Weekly Summaries- Dynamic Animation- week one

Weekly Summaries- Dynamic Animation

Week 1: (29.9.17)

What I learnt:

In this week’s sessions, we were introduced into the brief; we will be learning the fundamentals of 2d movement, beginning off with paper than using software. We will learn space, framing, movement and walk cycles. It’s important to refine by making further iterations and additional versions of exercises and extend our learning with research to truly understand the core skills. We will be focusing on weight/effort, speed/acceleration, stretch/ squash and impact/reaction. It is advised that we work quick and loosely, and to constantly refine yet learn from our mistakes. Some of the 12 Principles of animation that we were taught:

-exaggeration

-ease in/ ease out

-Follow through

- Squash & Stretch

- Anticipation

We were also given our first task, the pendulum swing. With this animation exercise, we had to focus on forces, for example gravity, resistance, centre mas. At first, we did a stop motion version of the pendulum swing on dragon frame, as a reference and practice. My first test was not as smooth as I would have hoped. After this, I created a diagram labelling when I should take the shot for each frame. And where the extremes, passing point and in-betweens were. When I worked out the frame rate, and when frames should begin to increased, I started my 2d pendulum swing on F12 paper. We learnt that adding more in-betweens decreased the speed of action. After creating the pendulum swing, we had to develop it further by creating a pendulum clash. My ideas first began off with having a spray can stop the pendulum swing by stopping it with foam, however I decided to go more imaginative and challenging by having a wizard character slowly ease himself into the frames and with his wand, attack the pendulum with a spell, causing it to clash down.

Progress this week:

 I later on decided to water colour in each frame for the pendulum clash test, however this consumed much time. Also, this week, we had a guest lecture from the animator Barry Jc Purves, he talked of using metaphors to create meaning with in animation and the importance of using artifice to reveal the truth. I decided to analyse his work on a PowerPoint to conduct information that will help me with my animations later on.