Assignment
You are to animate a character of your choice doing a “double take”. This is to be drawn from the character’s waist up. The character should be in a 3/4 front view, looking at something specific just off screen, in front of them. The character then anticipates and shakes their head twice - once to the left and once to the right, they then anticipate down and then move up into the take (which may be as extreme as you want it to be) and then settles slightly, keeping the suprized expression on their face.
This assignment relies heavily on the principles used in all the previous assignments to date: anticipation, overlapping action, and the elements learned from the head rotation. In order for this to be a successful “double take”, your character must have some form of three dimensional features on their face, specifically the nose or possibly hair as this will be used to show the appropriate overlapping action on the head turns. Without either of these, you will not be graded on the overlapping portions of the grade sheet and this could lower your overall final grade substantially.
An option to this assignment is to take an established character and draw them on model doing a take. While most studios don't want to see this on a demo reel, it's good practice to force yourself to get the character on model as you would in a studio environment. Try using a character from a cereal product and draw your own model sheet as practice. See my demo for this option here.
Shoot the animation as a line test showing 3 cycles, transfer to computer as an .avi for grading.
Principles Involved
• Acting
• Expressing an attitude or emotional state
•Working from your own character design
• Keys
• Inbetweens
• Timing
• Slo in & Slo out
• Stretch & Squash
• Overlapping Action
• Use of Arcs
• Weight
• Character
• Emotion & Attitude
• Observation
• Flipping
Deadline
2 weeks (12 - 18 hours)
Grading
Assignment is worth 10% of the second semester grade
Animation will be graded in the following areas:
| • Solid 3 dimensional drawing | ___/15 | |
| • Strong Key Posing | ___/15 | |
| • Appropriate, Realistic Timing | ___/10 | |
| • Proper Anticipation | ___/10 | |
| • Action | ___/10 | |
| • Reactions | ___/10 | |
| • Overlapping Action | ___/10 | |
| • Weight | ___/10 | |
| Total | ____/100 |
Work Schedule
Week 1
Begin working out thumbnails
Rough out primary keys to describe the basic action.
Rough out secondary keys indicating anticipation and reactions throughout scene.
Time out keys and pencil test to confirm timing.
Make any adjustments necessary.
Draw breakdowns to broad actions.
Week 2
Show Brian rough animation.
Inbetweening.
Week 3
Have animation on computer as .avi by beginning of class.
Reading Assignment
Read pages 175 - 187 of the Character Animation and Lip Sync book
See my work process for the mouse take
Take a look at 3 examples of takes