The mood change exercise has been the one I have struggled with the most and spent the most time on. As I was trying to create this animation I started to change my mind a lot and become unsure of what I wanted to do. Up until I began this assignment I had been drawing simplified standard human characters, so I wanted to push myself to make something more interesting. After seeing the work of my course mates I felt a little doubtful of my drawing skills and felt like I should be doing more complex characters so this is what I strived to do.
I decided to first map out the key frames very roughly:
Then I traced over it with a rough design:
When I came back to this animation after the break I wasn’t motivated to finish it at all. I had envisioned my character being a muscular gym guy wearing new trainers but I couldn’t translate it into my drawing. I decided that for these short exercises it is more important to focus on the animation technique, and then in future projects I can think about stylising my work more. I went back to the more simplistic design and finished recently with this:
I’m really glad I went back to this simple design because I could make the movement so much more interesting. I had a lot of fun playing with the reactions and anticipation, especially the exaggerated transition into the run. I made the animation using both Steve’s walk cycles and a reference I found online which is in my research blog. I would really like to clean this up and make some fixes to the walk cycle so I can use it as a portfolio piece.
The development I have been through in this exercise has really shown me how much I have learned and improved in the few months I have been on this course. I feel like by practising all of these exercises I am starting to get a natural feel for animation and an understanding of the basic principles.