Final animation/Thoughts/Process

I have now completed this 2D animation assignment and I am very happy with the final outcome. I used the song 'Bird Cage' by Camille Saint-Saens which plays along side my story of a bird trying to make a grumpy man happy. One aspect of this animation I think came out well is the timing with the music and animation. When the musics rhythm become more energetic the bird begins flying which goes well with the literal movement of the song. Also the juxtaposition of the grumpy man with the uplifting music helps to isolate this character even more from the joyful setting he is in. I have also challenged the stereotype of all characters having a more caring side to them, which can be seen in the abrupt ending. 

In terms of the animation I have tried to use a similar style as my influences such as the artist Ben Washam who worked with Chuck Norris. His style was very fluid and loose which gave the characters personality. I believe this worked with my characters who are supposed to show happy expressive movements. This kind of  movement can be seen in the opening scene with all the character walking by, they all have happy facial expressions and their movements are all similar to the mood of the song. 

The animation for the bird was the most important part because it shows the mood and story that I'm trying to get across, which is trying to make a grumpy man happy. The positions and facial expressions came out well and audience feedback shows that they could tell what the bird was trying to do.

The process of creating this animation is how I have done all my animations. I start by animating all the character movements on a rough background layer, then I add in the final backgrounds and sound effects. The reason I do this is because mixing between background and character work can change make the process messy with too many layers. I can also decide how the background should look depending on what the character is doing. The background art looks clean and fits in well with style of the characters. Originally I wanted the backgrounds to have more detail, however this made it difficult to get the camera perspective correct so I stuck with a simple look which worked.

 As I said in my earlier posts, I am using an fbf style of animation. Which as you can see on the right is an example of that process. Since I am using 24 fps I added a 1 frame gap between each movement which gave the movement a better pace. The layers in the corner also show each body part is separately animated which makes it easier to have control of the characters joints. The animation of characters looks smooth with no unrealistic parts.

Now that this animation is finished I believe I have achieved what I wanted to based on my studies of artists. Ben Washam was my main influence as well as some earlier work such as 'Felix the cat' which has a fluid style to express the characters movements and emotions. I wanted to create this effect with my animation because the music I chose has a lot of energy to it, so I wanted to show this on the animation side as well. I would like to develop the skill Ben Washam has which is being able to show a characters personality without the use of music and voices, this animation is hopefully the beginning of learning that process. 

Background characters 3

Today I started animating my last scene of background characters. So far I have sketched out the frames which shows two characters at a fruit stand, I can now start working on the final piece of animation for these frames, I can then finally start working on the animation for the bird.

Background characters 2

Today I finished my second scene of background character animation, which showed two men making an exchange of a package with each other. A lot of my influence for this animation comes from the Looney Tunes animator Ben Washam who had a smooth flowing style with his characters. His characters were never static and it looks like the joints are all fluent. I am also trying to make my scenes look alive and have atmosphere, firstly by making the characters move continuously. By using an fbf style I can hopefully achieve this in the same way Ben Washam did.

 I can now start working on animating the bird flying through these scenes created so far. Next will be the scenes which show the bird trying to cheer up the grumpy man, this will mix with the music I have chose because It has an energetic sound to it. This is how I want to show the bird in the animation. My next post will show my progress on animating the bird.

Background characters

I worked on my second scene today, which involved more background character movement in order to develop the happy atmosphere. This scene involves a man handing a box to another man. I chose this scenario in order to show the every day normal routine of the characters. To create this scene I am using an fbf style of animation. I finished the animation for the character handing over the box, but I am still making the final drawings for the character taking the box. 

Depending on my progress I may do a few more scenes of other characters interacting with each other to develop the scene more. Then I will move on to the main story of the bird and the grumpy man.

My idea

For my 2D animation I chose the song Bird Cage by Camille Saint-Saens to go along with the story. I am taking the literal movement of the song and using an animating a bird in the story. The plot of this story is about a small town where everyone is happy except for one man. The bird which will feature in the story will try to cheer him up throughout the story. The grumpy man only becomes more annoyed with the birds feeble attempts to make him happy and eventually wants to dispose of the bird.

I am using a frame by frame (fbf) style of animation for this and will be trying to achieve smooth flowing movement with the characters. Before starting the animation I made an animatic which goes over the basic idea of how the story will go, I used Adobe Flash to create this and made simple drawings in time with the music.

This image is the start of my animatic, which is a landscape shot to develop the scene, from there it goes through the character animation. Once I completed this I began the final animation, I first created a rough background for the opening scene, and then started the character animation which I always do first before creating the final backgrounds. 

 The story is set in an old looking village with a friendly atmosphere in order to emphasise the lonely nature of one man in a bundle of positive people.

 My first task was to create various characters in a bright outdoor scene to show the lively atmosphere. So that when the scene changes to the grumpy man the audience will know he is different. This image on the right is how far I am right now with the opening scene, all these characters have happy facial expressions and the scene is beginning to look lively. The next scene will be the bird flying into the grumpy mans house to try cheer him up.

To create the walk cycles of the characters I first drew a rough walk cycle with no colour or features. Once that was done I began drawing the final look of the character over the rough sketch. To make a smooth walk cycle I used onion skin and a smooth brush setting. The difficult part with creating a walk cycle is making it repeat correctly without breaking the illusion of the walk being continuous. I used ten frames and then made it loop. I then used the same process with all the other charcters in this scene. 

In my next post I hope to be done with this opening scene and animating the bird. Look forward to posting my progress with this assignment.