, I found it more challenging to maintain fluid motion in his arms, which were constantly changing shape and position. The body’s repetitive path of motion made it easier to manage, but keeping the arms in sync with that flow required more attention to detail and subtle adjustments.
For the cleaner, I started by animating with long, cylindrical shapes and hosepipe-like lines to contrast the chef’s roundness and emphasize his lanky, adolescent form. This design choice helped reinforce the character’s youthful, tired energy while maintaining a visual contrast to the chef’s more fluid, rounded movements. However, I quickly ran into challenges with animating his leg movements while keeping the upper torso in place. The cleaner’s body had to move more sharply and quickly to convey the need to finally finish the task of cleaning. This made it difficult to keep the same fluidity as the chef, especially since quicker movements required fewer frames, which in turn made the animation appear jittery. Balancing this sharpness with the cleaner’s natural, sluggish flow took some trial and error, as I had to ensure his overall movement still felt cohesive with his character design, while avoiding the stiffness that came with fewer frames.
Reflection
My time management on this project was significantly impacted from the very beginning, as I had to undergo major surgery shortly after it was assigned. Although I was granted an extension, working from home presented its own set of challenges. Without my Wacom tablet, I had to rely on less efficient tools, which slowed down my process. Because of these setbacks, I unfortunately had to omit certain features from the scene, such as the animation of splats of icing from the cake hitting the floor, as well as the wobble of the chef’s hat, which in the end looked far too jittery to be included with the rest of his motion. I also made the decision to animate the cake separately from the rest of the scene and to add it in during the editing process, as I thought this would save time by including it as an overlay on the original footage, but adding keyframes and using graph curves to change the speed of the cakes movement took away from some of the follow-through motion I had intended to illustrate with the prop.
Additionally, I missed the in-person interaction with my classmates, which made it harder to gauge whether I was keeping pace with the rest of the class. This lack of direct communication meant I had to rely more on self-discipline, which sometimes felt isolating. Reflecting on the project, I’ve realized that I need more practice when it comes to transitioning between poses quickly while maintaining fluidity in the animation. I also see now that experimenting with timing and pacing is essential, particularly when a character needs to move faster. Understanding how to animate faster movements without sacrificing the consistency and flow of the scene is something I need to explore more. This experience has shown me the areas where I can improve, both technically and in terms of workflow, and I’m looking forward to applying these lessons to future projects.
Here is the full 10s short:
