[Animation] Squirrel & the Nut

This was a small project I did in University, I worked with animator Tony Garth, the animator in the famous television cartoon "Danger Mouse". He taught us the 12 basic animation principles: Squash and Stretch, Anticipation, Staging, Straight ahead action and Pose to Pose, Follow through and Overlapping Action, Slow in and Slow out, Arcs, Secondary action, Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing ans finally Appeal. We where told to create a small animation using one of these principles, I chose anticipation so and created the animation using this principles. We where to create concept art for the character, and also a quick storyboard to prepair for the animation. Below is the animation:

Similar to the Transformation Animation I found this animation to be easy to do, but very time consuming. I used a lightbox to see through the paper to create a smooth animation. It is the first time I have ever had to animate a character and keep him looking like the character even when squashing and stretching him, unlike the Transformation Animation in which the character I had was changing into something completely different. I think doing these small animations are great practice for the future when I decide to key frame my animations in Flash like I said I was going to do in the Loop and for when I want to do more Lightbox animations. Tony Garth also showed me how to use the 'Trace Bitmap' in Flash, because of this I was able to edit the drawings and animate them. This helped me keep the character aligned in each frame and also let me resize the images to fit in my work space, unlike in the Transformation Animation when I used Adobe Premiere to animate the images.

I found this animation easy, but very time consuming as it took overall 7 hours to draw all 70 frames. Unlike the Transformation Animation I didn't have a problem with the number of lightboxes as I stayed behind one night after uni had finished and then drew all of the frames out. The following night I scanned all of the images into my computer one by one, the next day I put them all into Flash and animated them. There were no major problems drawing these really, I had a problem with the ending as I thought having the character walk off screen would be too difficult and would require a whole lot more time. To overcome this I had the character become too heavy until he falls through the floor, although in my own personal opinion I think that the scene ends far too fast.

The main focus on this animation was to include one or more animation principles into the animation, Choosing Anticipation and Squash and Stretch I think I achieved the main focus well. When the character leans back it shows the anticipation of him about to eat the giant coconut, when he does eat the coconut he stretches in the form of the coconut until he plummets into the ground. I would have added more of the principles but that would require more frames and more time, if I was to do another animation like this or re-due this animation I would be sure to add more principles.

The main character is a character I designed myself, a grey squirrel with a red fez on his head. Although the squirrel’s design idea was influenced from both cartoon characters; Gir from the television cartoon ‘Invader Zim’ and Foamy the Squirrel from the flash series ‘Foamy the Squirrel’. I wanted to make him look cute and small, similar to Gir when he is a dog suit so I tried to make him look similar to that, the design of the squirrel was taken from the character Foamy with his large eyes, grey design, large tail but small ears.

The intention of the animation was to show the animation principles in animation form; I showed two of the principles both Anticipation and Squash and Stretch. Personally I think I got the intention across to the audience by showing these two, mainly the Anticipation over the Squash and Stretch as you only see the character stretch whereas the whole first scene in the animation is anticipation. Another intention was to design a character and animate it from scratch, after Tony gave me feedback on my original character designs he said, “I was inspired by Manga, I need to show my own drawing style” so I decided to draw and animate my own character.

If I had to do the animation again I would pace myself, do some drawings one night and the rest another night, this would give me time to review what I have done and improve scenes and not rush the ending. I would re-due the ending if I had to do it again as I think the character falls through the floor too fast. I would also colour the animation in as I think that it would make it stand out alot more, plus I think it would give it a more complete feeling to the animation.

----------EDIT----------

After doing the animation I took out the grey colours and replaced them with actual colours using Flash, once Tony Garth taught me how to 'Trace Bitmap' in Flash it was much easier to manipulate the images so I could change the colours easily. I like it in colour, but I think i prefer the version in black and white now I have seen both versions, I think this I hadn't re-coloured the outlines so they are still grey. Another reason is that there is no shading on the character or the Nut, this makes the animation look flat and boring, if I re-did the colouring I would add shadowing to it and also thicken the outline. Below is the animation in colour: