This is it! My final animation for first semester!  And believe me, it wasn’t as easy at the time as it may look.  Not nearly.  I was working all day and night, almost giving up a couple of times and nearly deciding to hand it in only partly done, but I pushed myself to get it as close as humanly possible to my own standards of acceptableness.  I’m not sorry I did.

Since this assignment was so full of personality, I think it mostly speaks for itself.  I don’t need to state the obvious that it combined all the basic principles we’d leaned up to this point.  All I’ll say is that it’s over now, and I’m very, very thankful for Christmas vacation.  Looking forward to more all-nighters and pepto bismol next semester!

This was our last animation before the final, and it’s was a big one.  For the first time we had something resembling a character with personality, and there were several principles involved, including anticipation, an exaggerated overshoot pose, and a slow settle with follow-through on the ears (which in my case required a separate layer and a moving hold).  I’m proud of the fact that I managed to avoid “twinning” on the ears – they finish settling at slightly different moments so as not to look unnatural.

I laughed when I got my teacher’s feedback with my grade, because he told me to give him less of a “Jay Leno chin” next time

Further exploration of the wave principle.  I don’t feel as attached to this assignment as the others, and if I could redo it I would probably add a bit more wind.  Part of the reason is because it’s such a mechanical, cyclical action on a completely inanimate object I suppose.  It’s always more fun when you’re animating something to which you can give a little personality!

On the other hand, this was a really great mark on this one, so it’ll always have a place in my heart!

This early animation was our introduction to the wave principle, in combination with the bouncing ball which we already knew.  I still think it’s one of the cutest animations we made first term.  It has a definite “small, jumpy rodent” quality about it

Just got back from the lab, where I spent the entire day working on my assignment which is due in the morning.  In honour of this occasion, here’s the final line test for my previous assignment, the simple, classic “bouncing ball” that probably every animator in history started out doing.  The only slightly original twist is that it bounces vertically off of a fence and switches direction.

Don’t be fooled by how simple this may look… this is countless hours of hard work with multiple revisions, going back and changing specific frames where the drawing was off by literally a hair, then re-shooting, repeated ad nauseam until I felt like I never wanted to draw a circle again as long as I live.  Now just wait until you see my current assignment: a bouncing ball on top of another bouncing ball!

By the way, I’m only kidding.  I actually think circles are pretty cool.