Animation
At the same time I was working on my client project as an Illustrator for a book cover on Wattpad and
with Shadid on his project, I started animating the room scene right away. The room scene as followed
on the storyboard will start off with the girl leaning back from a book where she recorded all her
information on crystals. She then picks up a crystal next to her to examine it before chucking it into the
box with all the other crystals that she had gathered. Ready to move, she grabs the box where most of
the weight falls on her knees and as she picks it up, the bird flies in.
When I animated this scene, I started off with just a basic animation five frames by five, structuring the
poses on stepped tangents. In my first animation tutorials with Nick Georgeou, I was given feedback
on how to improve and was asked if I had created any video references. I didn’t have any video
references and was told to create some for the animation to gain a better understanding of where I went
wrong in my piece. To be honest, I was very shy on videoing myself and hadn’t created one.
I animated over and over again, trying to improve by myself without video references first, and when I
showed this to Dan and Sanjay in the next tutorial, they asked me if I had created any video references
which I said no. They insisted on doing it, because they could see that my animation needed a lot of
improvement. Finally I created it and saw where and when I went wrong in animation, especially for
each part of the body, such as the shoulders, toes, knees, fingers and hand etc. I started animating bit by
bit, going back to my references and with help from one tutorial with Mike. In the end, I managed to
create a good piece. As for the bird, I rarely had problems animating that creature as it was a very basic
animation with it swooping in and soaring into the ceiling and back into the box. The only changes I
made to the bird were the timing of when it dived slowly and soared like rocket before staying there for
a moment and then falling into the box.
The animation for this piece had taken a toll on my well-being as there was so much work to improve.
Only the video reference helped to shorten that time. Video reference are truly eye openers. To
elaborate, for example, the back foot when box falls on the girl’s knees moves forward a bit to gain a
better position before lifting the box onto the chest. I never realised that until I tested myself. Video
references shows little things that you never see and they are important as they supports each anatomy
of a single body. Next time I start an animation piece, I will always explore video references.
While I was doing the animation of the room scene, I started animating the Exterior scene with the town
square; to introduce the bird. Few feedbacks have been given