Week 2 - "The Bane of My Existence (I'm Exaggerating)" (4/9)

I’m back. It’s me :) Spring break is over, and it’s time for me to do some animating. This week was interesting to say the least. I focused on the 12 principles of animating (which I mentioned in my previous blog).

A quick overview in case you’d rather not take the time to scroll down a page:

    1: Squash and Stretch

    2: Anticipation

    3: Staging

    4: Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose

    5: Follow-Through and Overlapping Action

    6: Ease-In, Ease Out

    7: Arcs

    8: Secondary actions

    9: Timing

    10: Exaggeration

    11: Solid Drawing

    12: Appeal

My primary goal during this process is not to memorize these and perfectly use them in every single animation, but I do want to get to a point where I am incorporating them to an extent. After all, they wouldn’t be called “principles” if nobody used them. So, I made up a little game. Here are the rules: each animation I make must use at least 3 principles. Only one rule-- this is going to be easy! 

The first thing I animated was a stick figure picking up a ball from the ground and throwing it across the room:

This was a great way to start off the game, as it included: anticipation (preparing to throw the ball by bending the knees), follow-through (arm and foot continuing to move even after the ball is let go), arc (the ball and arm both move in the shape of an arc), secondary action (picking up the ball, blinking, and smiling), and timing! One point for me 😊

As I have made clear in my last post, SIMPLE DOES NOT EQUAL EASY! Drawing 40 frames of this stick-man took my perfectionist-self 2-3 hours to complete. Still, I think I was more efficient in the way I animated (this might be because I was drawing a literal stick-man, but I am hoping I am actually improving). 

                                                                                A frame

 

    I have always been terrible at drawing animals, but I thought to give it a try again (it couldn’t hurt). Unfortunately, I was wrong. I attempted to have a dog jump off a ledge and turn into a pile of goo on the ground, but I have honestly never been this disappointed in my art skills. This animation included anticipation, exaggeration, and timing. Still, even though I followed all the rules and included the minimum amount of principles, the end result was not to my liking, so I will not be awarding myself a point ☹ (try again next time, I guess. Or not.) I think I will be boycotting drawing animals for some time.

    So far I’ve drawn a person. GREAT! I love people. I’ve drawn an animal. GREAT! (not so great actually, but I like animals so I will say ‘great’). All that’s left is a non-living thing… a calculator 😊 What’s better than the one thing my anxiety tells me to use to calculate 2+2 even though I already know the answer is 4!

                                                           My original calculatorr

        *UPDATE --> I GAVE UP ☹ I guess my love-hate relationship with my calculator has turned into a hate-hate relationship. For real though, I have no idea why but I got so bored, aggravated, and tired that I stopped. After the failed attempt at a dog and now this, drawing random objects is not working out and I need to spice things up.

                                                            This is how far I got:

I think this gives me negative points, so my total is zero points...!! I need something that will make this interesting for me; I am uninspired at the moment. I will be brainstorming something more fun next week-- if you have any suggestions, please let me know!

Bye for now 😊

***This week, I commented on James, Jake, and Dan's blogs.