CAN was quite a crazy class to jump into. It was accelerated compared to FOA, but also having the basics down, was easy to get a grasp on. The class was very critique-heavy, and almost felt hard for that alone. Not saying any names, but there was one Studio Artist that was particularly rough on all of us. Yeah, we all know they critique the work, not you, but there was particular moments of feeling attacked. But hey, it’s the real world. Buckle up and maybe bring a spare tissue.
So, different than FOA, this class was a month in itself, and we needed to focus on JUST animation. But I was feeling generous in my time-spending that I also went ahead and started on the Hard-Surface Modeling Art Test (blog at a later date). The first assignment was to take our CAN character Bugsy and put him in dramatic poses depending on emotion, such as anger, joyfulness, disgust, and so on. Pretty easy, just put him in poses that relate to the emotion.
The second project we were given a rigged toon juice box, and were required to give him an action and a purpose. We learned some interesting techniques, and had to think about how one would walk if they have no legs nor feet. There were many perceived ideas in the class, but overall it can be made to do anything you want. We had to develop pre-pro, making break-down shots and action poses, as well as exploratory drawings, before we even start animating. My idea was to have the juice box walking into the shot, spot a ball, juggle it and ricochet against the wall and smack him in the face. There were a total of 3 passes, from key, to breakdown, to anticipations.
The third project was the basic walk, where we started with Bugsy, had to pose him sitting down and walk to another chair and sit down. The mood I wanted to use was something as a joyful stride.
The fourth project was an emotional change, where we had to give our character a starting emotion, and then give him an ending emotion. This one I chose for him to be adventurous and intrigued, and end in horrified and scared.
The fifth and final project was to take a sound clip and lip sync the character acting.
CAN was a great learning class on how to animate a character. I feel like if I spent more time and interest in this I could be a good animator, but unfortunately it’s not my thing. I can do it alright, but not good enough. I enjoyed the class a lot for the methodology and how to make a character function.
That’ll do for now.
-endy