You will choose two of the five objects listed below, and will use your research to inform the creation of animations which use these objects. Within your sketchbook there will be evidence of concept development, planning of path of action, key poses and storyboards for both animations.
| ball with tail | cannon | car & balloon | scales | jumping frog |
Once planning is complete, you will produce the animations using two different methods: one will be produced using traditional hand drawn animation and one using digital animation. Both animations will demonstrate your understanding of the principles of animation and Newton's laws of motion. Each animation will use keyframes and in-betweens, will play at 12 frames per second and will be no more than 48 frames in length.
To begin with, I chose to do Ball with Tail and Cannon as my two objects. I knew that Cannon would be far more easily achieved digitally as there would be a lot of constants within the animation, so I began with that.
Much planning was put in before any work was started digitally, with the characters, objects and actions developed in depth beforehand.
The storyboard, which in the end only utilized the top 5 images due to an underestimation in length:
From here I went on to produce the final animation:
For the Ball with Tail traditional animation, character design was again, highly important, and thus I came up with a variety of concepts:
From these concepts, I chose my favourite, and like the digital animation, planned out the motions and timing:
With the plan fully established, I went on to hand draw the animation, resulting in 27 individual drawings, which were then photographed and put together as an animation on Flash:
We were then given the following brief:
The flour sack is a character conceived by the Walt Disney Studios to focus an animator’s attention to the volume, weight and timing of the animation of a character. It also allows a range of performance opportunities for the animator. Using the flour sack, you will choose a scenario from the list below as a basis for a simple story starring the flour sack.
| Flour Sack Animation - select one of the following as a basis for your concept: |
| 1. Balancing on something/ Clinging onto something |
| 2. Preparing to jump off something |
| 3. Waiting for something |
| 4. Running away from something/chasing something |
| 5. Hiding from something |
Once you have chosen a scenario for your character, you will develop this into a simple story which will last a maximum of 20 seconds. The animation should establish the character, the conflict and a resolution during this time. You will also get to know your flour sack, what sort of personality does the character have? What does the character like or dislike? How might this affect the way the character reacts to the story?
To demonstrate planning of the sequence, you will produce a series of storyboards which detail character performance, body language, staging and action. The storyboards will present your concept clearly without supporting notes, symbols or arrows. As the animation has a short timeframe, the storyboard process will allow you to iterate the concept to ensure the simple story is clear and that character action reads.
I began with two concepts for the animation I was to produce. The first was for 'Preparing to jump off something' where a macho flour sack shows off on a diving board before leaping off to the water below and gets devoured by a shark:
However, I felt this idea had little thought or reason behind it, so came up with an alternate idea where a dough-brained flour sack chases a butterfly excitedly, before the insect flutters it's way into a bug zapper. Even though upset and disturbed by this turn of events, the flour sack quickly forgets the late butterfly as he is distracted by a second one:
From here I developed the story board for the final animation:
The brief continued with:
You will produce a short animation sequence based upon your storyboards from task 3. The animation will be in a 2D digital animation package. The animation will be a maximum of 20 seconds in length. Within this time you will introduce the character, present the conflict and the resolution. Within the animation you will maintain the volume of the character and will convincingly animate the character's weight in line with their movements. You will also consider body language and its effect in the creation of personality and emotion.
The sequence should demonstrate the principles of animation, and convey your understanding of their application within an animated sequence. And so I created the final animation based upon my storyboard and concepts:
