2D Animaiton Hand In

Olympic animation

Pre-Production

I Started by thinking of a famous historical character that I would like to animate. I originally thought of the idea that I would be animating Theodore Roosevelt doing the javelin, but I couldn’t find any funny/interesting ideas with this combination.

I then moved onto the idea with a Viking named Ragnar Lodbrok/Lothbrok. I explored a few early animation character designs but found these did not fit the style I was looking for so I looked at a sheet that was given to me in a lesson on designing characters and used some of the ideas from that.

Here are the results;

I Then Drew some more details on the Computer so I had more of an idea of what I was going to animate.

And after went on to drawing a character sheet so I could see my character from all angles.

After I had my character designed I went on to storyboard some of the shots for my animation. I started with the idea of Ragnar doing boxing, but found that this would be too hard to finish by the deadline. I thought about Ragnar throwing so shot put.

Storyboarding;

This is the original storyboard that I drew. I then went on to drawing the frames on a larger 

scale on TV Paint which I could then animate. 

After creating the storyboard, it was time to animate. I planned the timing and drew arcs for each action individually.

To animate the throw, I looked at a lot of reference on YouTube to create some key poses which you can see in the animation.

After establishing all the movements, I then moved onto to refining the line art and adding some “in betweens”. By doing this it smoothed the animation out and gave it a more professional touch.

When I finished all of the line work and had all the animation done I moved on to colouring the line work and drawing the backgrounds. 

I then exported the clips on TV Paint as a JPG sequence and imported them into Premier Pro as a sequence. By doing this it allows much more control over editing each shot.

After doing this I imported the sounds that I had found such as Footsteps, Grunts, Screams, soundtracks and Other smaller sounds. I then synced them to the Animation and changed balance and volume to create the atmosphere that I wanted.

When I was happy with my edit I exported it as H264 at 720p with maximum render settings for the best result.

Advantages

I found that doing this project really helped me with developing my skills in basic animation. It allowed me to analyse walk cycles and gave me the chance to practice them from angles I have never tried before. I also had a go at demonstrating weight in more depth by using a pendulum effect when Ragnar picks up the ball man.

I developed my skills in TV Paint which should help me be more proficient in my future animations as I found a lot of helpful tools during this project.

I also learned how to throw a shot put correctly and efficiently due to analysing a lot of the videos and looking at key poses.

Difficulties

The most difficult part for me during this project was time management, I set myself too much to do such as colouring and choosing a difficult movement, this resulted in me staying behind a lot of the time just to make sure I could finish.

I also found creating the walk cycle as well as animating another person in the frame was very difficult and brought up a lot of problems but I managed to pass the problems and proceed with the animation.

Link to Final Export: https://vimeo.com/199718425