STRAIGHT AHEAD
7/12/2020
My mind was quite empty at that moment, so I used a random word generator to begin and got the following two words.
I then began to morph a mobster into a rabbit.
I thought adding the cigarette to the rabbit at the end made for a fun little touch, as though the mobster could shapeshift into a rabbit.
As I have done lightbox animation before, I had some time left so I decided to add another transformation. The cigarette reminded me of a candle so I transformed the rabbit into a cake.
With more time, the strawberry cake reminded me of a character from a video game that was a rhino with a strawberry for a horn. This took more time due to the detail, however, and by that time I began to grew tired so the dissipation at the end came out quite sloppy.
After a break, I redid the last few frames, taking into consideration the change of speed and how I could present the transformation in an interesting way.
Halfway through, I thought it would be nice if the character transformed back into the initial mobster that the animation started with so that it could loop, and this was the final result.
Straight ahead animation felt like a continuous task—it felt like it could keep going forever. It was a lot of fun as well; I enjoyed the spontaneity that came with it and how most of the ideas were thought of on the spot.
POSE TO POSE
8/12/2020
When told to draw three different expressions, my first thought was my experience working front desk at a children’s clinic and how you could see the signs on children’s faces when they were about to cry.
These were the expressions I came up with.
I chose to make the character an alien with antennae to further emote each mood: happy—startled—upset.
My first line test from the first expression to the second one looks like this.
I think it worked quite well despite the rough sketch marks in the first frame.
All three expressions turned out like so:
I’m quite happy with how it turned out, although the pacing is constant throughout so there is no time for each expression to be featured. Shading in the eyes right away was also an oversight as it made it difficult to draw the in-betweens as it was all black.
For the straight-ahead background, I thought the alien would be startled by something loud or shocking, so I made a meteorite explode right above his head. I also came up with the narrative that perhaps he was one with the stars or the galaxy so it would change according to his mood.
By the end of class, I ended up with this line test:
I didn’t have time to complete the background for the last two frames.
After taking a bit of time to complete the background, I sat down and refined each frame by adding more details such as shading to make the explosion more dramatic.
I thought it would be nice to record my line testing process by screen-recording my phone when I was taking the pictures.
The completed animation looks like this.
It’s still fascinating to me how the hours of work and stacks of paper put out a few seconds of animation. It felt like the character I thought of in a few minutes came to life.
Though I’ve done light box animation before, I am much happier with the work I’ve done now compared to last year and I’m looking forward to doing more.
⇨ TIMING AND SPACING