THE PROCESS

Our brief for our 2D Animation rotation was to create a 5-second animation between two or more ‘characters’ comprised of basic shapes that illustrate a change in emotion or expression. The brief was intentionally very loose as there were many different possible interpretations of this idea- it could be extremely abstract and dream-like. It could potentially disobey the 12 principles of animation that we learned about in class.

I was initially very concerned about my ability to complete this project as I had never used Blender before and had some nasty expectations of it for its 2D animation features. I, unfortunately, struggle from a very weak attention span, and if the solution to a technical problem is not immediately obvious to me, it becomes extremely frustrating and hard to get myself into a good workflow. I was worried Blender would be too much for me to wrap my head around, but I still attempted to go into the project with a positive mindset despite my preconceptions.

I had already conducted my own independent research on the 12 principles of animation in the past and had been unintentionally incorporating them into my work for years. It was very gratifying to have explanations provided to the many conventions I had seen in animation in the past and to go back to the absolute basics of how things are done, consolidating my knowledge greatly.

For this project, we were tasked with utilising visual and emotional language to convey messages to our audience. We were encouraged to think visually about the emotions that we were starting with and how those can be represented through shapes. This was a very helpful exercise not only for this project but for the future in trying to present ideas that are hard to put into words. I immediately got started in designing my “characters” and planning out how they would interact.

It was a very fun experience sketching out various concepts of differing sizes and shapes of characters, and what that could convey in terms of shape language. I opted against doing something more abstract as I felt I would have been overwhelmed with all of the new information to take in on Blender- so I opted for shapes I could easily replicate and attribute emotions.

I found these shapes fit a fun, playful dynamic contrast (short and tall, slow and fast, etc) and would be easy to work with. I personally enjoy making fun and upbeat animations as it is not only fun to watch but fun to animate. It was clear that my emotional shift would be from downtrodden to happy, so it was simply a case of figuring out how I would achieve that. The larger shape’s appearance lent itself very well to being a sadder-looking character, so I quickly was able to establish the emotions and emotional shift these shapes would go through.

With my shapes chosen, I was able to keyframe out the key movements between my two characters, as seen below.

Once again, I struggled with the time limitations given to me and would need to shave off as many frames as I could as I entered the lineart stage. While I was happy with the movements themselves, I felt as if these shapes were not clear enough indicators of emotional states, and therefore, I decided to play around with the environment to further indicate this idea.

I decided to rely on the gloomy background effects of the second image, as well as sound effects, to further indicate the emotional shift between the characters. In hindsight, this was a bad decision as the emotions should have been communicable from the animation alone. However, due to time restraints, I had to press on with what I had created so far and thus lined and coloured my work.

Blender was extremely beneficial in this process thanks to its ability to recolour lineart and detect gaps when colouring. I was able to separate all of my assets into layers, thus avoiding overlapping issues or visual errors when the characters connected. I was pleasantly surprised with the features that Blender offered for a free programme, so I will be keeping it in the back of my mind for future projects.

This exercise was very helpful to me in realising just how long 2D animation takes. It incentivised me to be efficient with my linework and to not spend too much time on details, as I simply would not have had enough time to complete the whole piece if I had been too particular about my work.

Version 1

Luckily, I was able to wrap my head around Blender relatively quickly and provide this animation for peer review. I received some valuable feedback about my work which I not only took forward in this project, but other pieces as well.

One piece of feedback that I found particularly valuable was that I needed to cut on as the pink character jumped off-screen. The individual frame of the blue character looking up would have been effective if there was more time held on them for the audience to digest the moment, but due to time constrictions, it would have made more sense if the cut was between two shots of the pink character on screen. While I did not think this would make much of a difference at the time, it overall improved the look of my final piece greatly.

A member of my class picked up that I had an issue with the order of my layers meaning the blue character’s lineart was overlapping the pink character. This was an easy fix but helped make the final piece cleaner and more professional. Additionally, there were some minor issues with the volume of the pink character- while this style of animation tends to not pay too much attention to volume and scale, I still wanted the piece to look consistent, so I adjusted some of the volumes of frames accordingly.

Finally, as I had expected, there were issues in understanding the emotional shift between my characters from my peers. This cemented the fact that I had to work on a soundscape and background that would lend to the emotional shift, and I believe it did, in fact, help the final appearance of the project. The concept of the “Potato Audience” became very apparent in this piece as I showed some members of my family, and they did not understand the motion at all, cementing this concept as being very much so true and something to greatly consider in future projects.

Version 2

The changes I made to this version were small but overall improved the visual appeal and coherence of the piece. The addition of sound effects added character and humour and created a much more cohesive conclusion to the emotional shift, and were relatively quick to add in post-production. The addition of the shadow was done within Blender, which was a challenge to wrap my head around successfully but was worth it in my opinion. It may not have been a necessary addition, but it was a good exercise in trying something new in an unfamiliar software, and I believe it strengthened my understanding of Blender just a little more. The shadow grounded these characters in a real space, which helped make the camera shift and jumping motions feel more believable.

The background may not have helped the emotions feel as obvious in the beginning, but it definitely aided in the end of the piece. I felt I could have been more experimental with the background itself (this was the main issue that my peers fed back to me about) rather than it being a still image, but it felt like a tricky balance to hit to make something interesting without taking away from the main actions. I received feedback from my peers saying that the background could have interacted with the characters more to indicate how they are feeling, which I definitely agree with.

Reflections

I am very pleased with my ability to pick up new software, considering how hard it has proven to be in the past. I believe I paced myself well in trying new things while keeping myself from getting overwhelmed, and I believe I was proactive in my problem-solving when things inevitably went wrong. I felt I was thrown in the deep end a little with the learning curve of Blender, but I am pleasantly surprised with how well I fared and how smooth my animation was as a result.

I think my concept was acceptable but left something to be desired in its transformation. Considering the issues I encountered in the previous rotation with entering a “dream-like state”, I feel like I could have been more experimental with my ideas rather than having these shapes just move around the screen. I have a lot of work to do in thinking outside of the box in conventional animation styles, but I believe this is something I can only improve on with time.

In an ideal world, it would have been great to have the animation loop infinitely, however, that would have meant reworking all of the movement entirely and would not have been attainable given our two-week timeframe. Once again, I ran over the allotted timeframe, which was not a problem, considering this was just an introductory session, but it definitely will become more of an issue later down the line.

However, all things considered, I think my use of design, shape, exaggeration and the 12 principles of animation were good and well-executed to make a simple yet charming piece.