Animation Fundamentals - Final Project: Action Animation

2.7.2024 - 28.7.2024 / Week 11 - Week 14
Chan Wan Qing / 0350928 / BA of Design (HONS) in Creative Media
Animation Fundamentals
Final Project

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INDEX:

1. Final Project: Action Animation
2. Feedbacks
3. Reflection 

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INSTRUCTIONS

Final Project: Action Animation

In the final project, we are required to use our character from our previous project 1 and animate a 5 second physical action sequence. We can choose an action sequence that involves physical movement, such as a fight, chase, or sports-related activity. Then, we have to develop a clear understanding of the desired outcome, key actions, and the emotions we want to convey in the scene.

Storyboard

Before starting on animating, I drew the storyboard first. The scenes are inspired by my story idea on Film Studies and Cinematography. From storyboard idea 2, I modify it to a more connected action in the scenes. After drawing on the storyboard, I proceeded to search for the actions online, then I drew out rough animation. 

Storyboard Idea #1

Storyboard Idea #2

Storyboard Idea #3

References

Rough

Following the reference, I draw out the rough animation of the first scene, where the character is running. 

Scene 1 - Rough

Then, followed by the rough animation of the character falling into the hole. 

Scene 2 - Rough

The next scene is the character rolling down the hole. 

Scene 3 - Rough

The last scene is the character rolling out the hole. 

Scene 4 - Rough

Clean 

Following the rough animation, I draw the character in Project 1A and her action.

Scene 2 - Clean Animation

Scene 3 - Clean Animation

Scene 4 - Clean Animation

Tie Down

Then, I draw the tie down animation for all the scenes.

Scene 1 - Tie Down Animation

Scene 2 - Tie Down Animation

Scene 3 - Tie Down Animation

Scene 4 - Tie Down Animation

Background 

After finishing the tie up animation of all the scenes, I draw the background for all the scenes. 

Scene 1 - Background

Scene 2 - Background

Scene 3 - Background

Scene 4 - Background

Animation 

Then, I also coloured the character and placed them into the scenes.

Scene 1

Scene 2

Scene 3

Scene 4

After that, I compiled all the scenes together and added sound effects in Adobe Premiere Pro. 

Compiled Scenes

Animation with Sound Effects

After watching the animation, I felt that I can add more sound effects. And there is some amendments to make in Scene 2. So, I amended it and added the screaming sound effects when the character is rolling down. 

Final Project: Action Animation

Final Storyboard

Final Action Animation

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FEEDBACKS

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REFLECTION

For me, this final project is not an easy one although it's only a few seconds. Since I used the action in the story in Film Studies and Cinematography module, so the actions are hard to find. I couldn't find a real person and track his action, so I found the actions from other animation. There are quite a few steps to be completed throughout the whole project. First, I drew the storyboard, I have a few ideas from the story but at last, I choose this part because I thought that this is easier to animate and also to draw the background. After the storyboard, I first find references to draw the rough animation of the character for all of the 4 scenes. In the first scene, I could find image reference since it shows the character running. For the second, third and fourth scenes, I screenshot each frame from the video and draw the rough animation, so it requires more work. Then, I proceeded to draw the clean animation, in this process, I included the physical characteristics of my character in Project 1 into the drawing. It was quite challenging to draw the clean animation from the rough one because of the proportion of the character's. After drawing the clean animation, the work becomes easier as I only needed to draw the tie down animation from the clean one. While drawing the tie down animation, I found that some of the stroke looks weird, so I amended that particular part during the process. Then, I drew the background and colour the character. In this project, I learned to apply the knowledge from the whole module, including spacing, exaggeration, follow through and so on. This project was quite hard as we have to do it step by step for all the scenes. And it requires quite a lot of time to complete all of them because we have to draw every scenes, although some of them I copied and pasted the poses and changes the direction of the legs to make work easier. From the final animation, I felt like there can be some improvements, like the transition between scene 1 and 2 was too quick, and at the last scene, there can be a scene of in between between the final 2 frames, but I kind of wanted the action to be quick, so it was sort of dilemma while drawing the final 2 frames.