Process 3 – Project #2 Character Animation

During this step in creating my character animation, I worked on putting everything together to create a full, cohesive animation. That included adding the scene, finessing the movement of the character, bringing in audio, and adding a title animation as well.

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Setting the Scene

After taking a brief hiatus from this project while I was on Spring Break, I got back to it by inserting the living room scene into my animation. Right away I noticed how much more complete this made my animation feel. While the animation as a whole was far from being finished, I was able to get a better idea of how my elephant might move around by having that scene established.

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Finessing Movement

From the beginning, I was dissatisfied with how the elephant walked. I had been studying how cartoons walk, specifically Winnie the Pooh, but just somehow wasn’t able to execute my vision. Throughout the process, I made subtle changes to his movements based on what I observed through research, in hopes this would make his walking look more realistic.

1. My first attempt at making my character walk was just his legs and arms moved and his body moved from point A to point B.
2. On my second try, I tried to create little pauses in the swing of his legs when they would be perpendicular to the floor.
3. The next edit I made was changing the scale of his leg, making it squish a little as it touched the ground.

After making these changes, I still just couldn’t pinpoint what I needed to do to make his walking look like he wasn’t just floating across the screen while his arms and legs flapped in the air.

Finally, it came to me. I needed to give his whole body more motion than just sliding across the screen in a straight line. While his legs make the walking motion, I had his body move up and down, because, DUH! Our bodies have some up and down motion when we walk! This helped immensely in making the walking motion look more realistic and more fluid.

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Final Video

After may trial and error attempts, here is the final animation in all its glory.

Process 2 – Project #2 Character Animation

As the second step in creating my character animation, I designed a scene in which my character would live and interact with. Starting with simple sketches and then moving to Adobe Illustrator, I was able to bring this environment to life and add it to my animation to give it more substance.

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Scene Setting

After creating my elephant character, I had an idea of the style and aesthetic I wanted the scene to have. Because of the flat, cartoonish design of the elephant, I felt it appropriate for the scene/background to follow suit. Below are a few images that helped me envision a room, a style, and different objects I could include in my scene.

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I look my initial sketch and worked to apply these styles to it. Having these style inspirations helped me to be more consistent and stay on task with my original vision for the animation. In Illustrator, I designed an environment for my elephant to live in and that matched the style of him as well.

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Overall, I designed two different scenes that are to be featured in my animation. The first scene is of the elephants living room and the second scene is outside on the street in front of his favorite Chinese restaurant, Sammy Chang’s Chinese Take-Out.

Process 1 – Project #2 Character Animation

Our second project is one that I am equally excited and nervous about. We will be working in After Effects to animate a character that we create. The character can be anything from an illustration done in Illustrator, a drawing, collage, or whatever we want as long as it aligns with the project guidelines. I am excited because I love drawing and creating little cartoons, and I am excited to learn how to animate my drawings. However, at this point in time, I am not clear on how I will even animate my little character. But that’s what school is for. I’ll learn how to do it!

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Storyboarding

I started with thinking of a story that I wanted to animate. My idea was to show the process of a very excited elephant going to pick up his Chinese food. He gets to his car and buckles up his precious food and he looks lovingly at it. When he gets home, he joyfully skips into his house and then settles himself on the sofa with his yummy meal. As he unpacks his goodies, his eyes get big with anticipation and excitement! All of a sudden, his beloved Chinese take-out slips through his hands, ultimately falling onto the carpet below. He looks down in despair as he knows his lo mein is unsalvagable.

 

Storyboard

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Character Building

Before we started animating our characters, we thought about how we want them to move, their emotions, and personality.

Emotions Throughout Storyboard

– When the elephant is picking up his food, he feels: Excited, Giddy, Hungry
– When the Elephant gets in the car he: is caring, looks loving towards his Chinese food, is thankful that he has his food
– When the Elephant walks inside and sits down to eat he is: anticipatory, happy, in love, excited, satisfied
– Poor Elephant drops his Lo Mein and at first is: confused, shocked, sad
– The Elephant comes to terms he has lost his Lo Mein and feels: disappointed, depressed, lost, alone

 

Pooh loves him’s honey ❤️🍯

 

Movement of Elephant

The Elephant will have a super cute appearance, kind of doughy like Winnie the Pooh to make it relatable so the viewer will fall in love with the character. He will have a cute bounce to his step as he is a cute, chubby Elephant. When he sees his food, he will get big puppy dog eyes making the audience relate to how the Elephant reacts towards food. He might get hearts in his eyes because he just loves the Chinese food so much. He will have great facial expression changes to show his wide range of emotions throughout the piece. His movement will be bouncy, ploppy, and soft. He will come across as a soft and squishy stuffed animal Elephant that the audience will just want to hold.

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Character Illustration

I created my elephant in Adobe Illustrator. When I made him, I saw him almost as a mixture of Winnie the Pooh and Eeyore. I made him as a stuffed animal with stitches just to give him a cuddly and cute look.

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First Animation Attempt

As you can see, this is not at all what my storyboard looks like, but after getting into After Effects, I kind of realized that I had no clue how to animate what I wanted to. So, I am taking baby steps, relearning the basics as well as more advanced skills. Here is what I was able to do for this