2D Character Animation

Character development and animation And Production

As the semester continued we progressed to more complicated aspects of this module. One of the very first things we did was to develop a character from our cultural background. I chose one of my country's ex presidents as my character and sketched him out to make him look like a modern day superhero or super soldier.

We later looked at how to draw the structure of the human anatomy which was going to aid us in the developing of our various characters in our animation work. This module was focused more on the development of characters so everything done in this module was in that direction.
Also we considered the inking technique which was necessary if your animation was not going to be in color.

After we were introduced to the WALT DISNEY  style of doing animation. We had to draw every step and movement of our character at every point in time. This was in accordance to the principles of animation which a lot of animators today have become very oblivious to. 


Movement of Characters.

In my animation work, the main character which is the boy is frequently seen in every scene. His movements are simple movements which consist of walking, running and jumping. For the walking and running scenes the backgrounds are going to be moving, this is to give the illusion of him running or walking,hence the faster he runs the faster the background moves. Now to the jumping scene, this scene is going to show him jump then shoot jump in the air. To give that action and jumping look, effects are going to be added like how it is done in most manga cartoons to give it that fierce action scene. The shooting scene is quite simple since it would be a set position and only arms and legs are going to move. However it is the bullet of the gun that is going to do the upward movement. Again effects are going to be added to make it seem as if it is actually in the air.
Other characters like the monster and giant would follow the same walking and running movement trick, as well as the rocket. The dragon and other characters which are airborne would follow the same movement principles as the jump and bullet movement.
There is also the scene where the girl falls off the cliff. In this scene once again the background would move to give that falling effect and also there would be some effects to show her in the air. There is also the scene where they boy and the girl kiss and then hug, for this scene only their heads would be seen moving close till they get to the actual position either hugging or kissing. There is also the last scene where they walk away into the sunset, in this scene, I would apply zoom-in and zoom-out techniques to show depth and also to give the illusion of them moving further away from the screen. This technique would be applied in other parts of the animation for instance I would zoom-out on the main character when he is running and zoom-in for scenes where there is a lot of action.
There also other elements such as water and sharks for the scene where the main character swims, once again since the water is the background it would do the moving to make it look as if the character is actually moving as well as the sharks.
Also the main character would do some talking so a few lip movement and facial expressions would be drawn and changed in succession in perfect sync with the spoken words and statements.
Below are a few positions and characters.

                                                                      fig. o.1

                                                                 fig. o.2

                                                                  fig o.3

                                                             fig. o.4

                                                         fig. o.5    

                                                                   fig. o.5

                                                             fig. o.6

                                                               fig. o.7

                                                                fig. o.8

                                                               fig. o.9

                                                                    fig. 10

                                                               fig. 11

                                                                fig. 12

                                                              fig. 13

                                                               fig. 14

                                                              fig. 15

                                                                   fig. 16

fig 17

                                                                     We were also introduced to software which to aid in the development of our animation. These software included Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Premier, Adobe Flash and Adobe After effects. Some of these software were used to edit our characters whiles others were used in the development of the animation form movement to the setting of the background, whiles others could do both.

Disadvantages 

This module is very time consuming and especially since it was taken in a short semester it made students stressed out. Also it was a new thing to most of us and so we needed more time so we could get more assistance and guidance on how to go about the module. Unfortunately this module could not be fully completed though majority of the work had been done.

Advantages

Though this was quite a frustrating module, because of the time frame we had to complete this work, it was not a bad module. This module thought me how to became an animator and how animation started. I learnt the old way of making animations and also new ways of doing animation. Some of this knowledge was acquired in the studio from various lecturers and my course mates whiles others were from my research to find answers to my questions. This module also pushed me as well as many of my mates to a very tough extent since we were all eager to try our best to complete our work on time and this is a good thing for me.

In a nutshell this module has been both frustrating, tedious and stressful as well as interesting educative and fun. However I hope to do this again but under more friendlier time conditions so I could have more time to understand clearly this module since I consider it a very essential element to becoming not only a good animator but a graphic designer and artist in general.