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.