Topic 8: Polished Animation of a Character Jumping Over a Gap

Topic 8 is a continuation of topic 7 in which we are to use the character jumping blocking pass and polish it to create a finalised animation. 

This week's lecture focused on many principles of animation, such as timing, arcs and anticipation, but the major focus was on exaggeration. Exaggeration, as many define it, is the pursuit of making motion exciting. Many animators claim that striving for a perfect recreation of reality can look static and dull, this is why exaggeration is such a prolific principle. Exaggeration effectively amplifies the motion, movement or posing of a character to give them more life and the amount of exaggeration depends on the kind of style an animator is seeking. Subtle exaggeration will create a realistic look whereas a lot of exaggeration will produce a more cartoonish look. 

My Animation: 

Step 1:

Step 1 of topic 8 was to decide what animation style our character jumping would take on, stylised cartoon look or realistic. For my animation I decided to go for a realistic look. 

Step 2: 

For step 2 we were tasked with, while still in the blocking stage, adjust and exaggerate the key poses and the timing of our animation to match the style of animation we were going for. 

Although the blocking pass has been done already, the movement of the character is quite dull. To fix this I exaggerated most of the key poses. Exaggerating the key poses made the movement of the character look more pronounced and natural.

Step 3:

Now that the blocking phase was complete it was time to move on to adding motion in-between each key pose. To do this I selected all my key poses and set them to auto tangent to give a smooth transition between each pose. 

Setting the tangents to auto turned out pretty well and gave nice, smooth movement from pose to pose, however, there were some issues. Between the character raising his arms and squatting in preparation for the jump, he swings his arms outwards instead of keeping them by his side, this also happens while he is jumping. Another issue the animation possesses is, whilst in the air the characters legs fold in on themselves and point backwards for a frame. Finally, the timing of the jump is a little slow causing the character to hang in the air for too long. These errors make the animation look unrealistic and prevent the movement from looking natural. 

Step 4:

In step 4 we were to polish off our animation, making sure there were smooth movements and nice arcs.

To fix the issues caused by the auto tangents and polish off the animation to create a finalised piece, I went through and created in-betweens where issues were taking place. By adding these in-betweens the motion has a natural and realistic movement. I also adjusted the timing of the character's key poses to move faster and in turn look more realistic.

Reflection:

After completing topic 8 and creating an animation with a focus on exaggeration, it is clear why exaggeration is such an important principle. Without exaggeration, animation would often look boring and dull as imitating real life while remaining interesting is difficult. Exaggeration also has a major impact on the style an animation takes on. With a lot of exaggeration your animation can take on a stylised cartoonish look while a subtle use of exaggeration can give your animation a realistic feel. Exaggeration is a key principle in animation and can elevate an animation to the next level.