Final Lip Sync Animation

I enjoyed animating the lip sync project. For this one, I animated a music-video-style lip sync of Phil Collins' Don't Lose My Number. I used a combination of puppets and frame by frame animation. Miming the lip movements was a lot less complicated than I thought it would be. I took reference footage of myself to animate the lip sync, which helped considerably and also assisted in my understanding of the various mouth shapes that certain letters and sounds make. I also gained more experience using pegs and timing the keyframes. All of the animation was completed in Toon Boom Harmony, which I then exported and transferred into Premiere to compile and edit the clips. I also spent a day and a half coloring the backgrounds and scenes, but of course, ended up slapping a cool black and white filter that Premiere had on top of it in the end anyway.

Puppet Animation

For the puppet animation, I decided to do something that I could use for the final lip sync project. This time, I chose to animate Phil Collins drumming. Assembling the puppet was rather simple but still took longer than I had predicted it would. However, the peg system made animating the movements a lot easier than frame by frame, as I was able to easily edit the timing and snappiness of the movements.

Walk Cycle Animation

Animating the walk cycle presented some challenges for me, but overall, I very much enjoyed the project. I chose to animate a clip of Phil Collins from the Genesis music video "We Can't Dance". I took one full walk sequence from the clip to use as the basis of the entire walk. Because of the way he steps in the sequence, I had to align each drawing in order for it to appear as though he was walking in place. Then, I put the camera on a peg and moved it across the stage to present the illusion that he was walking across the screen. I had to mess around with the alignment of the drawings to ensure a smooth walk cycle, which was slightly difficult, but definitely proved easier than how I had completed the walk in my weight animation, since I only needed to align the steps of one walk cycle.

Adding the music was a last-minute decision, but is one that I am glad I made, as I feel it really ties the animation together.

Weight Animation

I very much enjoyed the weight project. I chose to animate the character Moomin, from the Swedish series The Moomins. For this animation, I had two components to animate: Moomin, along with the heavy body bag he drags across the screen. Looking back, I probably could've made things a little easier for myself had I put a peg on the camera to create the illusion of movement, as it was fairly easy to animate the first time Moomin pulls the bag. However, for the second pass, I copy and pasted the sequence and individually moved each layer over to show that Moomin was moving backward, which was quite time-consuming. Nevertheless, I had a good time animating the sequence, and I also believe it helped prepare me for the walk cycle, since I had to animate the foot movements as he stepped backward.

Head Turn Animation

Compared to the flour sack animation, I originally had less fun animating the head turn. At first, I found it rather difficult to keep the character on-model while switching perspectives, so I worked around this by working with guidelines and marking out the proportions of the character's facial features. Unlike the past two projects, I did not ink and color this one, but it is a decision I'm ended up being ok with as I was able to devote the most time to ensure the movements of the turn made sense and the proportions were consistent. 

Flour Sack Animation

I very much enjoyed the pantomime exercise drawings as well as the final flour sack animation. For my flour sack, I decided to animate a scene of grief. It was certainly difficult to translate the emotion of sadness onto a flour sack with no face or real appendages, so I made the choice to exaggerate the emotion of sadness by mimicking the shaking of a dramatic, physical sob. I originally wanted to have the flour sack throw itself onto the gravestone before throwing its head back and shaking its "fists" at the sky, but decided that it would take longer and might jeopardize the quality of the final animation given the time constraints.

Overlapping Animation

I had a more difficult time coming up with what kind of scene I wanted to animate for this project than I did with the bouncing ball animation, most likely because both the subject matter and action were entirely up to me. I decided on having a character, which at the last minute ended up being a bird, ride upon a ski lift that malfunctions and speeds off for added comedy. Originally, I planned on having the lift slow to a regular stop, reverse backward for a bit, and then stop again before speeding off back up the line, which I thought seemed simple enough to do. I ended up shortening the sequence to only coming to a single stop before speeding off, as it took me quite a bit of time to adjust the velocity of the lift peg to my liking. To achieve the constant slow speed at the beginning, I ended up starting the peg very far off to the left, whereby the time the peg would enter the frame, it would be moving very slowly. It also took a bit of time and patience to adjust the movement of the lift jostling after it came to a stop, since it wouldn't be realistic to have it remain completely still when it stopped. This was also true for the character, as I had to be mindful of even the slightest movements of the head, body, and legs at each point of the lift's movement.

Because I did the last project in black and white, I decided to work with full color and a background for this assignment, which I very much enjoyed. The bucket tool was especially helpful when filling in tighter spaces that required color. The only trouble I experienced occurred when importing the background, as it imported into Harmony smaller than I expected it to, and thus lost quality when I had to resize it to fit the frame. Overall, I ended up enjoying this project more than I expected to, as I was at first dreading having to finish it, mostly because I was having issues figuring out the right velocity for the peg.

Ball Animation

To give the ball some character in my animation, I wanted to have it interact with the space in a way that addressed the viewer, which is why I chose to have it crash into the screen. When initially planning the path that I wanted the bouncing ball to take in my animation, it seemed simple enough. However, as I was sketching the ball in motion on the path, I had to remember to utilize the squash and stretch of the ball at the appropriate times as well as make sure the spacing and timing made sense. The first time that I sketched each position of the ball, I figured I was set to draw the final version. But once I pressed play to preview the animation, it was all one jumble of movement. Therefore, I had to go back to several places to extend certain frames, such as when the ball landed on the trampoline and when it was in the air but out of the frame. Overall, I enjoyed working on this animation, as although it may seem simple and straightforward to animate a basic object such as a ball, there are many intricacies involved in the movement of the object that you become aware of once you are the one tasked with bringing it to life.

A Brief Introduction

I'm Cassie, and I'm studying animation as it is an art form that has grabbed my interest and attention from a young age but is something that I hadn't considered pursuing myself until a few years ago. I am more drawn to 3D animation, but I feel it is important to learn and understand 2D animation as well. I'm not extremely confident in my ability to animate two-dimensionally, as the only times I've tried to animate have been done in Photoshop with choppy or repetitive framework because I got lazy and/or impatient (and also Photoshop is terrible for animating anything besides a gif). Therefore, in this class, I hope to be able to become familiar and comfortable with using software that is specifically meant for computer animation, as well as learn various techniques and "short cuts" perse to help me create successful, fluid animations that also have charm and character.