Master Of Animation, Games & Interactivity
Master Of Animation, Games & Interactivity

In week 5 I worked on my script and animated another scene, which depicts my character’s inner child. First, I tested a wireframe version with a lot of in-betweens and rendered it once with the frame blending mode and another version with frame sampling mode to see which one looks better. https://vimeo.com/449509733

Afterwards, I coloured the background and the character and did a very quick figure animation, But I wasn’t happy with the result, it didn’t contain the feeling that I wanted to portray. https://vimeo.com/449511800

In this sequence, we see the character’s inner child and I wanted him to look abstract and overly simplified with weird movements, in stark contrast with the adult character who is depicted in great detail. The inner child is not very childlike, he is the size of an adult but the way he moves is a little childish but not playful. It is basically the vision that the character has of his inner child or in other words his failure to find his inner child let alone know his wants and needs. The feeling that I want to represent in the scene is the emotional struggle that many adults face once they decide to reconnect with their inner child whom they have been disconnected from for years.

Version 1 https://vimeo.com/449512202

Version 2 https://vimeo.com/449512991

After consulting with Uyen, I realised that I also need to start thinking about the environment around my character and the set of actions he is going to take. Uyen also introduced me to a new 2D animating app called Looom which is very fun to use. I also got the following feedback from Zhongyang and Holland in regard to picking the final version for the scene which was super useful:

  • The character in V1 is more like a child for since u didn’t detail shapes of his hand and feet. V2 is more like an adult (by the previous reason).  If u want to illustrate the attempts (driven by the struggles due to his failure - as i understand) of him finding his inner child, (for me) it feels good to simply animate a blend of V1 and 2, morphing between the developed and undeveloped shape of his hand and feet (maybe reduce the size of V1-the child version as in my understanding), and give each figure a few frames between the morph?  

  • I prefer the rendering style of the second one where the figure fades in and out of existence, I like the affect that gives a lot, but if I weren’t told the figure was a child, I wouldn’t interpret them as one.

Moving forward I need to quickly start working on other sequences of the animation. I also have to stop working on the colouring in so much detail and need to continue experimenting with different styles of drawing.

About This Work

By Bycharlotte
Email Bycharlotte
Published On: 21/08/2020