Practice Based Research – MA Character Animation

This unit has been very challenging; I’ve made lots of mistakes, spent hours trying to fix them and had to start whole projects again! However, when I look back on where I started in September, I am very proud of my progress.

Tuesday’s stopmotion workshops have been my favourite days. I love making analogue things with my hands and physically moving them frame by frame. I find it therapeutic, and I will explore more stop-motion techniques in future animation projects.

Attending Vanessa’s life drawing sessions has helped me gain more confidence in gesture drawing. I have actually begun to enjoy drawing humans in a more realistic way (not just as robots or creatures!) Learning ‘The Bean’ technique has helped me to understand proportions of the human body better, which has benefited my 2D hand drawn exercises. I found the perspective and colour theory classes very interesting as I’ve never thought much about the science and maths behind them.

I’ve pushed myself out of my comfort zone and tried to take every opportunity to learn something new. I need to worry less and enjoy the process more.

Bouncy Character Exercise

Learning how to animate a bouncing ball

Bouncy Ball Video Reference
How does a foam ball bounce?

Experimenting scratching circles onto old film. I really enjoyed playing with this technique and hope I can go back to it!

Initial Test: Experimenting with exaggerated squash, stretch and timing.

Test Two: I like the firmness, but the lines are changing thickness and the drawings aren’t spaced out correctly.

Experimenting with claymation

Shocked Frog

Character Design and Inspiration

Sketchbook – working out the design and movement.

2D bouncing Shocked Frog done on Animate.

Unfortunately I forgot to take pictures of the claymation process but here is a screenshot. Cut and rolled out clay on a Lightbox, shot overhead.

Lift/Push/Pull Exercise

First Attempt (TVPaint)

Adding in-betweens to give a smoother movement. I need to watch the shape and size of the head, and the bottom is moving around too much.

Second Attempt (puppet)

My design, ‘The Robot Caterpillar’, painting

Drawing a simplified design for the puppet

Sketchbook

Shooting

First attempt in stopmotion.

Mood Change Walk Exercise

New video reference for the second mood change walk

Silent Film/ Body Acting

Initial idea, before I knew we had to use someone else’s character!

Izzy’s Character Design

Identifying the keyframes

Drawing the keyframes

Adding the rough character on top

After feedback from the tutors, my story was not clear enough. Instead of a fish, a fly will suit the movement better. Please see this in my submitted animation.