Firework

By Lauren Cunningham & Rebecca Daws

Project Name: Firework

This 2D, hand drawn animation has my character singing along to Firework by Katy Perry. During the song she lets her true colors burst, literally.

ANC230_Firework_Lauren_Cunningham_FINAL.mp4

Process

Stick_Figure_Test_Audio.mp4

Stick Figure Test + Live Action Reference

I started out by drawing out a simple stick figure in order to get the key poses down. I also wanted to get a feel for where her feet would be planted in the first shot.

Keyframes

These were the main poses plus the arcs. This is where I really saw my project coming together. I was able to see the movement already due to the arcs. Some parts were changed such as the camera not following the rainbow.

Keyframes_Final.mp4

Extreme_Poses_Fixed.mp4

Breakdown Poses

Last tri I identified that I needed to add more breakdown poses into my animations, as the previous lack of them could make my in-betweens come out looking not so good.

In Betweens

Here is the final rough animation with all it's in-betweens and follow through and overlapping action

Animation_Finished.mp4

Animation_Final_Neutral_Colors.mp4

Neutral Colors + Backgrounds

Here is the final cleaned up animation without any shadows or highlights. I gave her neutral colors as this makes it a lot easier to edit them in After Effects which is where I did all the compositing.

Shadow & Lighting Passes

Shadow_1_GIF.gif

This is the directional shadow. This is the shadow that is created due to the position of the sun in the scene.

Shadow_2_GIF.gif

This is the ambient occlusion shading. It is different to the directional shadow as it appears when objects are closer to each other.

I additionally did two different highlights. One for each side. I did this in order for the both of them to be different colors. Also so oneo f them could be blurred more than the other.

Highlight_1.gif

Highlight_2.gif

Interdisciplinary Work

For my own project I collaborated with a design student named Rebecca Daws. She drew the backgrounds you see in my project.

Background 1.png

Background 2.png

I additionally collaborated with a group of gaming students. They asked me to produce some animations for their game in the style of a popular Flash game series Papa's Pizzeria. Here are some of the animations I created for them.

Student_1_Talk.gif

Student_2_Walk_Cycle.gif

Student_3_Celebrate.gif