Animation Foundations Caden Chan // n11736348

Hey!

This is a production book created to document my growth in character animation from Week 01 to Week 05 of this course. I've really enjoyed this first half of the semester going through each of the weekly exercises to build towards a solid understanding of the 12 principles of animation.

These tasks seemed so simple at first that I believed I already knew how to complete them. Needless to say, I was wrong. With that in mind, it is quite humbling to reflect on my work and see my progress across each week.

Three Character Poses

A deceptively simple exercise posing a bare bones character rig to express the emotions of excitement, devastation, and concern.

Excited

Pose for Grading // Excited Pose

This was the pose that really opened my eyes to how powerful a strong line of action supported by squash and stretch from the shoulders and hips can have on a character's expressiveness. I was also surprised with the feeling of balance this character had while standing with a curve in their posture. Overall very appealing with balance and staging creating a readable pose.

Process

Hands down the hardest pose for me to grasp as the first pose I attempted to hone in on staging and appeal. Balance was quite easy to grasp as all of these poses were acted out to ground them. It was a short coming in the other two principles that I saw were lacking in previous attempts.

This was an excited pose like when an athlete makes an energetic play and and screams "LET'S GOOOO!" Unfortunately, both the silhouette and emotion are not very readable with overlapping body parts and no face to sell the pose. Therefor the appeal of the pose is weak.

A more obvious pose for excitement than the previous that still falls short. It's kind of stiff with no curvaceous line of action. There's a lack of quash and stretch with shoulders and hips being parallel. Again, not very appealing.

This was the pose I was about to submit but decided it was still stiff. It's a big improvement overall and certainly appeal has improved but it needed to be exaggerated farther. In fact, this lack of dynamism kind of degrades the balance of the figure as the majority of body weight would pull the character backwards.

Devastated

Pose for Grading // Devastated Pose

Going into this emotion I had a clear vision for how I felt devastation should be portrayed. I made the character in a kneeling position with hands over their head to really enclose their body and make them feel small. It sells their inner turmoil and overall appeal of the pose.

Process

The biggest problem though was staging this character as a silhouette. Because they were so bunched up, it made all front angle views impossible to read when rendered.

That's when Cordell recommended to change the staging and try a high angle from the back. This not only found more negative space to show what the different limbs were doing, it acted as a story telling piece that further drove the emotion. A great lesson in the power of staging and how it can go beyond simply making the pose clear. It can be used as a storytelling piece to sell the message of a scene.

Concerned

Pose for Grading // Concerned Pose

The character is sitting and I've kept the seat out of the silhouette.

Process

Concerned was also a challenging emotion because without a face to show the character's anxiety, these sorts of poses can end up looking like frustration. That came from a quick search online from concerned and frustrated people.

(Wordley, 2019)

(Wayhomestudio, n.d.)

My focus on this piece was to nail the appeal of the pose with a readable silhouette that had the nuances of concern.

Character is looking down as if overwhelmed by thoughts
Hand makes contact with brow ridge with finger tips to support stressful thinking
Sitting down to put all energy towards thoughts

My first attempt was not as tense as I wanted and came out very relaxed as if it were a renaissance philosopher deep in thought. It needed to feel more rigid and enclosed to give off concerned vibes.

Our friend is pondering questions about the universe. I want concern instead, like concerned they won't be able to pay rent next month.

Head Turns

Having to make two head turns at different speeds makes for a great way to cement my fundamentals in creating engaging character motion.

But damn, what a struggle it was getting to these final products.

Fast Head Turn + Blink

Process

The fast head turn was based entirely on the pose to pose method that helped me plan out the major beats of the animation. I modelled my process one for one as shown in the video tutorial below to really understand how effective the pre planning effect that pose to pose offers.

(I Want to Be an Animator - Animation Tutorials, 2017)

I also wanted to make the head turn look more interesting than just a person looking across the screen. I'm happy it ended up looking appealing thanks to the addition of squash and stretch. I originally did not have any of it in my animation. This surprised me since I had everything else honed in like my timing and keyframe spacing matching perfectly with the tutorial. My extremes looked expressive, breakdowns were timed correctly, and in-betweens made slow-ins and slow-outs look crispy.

Once again, Cordel blessed me with some wisdom. Even though I wanted a realistic looking head turn, squash and stretch was still needed to communicate the action for appeal. People won't realized their looking at an exaggerated and squished body part; it happens so quickly that people only see the overall motion that its communicating. A big tip that really elevated this submission.

Slow Head Turn + Blink

Process

Yeah, I also felt my heart flutter when I saw this guy for the first time.

I wanted to try something more challenging with the slow head turn. Adding in rizz seemed like the best way to do that by bringing in personality to this character. This funny clip was really challenging and forced me to do way more research than my other work.

Below are two references I worked from; footage of me acting out the scene and professional work from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. Having video of me doing the shot helped identify the kind of mannerisms that go into such a bold motion and the Spider-Verse helped me see how to make the holds on action expressive.

(Sony Picture Entertainment, 2019, 0:07:17)

While the fundamentals I've described in the fast head turn are present here, I really focused on arcs and holds on action. The impact of the movement from the awkward phase to the rizz phase rides on the dramatic swoop of our friends head instead of just moving linearly towards the camera.

Spider-Verse really conveys natural human conversation through consistent and subtle facial movements when moving, speaking, or idling. It was those details I noticed and tried to translate into my animation in the awkward phase and at the end when the full rizz is in action.

Pendulum Swings

Simple exercises that allowed me solely focus on overlapping action, drag, and follow through.

Love it.

Simple Pendulum Swing

Process

From start to finish, this swinging motion was a pain in the ass to get down. I had no idea how motion decays when an objects is swinging. After working it out, I believe I was able to achieve some believable follow through. This animation looks like an accurate depiction of the gradual decrease of swing speed and maintaining continuous motion.

Originally I thought that swing distance shortens exponentially over time alongside time between swing cycles. I ended up with something that looked unrealistic.

With a little advice from Cordel, we got what ended up being my final submission. Learning that each swing took the same amount of time regardless of speed made a huge difference.

Also, observing real pendulums showed me that the swing distance decays linearly and no exponentially as I thought. Real pendulums being the computer mouse hanging off the wire. This contributed to a graph shape below and a very realistic animation.

Drag Pendulum Swing

Animators Note: I couldn't be bothered animating the pendulum slowly winding down after the final stop so lets pretend there is a brick wall that the ball hits at the end to stop.

Process

This one was also tricky to get down as I wanted to make the movement appealing and snappy. It made overlapping action complex as movement compounded overtime thanks to principles of follow through and drag.

Follow through caused the pendulum ball to swing higher and higher as the pivot stopped and change directions. Drag added more energy to the ball and caused it to spin higher and higher at every stop. This created the result of overlapping action where the pivot and ball were acting based off different forces and yet were still connected.

Because this was such a unique movement, I didn't think there would be online references. Therefor, I created my own by swinging my headphone case from the small loop sown onto it. Surprisingly, it taught me how to move the ball on the pivot very well.

References

[I Want to Be an Animator - Animation Tutorials]. (2017, March 7). HOW TO ANIMATE A CHARACTER TURN ▶️▶️▶️ TUTORIAL #05 (Beginner level) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/cMo970mew7c?si=zGU06TPKvz7vt7h4

[Sony Picture Entertainment]. (2019, March 1). SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE: First 9 Minutes of the Movie - Now on Blu-ray & Digital! [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/zzH4rV08TLI?si=3jQRFcp8wxwnEzqX

Wordley, S. (2019). Portrait of african american adult in pain with sad and exhausted face looking concerned, worried and thoughtful in human emotions, facial expression [Stock Image]. Alamy. https://www.alamy.com/portrait-of-african-american-adult-in-pain-with-sad-and-exhausted-face-looking-concerned-worried-and-thoughtful-in-human-emotions-facial-expression-image259112263.html?imageid=DD9655CF-234A-4785-9D86-C509BFC88800&p=56602&pn=1&searchId=a6159374501c54808fdbd6f87968a746&searchtype=0

Wayhomestudio. (n.d.). Photo of frustrated young afro american woman has headache keeps hands on temples suffers unbearable migraine [Stock image]. Freepik. https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/photo-frustrated-young-afro-american-woman-has-headache-keeps-hands-temples-suffers-unbearable-migraine_13956870.htm#query=frustrated&position=7&from_view=keyword&track=sph

Appreciate