Month: January 2025

Concept and creation process

For the 2D animation in Blender rotation we were tasked with creating an animation of shapes conveying emotions, making use of at least seven principles of animation that we had learned. For this animation, I chose to make a simple bouncing ball animation, having it bounce around a room to convey an excited emotion.

The main principle that would be implemented in this animation is squash and stretch. Alongside that, I would also make use of anticipation, ease in and ease out, as well as exaggeration. These were all used together to depict rapid movement of the ball. 

Squash and stretch were implemented to stretch the form of the ball as it makes impact with the edges of the screen, as well as when it is bouncing through the air. Using squash and stretch, I created a sense of anticipation as the ball’s form is stretched out to spread across the surface it hits. Along with that, I used exaggeration by stretching the form of the ball to a more elongated form as it bounces across the screen to show the speed at which it is moving. Also, I made use of ease in and ease out by having more frames where the ball is stretched out across the surface and less frames where the ball is moving across the air. By creating timing with ease in and ease out, I emphasised the impact the ball has, as well as the speed it moves at. 

While animating the ball, I had it start out bounce around the room at a very high speed to indicate an excited energy. I then decided to add to the emotions of the ball by having the excitement change to disappointment in the end. I chose to communicate this by having the ball change shape into a flat rectangle after hitting the wall at a high speed and subsequently slowly drop down to the floor. This contrast in both shape and energy is to show a change in emotion from the initial excitement and high energy to a sudden drop in energy to a sudden disappointment it experiences. I also made use of sound effects, most notably a hard impact sound when the ball hit the wall and turned into a rectangle, to emphasise the movements of the shape in addition to the animation.

Initial version of bouncing ball animation before peer feedback and changes:

Initial feedback I had received was that the change in emotion was not properly communicated. The shape fell to the floor too fast and because the bounce was fast and the drop was fast the energy did not dissipate and the audience did not capture that there was supposed to be disappointment indicated by a drop in energy. I had also animated the ball’s initial movements too slowly as I had animated them in threes instead of in twos. Following this feedback, I changed the ball’s animation to move around in twos so that there was faster movement. I also significantly reduced the number of in-between frames while the ball was moving across the screen so that the movements could be much more concise and sped up. With these changes, I was able to more effectively convey the initial excited energy of the ball and then the drop in energy and disappointment at the end.

Concept and Creation

The intention for this animatic was to create a story for the story prompt option where two friends meeting up for a coffee argue over who is paying the bill. My idea for the plot begins with the two friends finishing their meeting and talking in a cordial manner before the arrival of the bill. Upon the arrival of the bill, there is a dramatic and sudden change in tone with tension rising between them. The two argue back and forth with each other over who is responsible for the bill, culminating in a standoff between them. The standoff is interrupted by the waiter suggesting they split the bill to which they agree and return to their friendly manner.

While drawing the storyboards, my primary focus was to depict the conversation in an interesting manner. As the story was primarily a conversation at a table, I needed to find a way to keep the story visually engaging to the audience. To do this, I made use of a variety of different camera angles, such as a worms’ eye view and close ups, to depict an increasingly tense interaction. I also exaggerated elements of the story, such as the characters staring or facing off against each other to emphasise the conflict between the characters. 

When drawing the interactions between the two characters, I took influence from how manga artists would depict scenes in an exaggerated manner to emphasise the drama of a moment. Notably, I took influence from how manga artist Hirohiko Araki would illustrate dramatic scenes in his manga Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure where he would use extreme closeups and written sound effects on the panel. In the standoff between the two characters, I made a homage to a popular scene from the manga where two of the characters, Dio Brando and Jotaro Kujo, have a standoff against each other before beginning a battle.

Image source: https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/jjba/images/2/2a/DIO_JO_Preparing_fight.png/revision/latest?cb=20150606173516

Alongside making use of visuals, I sought to further elevate the intensity of the interactions through the voice acting of the characters. When doing the dialogue with my voice actors, I consulted them on the script I had written and asked for their contribution to gain input on how the dialogue could be improved. A suggestion that one of my voice actors had was to take inspiration from the dialogue of the animated series Smiling Friends where characters would often have lines that overlapped each other, creating a more conversational dialogue.

By having the lines of each character overlapping each other, we created an argument that sounded much more conversational and believable to the audience. With the combination of the realistic dialogue and the visuals, I was able to achieve an animatic that effectively conveyed a dynamic and interesting argument to the audience.

Peer Feedback

Throughout the creation process, we had group screenings of our progress where we had the chance to gain feedback from our peers on how our animatic could be improved.

An earlier version of my animatic that was screened for peer review:

When screening the earlier version of my animatic, the positive feedback that I received was that the comedy of the story was done well, due to the effective reveal of the bill and the timing of the dramatic scenes. The poses of the characters were also done well as they were dynamic and kept the visuals interesting. However, feedback that I received on what to improve was that the story had plateaus at certain parts, specifically during the back and forth between the two characters. This was because the argument was stagnant, there is no one character dominating the scene, and there needed to a bigger variety of shots that were not too repetitive.

In response to this feedback, I had decided that I would need to cut down several frames to make the story both more concise and prevent the story from being too repetitive. I cut down frames, notably closeups of the characters staring at each other at the initial reveal of the bill, so that I could limit it to only one scene that includes the characters staring at each other. By limiting this scene, I was able to make the story more concise and emphasise the impact of the closeups by only making one scene have it.

I also decided to add more frames in the back and forth scene, drawing new poses to replace some of the previous frames so that the story could have more varied poses.

In addition to cutting and replacing frames, I further improved the animatic by changing the timing of different scenes. I had different scenes take more time or less time, having the focus shit to different characters more quickly as the argument tensed up. Thus by taking in feedback and cutting down scenes and changing frames, I was able to make the animatic more concise and tell the story more effectively.