Animation Skills: 3rd - 9th October 2016: Paper Animations

This has been the first proper week of animating! It's been very exciting. I have thoroughly enjoyed creating flipbooks and paper animations.

I have already taught myself the 12 basic principles from online resources but I felt that this was a very useful refresher. It did clear up and clarify a few details which I had wondered about, especially 'solid drawing', which is one that I wasn't entirely sure about before.

I have created flipbooks in the past so I was excited to do some more again as it's something I always loved to do. When creating the flipbooks, I tried to focus on making the squash and stretch very exaggerated. This brings the ball a lot more weight and character.

I was very happy with how my bouncy ball turned out though if I were to do it again, I would give myself more time for the ball to stop bouncing more naturally. I feel that the two major bounces aren't enough and that the ball then stops too suddenly. This is only a minor issue though, I'm very pleased with the result.

I think that this same issue presented itself in both of my other flipbooks. For the sideways bouncing ball, I feel that I didn't have enough space at the end of the page. I also did start it too far into the book so that the first few frames can't actually be seen when flipping it. I think that this could be rectified by making the arcs of the bounces tighter so that it bounces higher rather than further.

The last flipbook simply doesn't have enough frames of the take off. It doesn't give the viewer time to really process. I could fix this by sacrificing a few frames from the build up in order to let the spaceship take off totally out of frame. I was, however, very happy with the squashing and anticipation in this flipbook and I feel they worked very nicely to really build up the energy of the ship.

Traditional paper animation is something that I've been wanting to try for quite a while and now I've discovered that I really love doing it. It feels incredibly satisfying. We first created a pendulum swinging in order to get a grasp on the timing principle. I feel that my swing wasn't quite as smooth as it could have been. I wasn't too happy with it. I think that the problem came in the frames where the motion ends. The ball stops too suddenly and stays on the extreme for too long.

For my first proper paper animation, I was actually struggling for quite a while to think of an idea. I started sketching the idea for a pencil walking across the screen. I quickly decided that I wasn't as interested in this idea and then changed the idea to a pencil character who was bouncing across the screen. I drew all keyframes on one sheet to plan it out first. I tried to make the motion slow at the top of the arc to get correct timing. When I had actually finished this version, the movement at the top of the arc was far too slow. I asked for some feedback because I wasn't too happy with it and I was told that if I were to make this pencil into a character who was jumping then I should really go all out.

I then started fresh, this time I used the pencil to communicate the idea of legs and joints. I also made sure to do more frequent line tests in order to check the timing was going well. I was very happy with the result of this one. I exaggerated the squash and stretch quite a great deal and I think that along with the legs, this really sells the idea that this pencil is alive and jumping across the screen. 

From this week of doing traditional paper animation, I have found that I really love doing it. I find it incredibly satisfying and I love the idea of creating these clips just like the old time animators did. I intend to do more of these types of animations again in the future.