ANC230 I Alyssa Gomes

What Is This Project?

This Trimester was dedicated to improving our skills in the role we specialise in. For me, this was 2D Character Animation. And so, I produced an 11 second vertical slice of a character animated to a dialogue piece - a snippet called ‘Play Dead’, originating from the series ‘Psych’.

The extent of the project was based on developing my skills in the 12 Principles of Animation (essential elements in all Character Animation), learn how to use the Industry Standard software Toon Boom Harmony, and know how to animate characters consistently and with shape. Additionally, I aimed to graduate from the bubble figures to a more realistic art styles and body proportions. My anatomy was pretty bad, and the characters would weirdly change shape throughout the sequences...

Goals:

• Develop character animation skills in the 12 Principles of Animation

• Study how to appropriately express a character through gestures and expressions

• Learn how to do basic lip sync to dialogue

• Learn how to use Industry Standard Toon Boom Harmony Software

• Learn how to draw more realistic art styles and proportions

Story

Contrary to the bubbly and bright tone the dialogue clip conveys, I have set the vertical slice in a post apocalyptic world. Despite the dark themes the original character I created for this project who is performing this dialogue has a unique sense of humour... The combination of the two genre's was a decision for comedic effect, as well as to reflect the growing interest in survival themes due to the social and environmental context of our society as we live now. It was possible to mesh the two very different genre's together by animating the character in a semi-realistic art style (a man with real-life proportions and structure, yet the method of drawing him is cartoony and of a simpler approach.

Process and Result

The character was drawn as if he was the one speaking the dialogue, with complimentary facial expressions, exaggerated body language and gestures, and basic lip syncing to complete the sequence. The piece builds on the 12 Principles of Animation, adding to the comedic element of the audio clip by exaggerating the characters' body language and expressions. Two tone colouring and polish was added for the polished result.

There were a lot of issues and learning curbs throughout the duration of this project. For starters, figuring out how to improve my animating skills through this project was a long process. The 1st 5 weeks were heavy with other unit content and group work, so sadly I put off the production phase till week 5, 2 weeks later than planned. Most of the pre-production planning (including the documentation, research and animatic) I made towards reaching this stage ended up not working in the end, so I had to change the approach entirely. Throughout the production period too I would realise that many methods of animating didn't work for me, and some did. As such, I was constantly research and gathering reference. Working on the iterations took a fair bit off time too. Implementing the feedback would take a while, and in numerous cases that feedback would prove not suited to the project, so I would then have to discard those changes and try another approach. There was also no instructors that knew Toon Boom Harmony, so I taught myself through research, trail and error. It took a lot of problem solving and time management skills, research and perseverance, but it all paid off in the end.

Thanks to this project, I have grown proficient in animating in the Industry Standard 2D animation software Toon Boom Harmony, and definitely improved in my character animation skills as a whole. The final product came a long way from the beginning of the project, and thankfully worked out quite well!