3D Bouncing Balls

Our first task in 3D was to animate a ball bouncing across the screen:

Whilst experimenting, I attempted to give the ball character and emotion, emulating a sigh and despondent movement:

2D Head Turn and Take

Next in 2D we were tasked to create a head turn, followed by a surprise take, with an attribute such as hair or long ears with which to demonstrate overlap and followthrough. To begin with, we had to create a turnaround showing front, profile and 3/4 views of our character. I decided to revisit my character Noelle, previously seen in A Walk Cycle, But Not.

Noelle turnaround.

First I worked out the basic movement of the head as it turned, and then recoiled in surprise.

I then added detail with the face and eyebrows, giving the character expression.

Next I drew out Noelle's hair, giving it drag and followthrough separate from the movement of the stiffer head.

Finally in the roughs stage, I sketched out the pupils, exaggerating their shrink to emphasise the character's shock.

I then inked the animation:

And lastly I added colour.

I am pleased with this work, however I know it is not as good as it could be - there are a few slightly odd movements in the top of Noelle's hair, particularly as she first comes to a stop after turning, and some inconsistency in the size of her eyes and the edges of sections of hair. I am most pleased with my final sketched version of this piece, and may revisit the inking and colouring stages in the future.

2D Flour Sack Jump

In 2D practice this week we have been exploring more anthropomorphised movement, with particular emphasis to anticipation and follow-through. To this end, we have been animating a a flour bag jumping over an obstacle.

To begin this exercise, I created a page of sketches, exploring the range of movement of the flour bag and how it behaves under different circumstances.

This helped me to get a better understanding of the weight and form of the flour bag, so I could begin my animation with more confidence, starting by drawing out some basic key frames.

I then played around with the timings, speeding up the initial push up into the jump and slowing the follow-through after the bag lands.

From there I cleaned up my timings a little more and created the linework for my animation.

I then added colour and a dropped shadow to my animation in order to give it a greater feel of realism.

At this point I realised that I had made a mistake - what should have been the slowest part of my animation was on 1s, as opposed to the 2s of most of the rest of the animation. This was fixable by removing some of the frames and adjusting timings, making the final animation look less wobbly and more smooth in the centre of its jump.

2D Waterballoon Bounce

This week we have been exploring the twelve principles of animation, working with squash and stretch particularly. To learn about this, we were tasked with animating a waterballoon bouncing across the screen in TVPaint.

We also looked into using different fairings to increase and decrease the movement speed (as seen in the screenshot above), giving it a slow-in / slow-out effect to make it appear more natural.

Once I was happy with the basic flow of my animation in 2s, I inbetweened the frames to bring it to 1s, before inking and colouring the final sequence.