For this unit, my goal is to have everyone create a few fundamental animation exercises, culminating in the end with creating your own super short animation, showcasing what you learned.
Let's start with two ball bounce activities. 1: A Perpetual Ball Bounce without Squash or Stretch, applying the principles, of weight, timing and ease-out and ease-in. 2: A Perpetual Ball Bounce with Squash or Stretch, applying the principles, of weight, timing and ease-out.
Please take your time with the above two activities, rushing it will not help you appreciate the complexities within such simple animation exercises, experiment, take risks, change your timing, spacing, weight and ball volume, remembering to document all your stages of progress.
I will add links to my in class demonstrations very soon
My most recent in-class demonstration
Please watch the following 2 videos to help us understand a bit of the background theory involved in creating successful animations. If you get to the Ted Talk, it will probably be one of the most rewarding 6.5 minutes of your life, just saying...:)
Culminating task, right after the first two activities.
Option A: Based on the two planning boards below, create a 2D animated scene, please do not go beyond 5 seconds. Animation Direction 1.0-Moving a Cube from Position A to Position B 1.1-Add a hold, and then a Fast Out like a Rocket Ship going up in Translate Y 1.2- Apply a Jump Action from your initial Movement from A to B 1.3- Incorporate Squash & Stretch to Your First Movement of the Jump/ Take Off, Landing as well as the Rocket ship style take off Up direction. 1.4-Apply the Principle of Anticipation to your first movement 1.5- Work on Timing and Weight 1.6- Export all your stages of progress into short clips. Submit, one video of all your progress and final movie all into one MP4 and or MOV file.
Option B: Ball Bounce, then something happens to the ball after the first loop of descending and ascending. Please do not exceed 5 seconds of animation. I had an idea where a ball is in a scene(environment), Act1, possibly a lightning strikes the ball, Act 2, the ball then cracks open, and Act 3, a ghost comes out and flies away. Beginning, Middle and End, three simple actions to plan around your animation. In the upper years of our course, the terms we use to plan our shots are, Setup, Conflict and Resolution.
Resources: Free Desktop and Online applications to help you through this unit, as well as apps that you can upload your drawings frame by frame with the ability to export your shot onto a movie file.