5 Tips for Animation

 Tip 1:

    The first tip from the reading that I want to talk about is the tip about making everything feel bouncy and alive. The first time I presented my animation the character felt stiff because only the arms and legs moved and nothing else. After going back and readjusting a few things, I think I did a good job of making my character look more alive while running. "Robertson says that you should always try to keep the character moving, even if they're standing still (Caoili, 2012). This is something that I am keeping in mind for all my animations.

Tip 2: 

    The second tip I want to talk about is the one about having strong keyframes and silhouettes. My animation in particular has a lot of keyframe movement within it. All of my frames were strong keyframes with a lot of movement going on to achieve fluidity. 

Tip 3: 

    The last tip I wanted to talk about is the tip on limiting frames. I know I just talked about how many keyframes I had, but I would really rather lower the number of frames I have to make the animation look neater. "It's best not to over-flourish your animations, limiting the number of frames and just using a good smear instead, to ensure the impact of the movement isn't lost" (Caolili, 2012). I feel like this is important to me because I think using a smear would have achieved the same effect faster. Also, I feel like my frames weren't the smoothest, and using a smear would have made it so.

Animation Principles in my Character Rig

 Slow In & Slow Out

The first principle I will cover for my character rig is the Slow In & Slow Out principle. I choose this one because I made a run cycle for my animation, so I have a fast in and fast out. The book states, "Objects that burst into full speed immediately can look weightless and unrealistic" (Cooper, 2019 p.g. 33). This is true but for strictly a run cycle that is used for running one would not want it to have a slow out while you are consistently running because then the run animation would just look wonky. For that reason, you just insert an animation of the character slowing down while exiting the run cycle.

Secondary Action

"Secondary actions are used to complement and emphasize the primary action of the character, adding extra detail and visual appeal to the base action" (Cooper, 2019 p.g. 36). For my run animation, I have secondary actions in place that involve the hair moving while mid-leap and so on and so forth.

Straight Ahead and Pose to Pose

This principle is probably the most important in my animation because I worked on all 10 frames individually and did pose to pose actions in my piece.