Pages

For People Crazy About 2D Animation!

Acme Punched! is for people crazy about 2D animation. It may be enjoyed by beginners and others, but it is aimed at animators who know already something about the process of animation and the basics of character animation. In large part, it will attempt to provide a deep look into the problem solving that goes on in my head as I work out a scene, often in step-by-step posts that I will sometimes enter in "real time", without knowing in advance what the outcome will be. Mistakes and false starts will not only be included but emphasized, so that the creative process of animation will be portrayed realistically. And, while my own bias is for 2D drawn animation, many of the effects and principles discussed here can apply to CGI 3D animation as well. I hope the blog will prove useful and instructive for all.

-Jim Bradrick

Tuesday, December 5, 2017

No. 144, A Weighty Problem, Part 2

To answer the question posed at the end of Part 1 (No. 142, A Weighty Problem, Part 1), I believe that the animation works as intended.

The problem was that a beefy man, the Taxi Driver, was to pick up and move the Old Man's trunk, showing how very heavy it was. But the staging I had chosen did not show all the action--did not show the effort of the Taxi Driver lifting the dead weight of the trunk off the ground.  The severely cropped staging was chosen to emphasize the trunk's size, and also to startle the viewer when the trunk is unexpectedly and violently set down to almost fill the screen.

But I was betting that the scene would work anyway if I carefully animated the Taxi Driver's effort in moving the trunk. Also I was counting on sound effects--the grunting and the impact of the trunk being set down hard--to help put across the man's effort.

Here is the final animation...

a

The right border of the screen is cropped in this pencil test at the same place where I intend to crop the finished shot. (See the storyboard panels in post 142.) As yet, there is no sound at all, but I am happy to see that the animation still has the power that I hoped for.

Sometimes now, I actually get things right on the first try.



 Next: All About Getting Out of a Taxi

No comments:

Post a Comment