My first animation

This is my first ever attempt at an animation. In school I regularly doodled little stick men on the corners of text books and refill pads and would sit and watch the doodles run or dance while I flipped the pages rather than pay attention to the teacher, so when I was told we would be creating a flip book as our first animation I was pretty excited!

We are animating in groups to produce a continuous animation linking the individual work together. To do this each person in the group has to start with the persons before them last frame and continue on from there. We each came up with an idea of what we wanted to animate then had to find a way to get to our ideas from the Starting frame (the last frame of the previous animation).

As this was is first proper animation I’m planning to do, I have decided to go with something simple.

Ideas

After having a quick brain storm I have come up with a few possible ideas for my animation,
· A stick man running or dancing
· A bouncing Ball
· A flower growing
· Someone riding a bike
· A bird flying
· A fish swimming

For and against

Stick man – This would be easy but is a bit cliché
Bouncing ball – I feel this would be too simple
Flower – This has potential, it is simple but interesting
Bike – I don’t like this idea it would be far too ambitious as a first animation
Bird – Another potential idea
Fish – Again I like this idea

Out of my three favourite ideas I have decided to go with the bird purely our of personal preference.

I am the second person in a group of three and my starting frame is of a bubble.


To get from the bubble to my bird idea I’m going to have the bird appear in the distance behind the bubble flying towards us and as the bird gets closer the bubble will pop and we will follow the bird as it flies along and eventually disappears off into the distance.

As a group we discussed what each other wanted to do so we could each adapt our ideas to help make the transition from one animation to the next easier. My animation will end with two lines, which will then create the beginnings of a cartoon man that the student after me will then animate.


My working Progress

















The final Animation

Evaluation

I am happy with the final outcome, as this was the first animation I have attempted I believe it went well. The only criticism I have with it is that my bird does appear to be moving in reverse at some points. Overall I am happy though I may have underestimated how difficult drawing a bird in flight actually is.