Exercise 7 - Character animation
In this exercise you will apply what you have learned in Lesson 7 to your own character’s animation. Animating a character is much more than conveying movement as going from point A to point B. It also involves expressing your character’s personality and emotions through the way it and other elements surrounding your character (for example hair, clothes, props) move.
Guidelines
Based on Lesson 7 and on your storyboard (Project 1), animate the character you have designed for Exercise 6.1. The objective here is to present the way your character moves AND its personality/emotion in two basic animations:
Animate your character moving forward. Your character can be walking, running, jumping, or rolling. Anything that conveys forward motion as you envisioned in your storyboard (Project 1).
Animate your character to convey one emotion/personality trait (for example: happiness, sadness, excitement, fear, courage). For this animation you can focus on your character’s face or entire body, whatever makes sense in relation to your story.
You can choose to combine the two animations (display personality/emotion as your character moves forward) or to create them separately, but your final product must be a 5 second clip with both animations (forward motion and personality/emotion).
Steps to completion
First, take some time to think again about all the movements your character will perform. Is your character designed in a way that allows for those movements? Refer back to your storyboard (Project 1) to make sure you have taken into account the various motions your character will perform in its journey.
Make any adjustments necessary to your character’s original design. Remember, all the different parts that will be animated must be in separate layers.
Import your character into Adobe After Effects. If you don’t remember how to do this step, watch again the video available on Lesson 4.
Using After Effects, start rigging your character. This step is thoroughly detailed in Lesson 7, so refer back to it in case of any doubts.
It is crucial that your character is rigged properly for a smooth, easy flowing animation, so test all different parts of your character to make sure everything is moving correctly and that you don’t have any disjointed parts.
Animate your character to display:
Your character moving forward;
Your character’s emotion/personality trait.
Again, you can choose to combine the two animations (display personality/emotion as your character moves forward) or to create them separately.
Take a closer look into your complete animation and make any necessary adjustments.
Export your final animation as an .mp4 video following this naming convention:
art204_exercise7_lastname_firstname.mp4
If you have created two separate animations (one of you character moving forward and another for its emotion/personality trait), combine both into one clip using After Effects.
Upload the animation to your frame.io page and post the link on the course page.