Introduction
Over the past 10 weeks, I have worked on my animated artefact, which was a great opportunity to push my animation skills to the next level. In addition, I practiced how to manage my time and create my own animation workflow to deliver the project on time.
Animated Artefact Render
Concept
I developed a short animated film to showcase my body mechanics abilities. My source of inspiration is Buster Keaton’s silent films, as the body was the most essential part to communicate an idea. In this sense, I focused on exaggerating the movements of my character in order to communicate the story with a non-verbal storytelling style.
Inspiration: Buster Keaton
Buster Keaton Tribute Frame
I decided to include a picture frame in the background as a way to tribute Buster Keaton’s films.
Narrative: ‘Paranoia’
My animation tells the story of how the character has the feeling he is being observed by creatures and it is his fear and obsession that leads him to a paranoid state of mind.
Cartoony Visual Style
As regards my visuals, I followed a cartoony style as I wanted to create an absurd animation targeted at a younger audience.
For this reason, the elements of my room are stylized and do not follow a hyperralistic shape.
In addition, whereas the background follows a pastel pallete, the creatures have applied vibrant colors so that they are highlighted in the scene. This applies also to the character’s hair and pants.
Pantomime Character
Even though I did not model and rig the character, I made sure to personalize the design and clothes.
I decided to create a pantomime as a reference to my concept and convey the idea that the body is a powerful ‘tool’ of communication.
Feedback Sessions
What follows next are some of the videos I discussed with my animation mentor George, who guided me in improving the movements of the character. I started my process by recording reference videos, then creating my previs scene, and finally replacing the placeholder elements with the character and props. The feedback sessions I had were crucial as they truly helped me to enhance my animation quality and learn from my mistakes.
Further Comments
In the future, I would like to keep polishing the character’s animation in order to get smoother movements. However, even though every animation project can be enhanced, I am truly satisfied with the progress I made during the past 10 weeks as I learned how to create my personal project from scratch and deliver the animation on time.