3rd Year Design: For Katherine and Britney

Last week we looked at Model Sheets.  

Character Lineup

Character Rotation

Pose Sheet

Structure and Character Breakdown

This week we will begin to put into motion our characters.  It's not enough to simply design a character.  The character needs to be thoroughly practiced and posed.  Fine tune your character and alter it if you need to, until it's comfortable to animate.  IN DETAIL describe how  to approach this character in animation.  If you were working at a studio, this would all need to be clear on paper prior to production.  It makes more sense to give the animation team as much information possible before they animate, rather than try to explain it during animation or the revision stage.  Time is money, and you will surely learn that as an animator, you want to have as much information as possible  from the start.  Too often, I see unnecessary revisions after scenes have been fully animated.  Something as simple as a detailed model sheet could have been enough to prevent such set backs.  Plan, plan plan.

Below are some wonderful drawings from Hans Bacher's blog.   Designed by CHEN-YI CHANG for Disney's Mulan.

© disney enterprises, inc

[source]

Your end goal is to have many industry standard portfolio pieces as possible.  Keep asking yourself, can I animate these characters?  Are they esthetically appealing?  How do the forms move in 3 dementional space?

Here's a beautiful piece of animation I found while looking through the 11 Second Club.  The short film was originally created by BJ Crawford for his 3rd year film.  He says he recently finished it up in collaboration with many talented animators and artists.  It's never too late!  Feel how the characters move.  They seem 3 dementional!

[source]

[source]