Animation Fundamentals-Task 1: Project1

  26/9/2024 -  /9/2024 (Week 1 - Week 4)

Yang Jiayi / 0369288 
Animation Fundamentals
Task 1: Project 1

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Instructions

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Lectures

Week1-Understand the module topics

In the first week, the teacher gave us information about the modules for this semester and explained the principles and history of animation.

fig1.1 Walking Segment

fig1.2 Animation Introduction

Week2-Timing, Spacing , and Arc

The teacher introduced us to the basic buttons of this software

F5：Insert keyframe 

[Shift] + F5： Delete keyframe

fig1.3 

Week3-Squash & Stretch, Drag, Follow through and Overlapping

Squash and Stretch

This principle defines that the animation object will become longer or flatter due to speed, momentum, material and mass. The ball bouncing motion we made this time is based on this principle.

Squash and Stretch gives the illusion of :

•  Elasticity of the material
•  Flexibility of motion
•  Life

Animation Methods: Pose to Pose and Straight Ahead

TYPE OF POSES:

Straight Ahead：Draw the number of pictures in sequence, basically urging you to animate as you go along

Pose to Pose：Draw the beginning and end of each pose, and later start filling in the missing parts in the middle

• KEY
• EXTREME
• BREAKDOWN
• INBETWEEN

fig1.4

Week4

APPEAL

Anything that person like to see such as:
- A quality of charm,
- pleasing design,
- simplicity,
- communication,
- magnetism

A weak drawing lacks appeal such as:
- complicated or hard to read
- poor design
- clumsy shapes
- awkward moves

Spectator enjoy watching something that is appealing such as:
- an expression,
- a character,
- a movement,
- whole story situation.

Line of Action

A line of action is the imaginary line running through a character that describes the direction and motion of his body and is the leading force of a character's action.

fig1.5 

Silhouette - Negative Space

Negative space, or the empty space around your character, is very important to your posing.

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Exercise

Week2

The bouncing process of the ball is an acceleration process, so when adding keyframes on the arc, pay attention to the number of balls. The number of balls in the rising arc should be more than the number of balls in the falling arc. I made some adjustments.

 Create three paths. The ground and bounce paths need to be inserted until the 24th frame is locked. Then fix the position of the ball. First fix the beginning and end of each bounce, and then add keyframes in the process. Determine the position of the added ball by the appearance of the drawing paper, so that you can better observe the position of the ball.

fig1.6 Animation Process

fig1.7 Animation Process

Below is the ball bouncing animation I made

Attach the Adobe Animate file :

Link:https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Qq1Gmwynq3m0YsV9dfhi_ODXQh2KVzs-

Week3

This week in class we practiced how a ball is squeezed and deformed during its bounce.Add a tail behind the ball，we need to draw the direction of the ball's tail in each frame and adjust it to make it look realistic.

When the ball bounces, it stretches most when it is about to touch the ground. Do not overuse the deformation principle.

fig1.8Ball extrusion process

fig1.9 The process of adding a tail to the ball

Here is my practice video 2

Attach the Adobe Animate file :

Link：https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Qq1Gmwynq3m0YsV9dfhi_ODXQh2KVzs-

Week4

Project 1A - Character Design

The Project 1 consists of 2 work progressions:

1A - Character Design (Week 4) 

This week we started Project 1. To draw a character of our choice, we needed to set up a character description. This is the deliverable for Week 6:

Deliverables:

A turnaround sheet / Model sheet (front, side, back and ¾ view perspective)

Pose sheet (Various poses in different emotion / action) - 5 poses *full body

Character facial expressions  - 5 expressions * focus on chest up

Here are my reference pictures：

fig2.0 Drawing reference

fig2.1 Drawing reference

fig2.2 Drawing reference

I want to make a girl who looks mean, I like this style

Character setting information：

Gender：female

Age: 20

Weight: 50 kg

Attitude: Looks cold on the surface, but is warm-hearted on the inside.

Personality: This is a girl who doesn't want to be in trouble, but will definitely help once help is needed. She is enthusiastic and her MBTI is I.

I want to create a girl who looks cold and ruthless. My idea is to use darker colors to design the appearance of the character, and set the ratio to 4:6, which is more in line with the cold image. Glasses seem to be her umbrella, but when she takes off her glasses, she is still a cute little girl. This is a portrayal of my past self, and I want to express it through animation.

Here is my draft drawing：I studied the human body structure and completed the draft through my settings

fig2.3 Character Turnaround Sheet

fig2.4 Character Poses Sheet

fig2.5  Character Expression Sheet

After I finished the rough draft,  This was a long and arduous process. During the production process,but drawing the human body structure is not easy.

fig2.6 Detailed image

fig2.7 Detailed image

fig2.8 Detailed image

After I drew the details, I started to color it. Here is the final product:

fig2.9 Character Turnaround Sheet

fig3.0 Character Poses Sheet

fig3.1 Character Expression Sheet

Project 1B - Environment Design

For this work progression 2, you will be creating layout designs for an animated project using perspective. Your designs will be used as backgrounds for various scenes in the animation.

This is the reference picture I used when I first designed my draft. It is from the streets and alleys of Japanese comics. I want to show the feeling of the protagonist walking in the dilapidated alleys.

fig3.2 Reference Image

fig3.3 Reference Image

Before starting, simply sketch the object based on the established perspective relationship and volume.One-point perspective must eventually converge to one point. Only when the perspective is ensured can we proceed further.

fig3.4 Perspective Lines

Next I started to design my sketch and imagined the characters being placed in the center of the main street.

fig3.5 Line drawing sketch

After the design sketch was finished, I started to color it, and then added the characters. My characters were added to the shadows of the scene. I deepened the color and drew out the shadows according to the relationship between light and shadow.I turned the character upside down so that walking to the other end of the picture would give the picture a sense of extension.

fig3.6 final environment design

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Reflection

In this course, I came into contact with AN. This was my first time learning this software. In this project, I learned a lot of animation drawing skills, which made me understand the basic knowledge of animation. I think it is very interesting to turn static things into dynamic ones. I drew a lot of sketches in completing this assignment. I failed several times and made mistakes several times, but I learned from my previous experience and calmed down to redraw. In the beginning of the practice, the linear bouncing ball animation was difficult to make, but through the teacher's explanation of the working principle in class, I followed the teacher step by step. This assignment was not very difficult, so this is generally a good warm-up exercise.