This will be a long post containing the work I created for the first two toolkits. For both these toolkits I chose 2d animation, as I wanted to choose something that would aid the main project I was doing at the time, the cats and dogs horniman animation.
Generally, the toolkits focused on practicing a principle in 2D animation, ranging from things like squash and stretch to anticipation. I already have some experience with these principles, but practice makes perfect and I was able to polish my skills a bit through the toolkit. Below, I’ll attach videos accompanied by a bit of text explaining what the task was. I completed these animations all on Krita.
squash and stretch
This was a simple ball bounce animation, to practice the principles of squash and stretch. It’s a simple beginner’s animation, so I didn’t have too much trouble with it.
This was a second squash and stretch exercise; the goal was to animate jelly being penetrated by something, and stretching out as jelly does. I chose to have a character push his finger into the jelly from the top; However, I was advised to consider the qualities of jelly and it’s transparency & movement a little more, as it kind of looks more like dough in my animation.
For this animation, the goal was to have the ball interact with something that was applying force to it; we had to make the ball get hit with a bat. The feedback I received was to 1. apply more overshooting to the bat, as it looks awkward when it stops suddenly after hitting the ball and it’s unrealistic, and to also avoid using things like big spiky marks to display that the ball has been hit, as the focus should be on the movement. As a personal point I feel it would’ve been more interesting to animate in a more 3d space, with the ball getting smaller as it goes off toward the distance.
2. Anticipation
For this animation, the goal was to use anticipation; we had to have a character interact with a ball, either kicking it, batting it or throwing it. For my first anticipation task, I chose to make the character kick the ball, but with a twist; he breaks after kicking it, as it’s solid. I challenged myself to try making the character expressive, as I thought it would add to my overall idea; I think it turned out well.
Here, I chose to animate a character throwing a ball. Acting on my self criticism for the ball being hit with a bat, I wanted to try and envision a 3d space, allowing more movement for my character. The advice I received here was to have a small moving element, such as a jittering eyebrow, on the parts where my character is still, to avoid making it look like they completely freeze before finishing their actions.
5. overshooting
The last task for toolkits 1 was to create an animation with overshooting; small things that stop moving just after the big object they’re attached to has stopped moving, such as hair on a head. I used a bunny character, and made his ears overshoot. The advice I received was to avoid a mistake I made on the 2nd head turn; the ears start moving before the head, making it look like the the bunny is being dragged. Overshooting should happen just after movement stops.
5. character acting
toolkit 2 was about character acting; how we can characterise characters through their movement. The first task was to sketch up a quick character using simple shapes, displaying their personality; we’d then go on to animate this character doing something that would express their personality to viewers. I used my character, Alf; he’s a mischievous young boy who enjoys messing around and slacking off. I tried communicating his characteristics through his expressions, but looking back I think I could’ve made his traits more outstanding and noticeable through a single drawing with a more dynamic pose and exaggerated face. I was also told to avoid patterns and things that are hard to reproduce in a character design, such as Alf’s hair and the lines on his hat and zipper.
I went on to animate a short video showing off Alf’s power and love for fighting. The animation is pretty stiff; I’d like to take on the advice of simplifying designs and ensuring that they’re re drawable for future character animations.
For this task, we had to animate a person walking like an animal; I chose a crab. We were challenged with not using video references, and instead getting up and acting the motion out ourselves. This was effective as we could feel the shift in weight, allowing us to better visualize subtle details that we may have missed through videos. The advice I received here was to be less careful with the detail in the drawing and to focus more on the movement of the character, as well as to practice anatomy to better portray the pose.
The task here was to animate a character moving along the stage, and one of the prompts was a character chasing a fly. I chose to use a cat, as i thought it would be fun to work with a non human character. Initially my cat had no tail movement; I was advised to add it as it’s a subtle detail that adds a lot of character to the animal, along with his hip shake before jumping. I was happiest with this out of all of my toolkits 2 work, as I feel I clearly communicated the cat’s frustration to the audience, and it has a fun ending.
The task here was to animate a witch attempting to hang up a broom that doesn’t want to be shelved. My feedback here was to 1. again avoid using added things, e.g. the ellipses that appears next to the witch’s head, to express her feelings, as it distracts from her actual actions which are more important, and to keep the size of my witch consistent as her legs got longer when she fell onto the floor. (unfortunately I can’t find the file where I implemented these changes, but they did make a difference. I added a sigh to the end instead of the thought bubble).
The final task was to create a scene for an ‘exquisite corpse’ animation; scenes made by multiple different animators and combined into one long flowing video. We had to have a character interact with this pole, dethatching the top half; the character would then reattach if before leaving, and the first and last frames had to be empty. I chose to use a witch character who bumped into the pole and broke it, before fixing it with magic. I wanted to play around with anticipation, which I used before the pole broke, and other principles, such as squash and stretch for the broom and overshooting for her legs when she landed on the floor. I was happy with the outcome, as I liked the way it looked when combined with the other animations.
Overall, these two toolkits have been helpful in giving me some practice in animation, and in challenging me to create things quickly without too much planning and clean-up. It has changed the ay I approach animation, as I now prioritise movement more than I previously have. I look forward to further developing my arsenal of 2D animation skills.
