This task requires students to create animation using assets created by themselves. Animation is a series of images played in sequence that gives the illusion of motion. By tweaking each frame, students are able to replicate the said illusion.
Students are required to create a complete animation of a character performing an action with the students given a choice between eating or doing a particular sports. In the end, students are expected to produced an animation saved as .gif format.
The animation above despite softy "boi"led performing pole vault. The animation aims to inspire the courage of doing things as shown by an egg paul vaulting without any mats or cushions. It also symbolized how one should be brave to take risk as they would never know whether or not that they can get through it.
A simplified version of pole vaulting is used in the animation. The action begin with softy holding a pole which he then follow it up with running towards the bar whist pointing the pole forward, Upon reaching the bar, softy use the pole to vault himself over the bar with the pole left on the ground while doing such.
The animation is created in 15 fps with motion blur disable to reduce complication of the created gif. The action of vaulting over the bar is showed in slow motion to help emphasis the action while also greatly add wow factor on the overall animation.
Choosing topic
Before any designs are made, a topic is needed to be chosen. For this project the topic of sport is chosen due to it having more complex actions that are different and unique and also distinguishable with other sports which will make the animation more interesting. The particular sport that is chosen is pole vault. This is due to personal interest in that sport while also having an edge in the knowledge of that sport while reading about it back in secondary year.
Pole vault is a track an field sport in which an athlete would utilize a flexible pole to help jump over a bar. Pole vaulting is known since the Greek era and is made into a full medal event in the Olympic since the late 90s.
Previsualization
The task begin by developing a concept map. Mood board of references images is also used to help shape the final product. Additionally a draft of the story board is also crafted to identify and examine the major “key frames” of the animations.
//insert scanned story board
Creating character
Inspired by characters from Chaos Faction 2, various character designs are considered and iterated into the final character used for the animation. The character styles from the mentioned game is chosen as the characters are unique due to having no limbs while still managed to express action. Additionally character style from an older project is also considered when creating the character.
The theme chosen for the character is based off an egg. This is due to the recent trend of sharing and supporting a post of an egg on Instagram. The name softy "boi"led is derived from the phrase "soft boiled".
The character and assets is made on illustrator. A combination of pen tool and curve tool is used to create the shapes and forms. Cartoony theme is appropriate for this animation and as such, the character is given a pair of white gloves and shoe. Additionally the character is given asymmetrical eyes. The color of the character is orange-peach this is to further strengthen the cartoony characteristic of the character which have vibrant colours.
Animating
After effect is used to give animation life. This is used instead of simply drawing out each frame because it allow for more efficient and flexible animation. This mean that it allow for a greater control on what the animation would look like and also how long the animation last.
The assets are import into after effect. A composition is chosen with the appropriate size and frame rate chosen. For this project, a resolution of 700 x 480 px is chosen along with the frame rate of 15 fps. The small resolution and frame rate is used as it will be exported as animated gif and as such, the file size should be kept as small as possible to ensure that the gif will not take too long to load on web pages while also maintaining a relatively acceptable quality.
Each assets is imported into the composition in layers. With the sky being on the bottom and the character being on top. Key frames are adjusted on the assets position and rotation and this in turn produce and animation. The animations are played and reviewed with various tweaks made to those key frames to enhance the animations.
Export as gif
The animation are exported as a video file and the file is then imported to photoshop to be exported as gif. In there, multiple presets can be chosen to optimized the exported gif relative to the file size. Additionally, each fields can also be modified to further reduce the file size.
Despite it being a few seconds gif, it took a considerably large amount of time to produce it. One key challenges is unfamiliarity with new software which itself also require a lot of time researching on how to use it effectively. However the animated gif produced is satisfactory with some improvements that can help to improved it further. Creating an animated gif is no easy task as it require both the knowledge on animating and also knowing how the action look like.
