cpsw8-time

Theme

Time

Context

The Dover Boys of Pimento University

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpOPyjmB8SI

Zabriskie Point - Final scene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guOmJM8xvHA

The first animation uses fictive time to change the moving speed of the characters. This is a common way in the animation which uses the time to increase interesting and dramatical. During the animation, it also uses stretch to make the character look resilient, in order to improve the smoothness of movements.

To the second video, the director uses the varying time to present explosions, which makes everything move very slow. It is a common representation in film as well.

Method

I will make an animation in tvpaint with varying time.

Response

When I saw this topic, I considered about when will people feel that time moves so fast or slow, which remind me of the theory of relativity. It states that when people have unpleasure feeling, time feels particularly slow, and my story is about such an awkward moment. My main character is a newcomer in the company. When he found that the boss and his beautiful secretary are on the elevator, he has been under great pressure and the atmosphere came very silently. At this time, he farted accidentally. I think most people will be very embarrassed in this situation, because farting in a quiet closed space will be very obvious, and the people around him is boss which increase the awkward feeling. I use varying time to express his panic, in fact, the fart may not be so smelly and time did not move so slow, it is just his feeling.

Reflection

The use of time in animation is a very important part. In order to make it more interesting, the director usually uses a lot of time-varying which different from reality, such as character zips off screen leaving a puff of smoke. The speed of the movement can reflect the mood of characters. For example, when the character is very eager and exciting, he can move extremely fast. In the process of making my animation, I found the most interesting part is to describe his panic of whether they noticed. At this time, the frame should move very slowly, consistent with the speed of time that he felt. I also used the stretching of shape, which should be more distinct here, because stretching can represent the speed of motion in a slow-motion lense.