Assignment 5: Head Turn

The purpose behind this animation was to make a character dramatically and clearly turn his head from one direction to another. Modeled after Legosi from the Beastars series, I initially drew 3 key-frames on paper before transferring them into Harmony, drew 3 main action frames in between, and then added all in-betweens. Through this experience, I learned that even the most subtle changes in a few frames can make an animation leave a much stronger impact. When I initially drew Legosi turn his head, it simply moved from left to right, so revisions were made to make his head follow a rather curved arc. Adding this made his character feel a lot less robotic and much more startled or surprised by whoever is speaking to him. Furthermore, the most difficult thing about this animation was the volume control, as some parts of Legosi's face (particularly his eyes and muzzle) appeared to pulse or rotate inconsistently with one another as his head turned.

Project 2: Walk Cycle

This project had the goal to create an animated walk cycle of a fictional character moving at a natural pace. I chose to animate Princess Daisy from the Super Mario franchise since she had a human-like design with some cartoon proportions, simple to do after the previous project proved to be difficult.

First, the contacts, "down" and "up" frames of Daisy's legs were sketched in Harmony, each drawn with a different color to avoid confusing one for the other. Once the legs were tweaked to look more consistent, I went up the body and drew the torso, then the arms (with different colors matching the sides of the legs), head, eyes and nose. I then drew all the in-betweens, using guidelines to ensure there was a visible push of the legs in the upward frames as Daisy walked. After a few tweaks to the legs, I animated the parts of Daisy's design whose movement depended on her bodily movements, such as her hair and a short dress based on what she wore in Mario Tennis (2000). It was planned from the beginning that she would hold a tennis racket on her left shoulder, so the racket was rotoscoped over a stock photo that moved via peg animation. A crown and earring, two of the more notable accessories on Daisy's design, were later animated with the same peg animation for greater model consistency.  Afterwards, a background was using gradients and pencil lines. Clouds were drawn on two separate layers that moved via pegs at different speeds to indicate a contrast in distance from Daisy. All layers linked to Daisy's cycle were grouped and then moved across the frame to showcase the cycle, making it appear as if she's heading home after a day at the tennis court.

The most difficult part about animating this project was the left arm and the racket she was holding. Not only was the racket a particular geometric shape that could easily be drawn inconsistently, but the movement of her hand and the handle created an illusion that she had a very loose grip and the racket slid up and down. I had to re-trace steps and animate many key frames and in-betweens repeatedly on both layers to make her grip look fixed.

Project 1: Weight

This was the first major animation project I worked on, and it took the most time and resources to complete at the time. The goal was to breathe life into a character as (s)he struggled to push, pull or lift an object of heavy weight, so I took the opportunity to animate Ori (the little one) and Naru (the heavy one), two characters from the Ori video game series. From the beginning, I wanted to use a jump-cut technique to show passage of time as Ori struggles to move Naru, which can allow me to animate a variety of different interactions with the weight. Possibly the biggest inspiration outside of Ori was the scene from Disney's Tangled (2010) where Rapunzel attempted to haul an unconscious Flynn Rider into her wardrobe. It was a scene that used the jump-cut technique to show many failed attempts with comedic effect, and so I thought it would be best to use this.

To complete the animation, I sketched concepts of the main ways Ori would push or pull Naru in Photoshop, imported them to Harmony, recorded references in which I would push against a wall to the point where'd I fall or slip, and then animate Ori doing the same, starting with key-frames and later adding in-betweens. To ensure the animation had a conclusion, the final segment where Ori looks at the sky and then falls asleep was animated earlier on before going back to the previous sequences. As I went back, I drew some frames of Ori in the same position and looped them similarly to when characters stood still in Ed, Edd N' Eddy, just to make it feel like motion occurs as Ori forces his body against Naru. The first segment in the animation where Ori squats down and pokes Naru was the final segment I animated, based on another reference I recorded, to give the project some introduction. Once all segments were complete, ears were animated on a separate layer as the final step since their movement was dependent on how Ori's head and body moved. Naru was also animated to show how heavy she is and make Ori's ground-pound deliver an impact, but one that isn't strong enough to wake her up. I also imported a background drawn in Adobe Photoshop to ensure there was visible contrast between the characters and the setting.

There were about three other ways Ori was initially going to push or pull Naru with, two of which already had references and parts I animated. However, they needed to be cut due to time constraints and difficulty with the perspective of the shot in one position. Thankfully, the end result is one I felt very proud of myself for.