Blue Zoo Animation Masterclass

I haven't done a blog in ageeeeessss. Any ways, for the last two weeks or so I have been working solidly on the master class project. The brief, which was set by Mike Wyatt from Blue Zoo, was to create four animations. The first was a 30 second 2D ident for the NCCA, which had to involve a character interacting with a ball that transformed into various objects of different weights. The other three were 10 second scenarios involving a character being revealed something the viewer can't see, and reacting to it.

For my 2D animation I wanted to go a kind of Peppa Pig-ish vibe, (except a bit more violent). I had this idea of a strange guy throwing animals around and thought it was funny enough to go with. I really enjoyed working in this cut-out style, and being in 2D I feel it really made me focus on getting the basic movements correct. I was also able to use a python script I wrote last year for Spies, the russian doll film, which helped swap between textures for the eyes and mouth.

For the 3D animations, I wanted the character to change emotional states by what was revealed in the box. In the first animation he goes from happy to distraught/shocked; the third one from sneaky to happy; and the third from happy to angry. This contrast helped to emphasize the exaggerated poses.

I feel I have learned so much from this project, especially being able to get feedback halfway through. Looking back at my original blocking I can see a huge improvement, both in timing and staging, particularly thinking about silhouettes. At first I was focusing too much on individual poses, rather than the shot as a whole. I feel this meant me timing was off, usually too fast-paced, and also not varied enough. A good example is the happy reaction, which initially had a big jump before the fist pump at the end. I spent a while getting the jump right, but realised it just didn't fit the scene. I deleted it, freeing up the action to slow down a bit in that section, and it suddenly read a lot better! Although it's not perfect, overall I am happy with the resulting work, and feel the knowledge gathered will be incredibly useful as I start properly animating my on my major project.

(It's also the first thing I've rendered in HD so full screen it, why the hell not?)