Animated By Me

Images

Here's the planning and images associated with this week's exercise:

Forget two bouncing balls, welcome to the obstacle course! And squash & stretch. And devastation for Stu. A big week this week with an awful lot for us to cover!

Last week's assignment didn't go down very well with my mentor. He said the physics was off in my shot with which, I have to say, I didn't totally agree. He's a professional animator and therefore he knows what reads, so there's something in there for me to take away and, having watched it again, he does have a point.

In our lecture this week we covered squash & stretch and anticipation. Anticipation comes before any action and is responsible for two things: 1) preparing the audience for the impending action and 2) allowing the character to build up the requisite force for the action.

Think about a person jumping. They squat down before they jump. That's the anticipation; they are building up the force in their muscles and if you're watching them you know they are about to jump.

OK, so that's anticipation. Let's talk about squash & stretch.

Anything organic will squash and stretch during an action. In an extreme example you could think about a water balloon hitting the table (and let's assume it doesn't explode!) and how it sags. And when you pick it up at one end it stretches out.

Well when someone is going about their actions there's all sorts of squash and stretch going on, whether it's an individual part of the body (say the face when someone scruntches it up) or the body as a whole (squatting for the aforementioned jump.)

Taking all that into account we have our infamous ball taking on the challenge of an obstacle course. The ball has to get its initial jump energy from somewhere, and that's why you'll see it squat down a bit. From there it has to act like a normal ball, so everything is toned down.

The other part of this week's assignment has to have Stu, our large-headed chum, take the pose of devastation. You can have yourself a look at that by clicking on the picture above.

I hope you enjoy this week's work. If I'm honest, I really hope my mentor does this time, too!