Character Animation

For character animation we had two main submissions. The first was a hand-drawn animation featuring an object that does not normally have human characteristics and emotions - this object being a sack of flour. For my flour sack, in order to have him show more than one emotion, i created a scenario where he is happily playing the guitar until he manages to break a string, and then is so sad about this that he gives up and leaves. I found the process of making this animation, although very time-consuming and sometimes even really difficult, rather exciting because i have never attempted a hand-drawn animation before.

My almost-finished flour sack animation can be found here!

The next and main part of my Character Animation module was to design and create a character to be used in an animation. We first had to design our character's personality, qualities and attributes before we even started to draw him. After going through various ideas including a vegetarian zombie, I decided to explore further into the character i created for my other module Time-based narrative. His name is Lewis, he is a doctor from southern England who suffers from nightmare disorder, slowly morphing into insomnia. Various flashbacks from his dreams are slowly causing him to believe that they are in fact predictions of the future, and he eventually becomes what we would perceive as insane.

I have yet to produce a suitable quality character layout and emotions sheet, but have done various sketches and paintings of my character, shown below.

Also part of this submission is to write a script for a 30 second animatic that would show more than one aspect of our character's personality.

I have recently completed my storyboard for the animatic that i am to create for the final submission in this project. This was an enjoyable experience because i have come to know my character fully inside-out and i enjoy drawing him and building on his story ^^

External files: Storyboard/script/description, Animatic (unfinished), sketchbook

Next steps: to complete model sheet, expression sheet, animatic

Possible summer project: Continue with animation to produce full short story