Crunch Time

It's the last day of term one and today we are each presenting some of the animated exercises we worked on during term-time. The line up includes: an animated ball bouncing, human walk, 4-legged walk, bird, fish, snake and last but not least a mood change through walk type.

I spent the last few nights up until the early hours trying finesse and rework my animations, and could have spent another week ironing out all everything I wanted to; however, a line had to be drawn in the sand. I am pleased with how much I have learnt over the past 10 weeks and feel like I have come a long way from my initial scratchings.

Out of all of the animations I am most proud of the horse, mostly because it's movement was so difficult to master. It taught me an important lesson, which is to recognise mistakes in your animation and then move on afresh and inject what you have learnt from the previous exercise - just animated over and over until you get it right

The mood change project is the most heavily weighted animation for assessment. I kept the story in this one as simple as possible. Things I'd like to improve would be the walk-in, especially around the arms, and the hand coming out of the pocket. If time had permitted I would have like to have him flick up his collar and act-out the mood change a little more in the middle.

After doing the mood change walk, I had plenty of practice with walking, so it would have been great to attempt another walk cycle, and I almost certainly would have made a better job at it; however, once again time was running short, so I had to go with the limp cycle I had made a few weeks back. The thing I like the most about this particular animation is the fact that I made up the walk through my own research and trial and error. I also like the colouring and textures I used in in. 

Between the bird, fish and the snake, I think that the fish is probably the weakest. I would have really liked to slow him down a bit and work more on the pause and the turn. I really like the colouring I've used on the bird, but if I had time I would have liked to have revisited the bag and the up and down movement of the bird. I am probably most happy with the snake, he moves well, only change here would be to slow him down a bit on the move out.

Finally, I haven't changed the ping pong ball since I'd done in 8 weeks or so ago. The main thing I'd like to change in this one would be to make it bounce higher and intensify the bounces in the end.

All in all I think it's been a successful, albeit tiring term and am looking forward to exploring storytelling and technique along with refining my animation style over the next 6 months.