Tuesday, February 8, 2011

AM Class 1 - Week 5

Well hello everybody. Week 5 just passed at Animation Mentor and our topic of study was Anticipation and Squash & Stretch. Our assignment was to animate a bouncing ball (yes, another bouncing ball) that goes through an obstacle course, as well as create a pose that conveys Devastation. Oh, and the bouncing ball will now have squash and stretch applied to it.

But Matt, what is Squash & Stretch? Funny you should ask, as I was just about to explain them. It's a simple enough concept to understand: things squash, and things stretch. But we're not just talking about the skin on you arm when you rest it on a table, or the muscle of your butt-cheeks when you sit down. Entire actions can be defined by squashing or stretching or both. For example, if your standing and you want to jump in the air, what do you do? You squat down (squash) and then you straighten out as you leap into the air (stretch). A bouncing ball will squash as it hits the ground, then slightly stretch out as it leaves the ground (this is often greatly exaggerated in animation to be more clear). Squash and stretch happens everywhere, even when you don't exactly notice. Even a pitcher throwing a baseball squashes up as he starts the pitch, then stretches out upon throwing the ball. I bet you never thought of that, did you? (Neither did you until they showed me).

Ok Matt, I get it, but what about Anticipation? Isn't that the feeling you get on Christmas morning right before you see all the loot you got? Yes, yes it is. But it's not quite the same in animation. Anticipation for the animator is the building up of energy in order to perform an action. Sometimes it's shown as moving backward before moving forward, or shifting your weight to the left before you step to the right. It's kind of a movement before a movement. A golfer swings back before swinging forward, a pitcher winds up before throwing a baseball (anticipation and squash), you scrunch down before you jump up. We use it because things don't look right without it, and it clarifies the primary action that's about to take place. Could you imaging a golfer just swinging the club forward? It would probably look pretty weird and it wouldn't be too effective. These are obvious examples, but anticipation happens everywhere on both small and large scales. Sometimes so minutely that you don't even really see it, it just 'feels' better than it does without it.

I could go on for a while about Anticipation and it's uses, but I think you get the picture. So on to the assignments. I unfortunately had to rush a little bit to get through these because I was travelling from Friday through Sunday, so I definitely think there will be some revisions.

Here' is my planning for my obstacle course.


Here's the animation.


Here's the planning for my pose. I chose #4 and put it at a different angle for clarity and feel.


And here's the actual pose.

1 comment:

  1. Looking good! On the ball obstacle course I feel like frames 27-40 happen too quickly. Particularly the downward bounce after hitting the upper block around 31-33. It could just be the small video making it hard to track, though.

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