Production
Aim : I want to become a better character animator by challenging myself out of my comfort zone
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To improve my character performance by researching and understanding character development.
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To challenge myself to animate a Quadruped effectively
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To animate a child character.
To become a better character animator I wanted to go into the animating with the excitement I had felt when creating
this world, I have really become so passionate on conservation and inspiring children that this stage was really exciting.
Hayao Miyazaki expresses how animating should be, “Inspired by that trigger, what rushes forth from inside you is the
world you have already drawn inside yourself, the many landscapes you have stored up, the thoughts and feelings that
seek expression.” (Amidi, 2017)
My Research and development project was to work on creating an effective piece of animal animation. I was a little
nervous as I had never created a Quadruped prior to this animation. Altogether I am animating A Badger, Owls,
worms and snails.. Other than just recreating a realistic Badger I wanted to 1. Understand my character and 2. Research
and observe Badgers. I broke down my character into it’s flaws and virtues. Knowing these attributes I could try to
get my Badger’s character across. For instance one of the flaws of my character was that the Badger was more animal
than human. I wanted my animation to show the Badger in it’s glory. I therefore needed to research into the quirk and
habits of Badger’s to achieve this objective.
I began the animating process by observing Badgers and noting as much about them as possible. I watched doc-
umentaries how they live. I drew sketches to understand how they moved and reflected on their body structure.
In The Wildlife Garden Project short video about Caring for Badger’s (YouTube, 2017) I learnt how powerful a
Badger’s nose is. It’s smell 800 times more powerful than our own. This reinforced my own observations of how a
Badger leads with it’s nose. I played with this idea when animating my Badger, using his nose to direct his movements.
Other observations I shortly made after understanding the anatomy of a Badger, was how shallow to the ground it
stood and how sloped it’s spine was. These observations I knew would be very important to me when it came to
understanding how to exaggerate their movements. It allowed me to reach an objective of representing my character
effectively.
One of the failings of my Badger animation is I wished I was able to give it more an animalistic nature. I wanted to
emphasise the wildness and I feel reviewing it I could have played further with this. I used the oak leaves to help give
my Badger another layer of character however.
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