As an aspiring animator, it is important for you to learn about and understand the skills and techniques used to create visual art. The ability to visualize objects to then draw, paint, sculpt, or otherwise reproduce them accurately is a skill that you can learn. Therefore, a knowledge of basic shapes and their physical properties is helpful to you in your quest to become an animator. The recent animation lessons served the dual purpose of teaching you about objects made in common 2D and 3D shapes while also bringing to your attention the fact that you see these shapes every day. You can find basic and common shapes such as squares, triangles, cylinders, rectangular prisms, and cones in your house, on your job and in many other places. Since we see objects in these shapes on a regular basis, it makes sense to also learn to animate them. Some examples of objects in these shapes are listed below.
Circles/Spheres
Basketballs, donuts, and globes are easily recognized as circular and spherical in shape.
Other items that can be drawn as circles/spheres include fists and character’s heads.
In our previous lessons, we learned about how common 2D and 3D shapes can be made into anthropomorphic characters. Below is an image of a donut character, which has a circular shape along with an anthropomorphic circle character.
Mickey and Minnie Mouse are two popular and well-known characters that can easily be drawn using circles.
There are also other characters that are made in the shapes of circles/spheres. Some examples include Mrs. Potts, the teapot from the animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991), and two of the characters from The Angry Birds Movie (2016).
Squares/Cubes
Some television screens, boxes, and dice are easily recognized as being made in the shapes of squares and cubes.
Squares/cubes can also be used to create anthropomorphic characters like the ones shown below.
Rectangular Prism
Gift boxes, mailboxes, and DVD players are all recognizable as being objects that are made in the shape of rectangles and rectangular prisms.
Here is an image of an anthropomorphic character in the shape of a rectangle.
Some well-known cartoon characters are also created in the shapes of rectangles and rectangular prisms. Some examples include SpongeBob SquarePants who is made to look like a regular kitchen sponge in the shape of a rectangular prism. Also, Betty Boop and Jimmy Neutron both have rectangular prism-shaped heads. Can you see that? They are drawn to be funny looking characters.
There are other popular and well-known characters that have also been created in these ways. Lumiere, the candlestick in the film Beauty and the Beast (1991) is drawn using cylinder=shaped candles.
Mrs. Potts’ son Chip, the teacup, is drawn in the shape of a hemisphere.
The character Phineas Flynn, who stars in the cartoon series Phineas and Ferb, has a triangular-shaped head.
Some characters have oval-shaped figures and/or heads. Others have egg-shaped figures and/or heads. These include Arthur Read aardvark, Looney Tunes characters Elmer Fudd and Tweety Bird, Humpty Dumpty from the film Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016), and Mr. Potato Head from the film Toy Story (1995).
There are even some characters who have heads shaped like footballs! These include Stewie Griffin from Family Guy and Dora the Explorer. Arnold from Hey Arnold! also sort of has a flattened, football-shaped head.
This information is helpful to those who are interested in learning to become animators because animation is a process. The animation process involves making many drawings to create the illusion of movement. Anthropomorphic characters and objects are drawn to appear to be alive. This is done by drawing them many times in successive poses to create the effect of animation. Think back to how you learned to make flip books. Each movement of an object or each pose in a character’s movement is drawn on a separate piece of paper. When the pages are flipped, it looks like the character, or the object is moving ON ITS OWN. In other words, the character or the anthropomorphic object is made to LOOK LIKE it is alive.
This process takes place by creating many, many, many, MANY drawings of the same character or object. However, each drawing is slightly different depending on how the animator wants the figure to move. To demonstrate, watch the following YouTube video in which we see an artist who animates a drawing by creating a flip book. This is the same video featured on the CARE Now website under the heading STEAM Animation Education. In each example, his flip book has about 20 pages. This means he draws the figures at least 20 times and makes small changes on each page to make it look like the figures are animated.
The point I am making is that as an animator, you will get used to making many, many, MANY drawings of characters, figures, and objects as you animate them in a project. This is the main reason that animators and artists who develop cartoon characters create them in common shapes. If the characters are created in these ways, they are easy to duplicate. Copying, redrawing, making slight adjustments, and coloring characters with basic and common shapes is easier and less time consuming for all the artists who will eventually work on completing any particular animation project. Another example you can look at is the following Rollercoaster Ride Animation. This animation was completed in Microsoft PowerPoint with clip art.
The image below was used in the Rollercoaster Ride Animation. It is an online clip art image that was manually moved along the image of the track in each slide. Then, the slides were set to advance automatically which made it appear as if the car was moving along the track on its own – in other words, the rollercoaster car was animated. This is an example of animation. It took 111 slides to complete the entire animation. That is one hundred and eleven slides. And it took quite a long time to complete. A long time and lots of patience. However, this was done with a clip art image. It would have taken much longer if each part of the image was drawn by hand.
The clip art image includes a car that is rectangular prism shaped. However, the heads of the two patrons in the car could have been made easier to draw and less time consuming if the heads were more circular. A rectangular-shaped car with two people with circle-shaped heads with circle wheels would be much easier to draw and redraw to animate than the clip art image that was used.
“Animation requires a lot of images.”
Since we now realize that animation requires a lot of images that are only slightly different from one another to make a character or an object appear to be moving, let’s look at some examples. Here is a group of images found online that are drawings of Mickey Mouse in what is called a Run Cycle. An online search for the definition of a run or walk cycle returns the following results:
A run/walk cycle is a sequence of frames or drawings that depict a character running/walking. Animators use run/walk cycles to save time and effort, while still creating smooth and realistic movements for their characters. The sequence is used repeatedly in an animation to create the illusion of continuous motion.
This particular run cycle has eight (8) frames or drawings. They are all slightly different and when put in successive order on a flip book, for example, Mickey Mouse appears to be running across the page.
The following YouTube video shows how it would look if the frames were put in order in one place. When this is done, he appears to be running in place.
The following video is a faster version of the same run cycle animation.
Character Walk Cycle Demonstration
Here is another group of images found online. These are images in a walk cycle. This walk cycle has nine (9) frames or drawings. They are all slightly different and since they are png images, when they are placed in successive order with a background, the young man appears to walk across the room.
This is a slow version of a walk cycle animation demonstration. It was made using Microsoft PowerPoint. In the demonstration, the young man begins from a non-moving position and appears to walk across the room from right to left.
The following video shows a faster version of the walk cycle animation. Each of these demonstration videos were completed in 22 slides.
This walk cycle animation is featured on the CARE Now website under the STEAM Animation Education heading as an animation practice lesson. You can find instructions and images there to create this animation.
Mickey Mouse Disney Animation example
The following two images show Mickey Mouse walking. Notice that one is a static image of him walking in mid-stride, while in the other image, we see him walking in a clearing with a small town behind him in the background.
In the following YouTube video, we see Mickey Walk across to the middle of the screen, turn, speak to the “audience,” wave, and then walk away. We now know that an animator created this animation by drawing at least eight drawings in a walk cycle that were then put in successive order so that it would look like Mickey is walking across the page.
*Quiz Question – How many total frames do you think were necessary to complete this animation? (Note – I do not know how many it took and I know that the answers will vary. However, logical, reasonable, educated guesses will be accepted, and you will get it right if your answer is close to my best guess.)
These examples demonstrate the fact that it takes many, many drawings/frames/images to animate a character or an object. However, the important thing for you to understand at this point is that visualizing common shapes that are easy to draw makes the animation process easier and less time consuming. It also makes it so that you can have lots of your friends to help you complete your animation projects.
In conclusion, here is an animation practice video that you can watch to get some ideas for objects you can practice drawing to animate. Until next time, have fun learning!