Tasters Week - Week 4

2D-Animation...

To truely be an animator you will have to have some experience with 2D animation, or thats what the tutors say..

This week all the animation class gets moved around, so that everyone gets a taste of a different kind of animation. Us, the computer animation guys, have to give 2D animation a try, and the 2D guys have to try computer animation. The stop-motion group is doing computer animation aswell.

The brief (assignment) is to make an animation with a tennisball, canonball and a balloon. The animation needs to show the weight of the different balls, by drawing them falling down a staircase. I have never drawn so many drawings in a week before. Allthough the drawings wasn't anything but a circle most of the time, I most have drawn at least 200+ drawings. For a second of 2D animation you will have to draw 12 drawings, so thats means I'm never going to be 2D animator :-) Its such a lot of work, but when you put the drawings together and they start to move it's worth the trouble. As much fun as 2D animation is, I am still a Computer animator by heart.

The experience of 2D animation was really good. I thought it would be a pain to get through, but the resulting product was worth it ( said that twice now:-) In the future, the knowlegde of 2D workflow, is properly going to be beneficial for a career in 3D.

And thats enough talk about it. Time to show the products of the week, I must excuse the poor quality in the bottom-right hand corner:-

Tennis ball

Cannon ball

Balloon

All copyright is reserved for the University of Glamorgan, Cardiff school of Creative and Cutural Industries.

The best of the three is in my opinion the balloon animation, cause the timing and spacing of the frames comes pretty close a real balloons movements. The worst of the three is the cannon ball. I dont really know why I dont like that one, maybe it's because I haven't actually seen a cannon ball fall down a staircase. Yep, thats right. They didn't allow us to roll a cannon ball down the stairs. Jeez, the nerve of the tutors. And they expect us to do some proper research ;-)

On the other stuff that animation, I finally got the grant from the Danish government through. So at this point I dont have to worry to much about money, which frees a lot of "thinking" to focus on my animation.
Thats the words from the week, hope you found the reading a bit interesting.