WEEK 9: Modeling and Animation II: Intro to 2D Animation Techniques

3D is an orderly world of objects that never change volume, graph editors that keep track of the motion, and automatically-generated inbetweens. It's time to leave the cozy, predictable world of 3D and embrace the friendly chaos of 2D animation.

2D animation, also called traditional or hand-drawn animation, is drawn frame-by-frame with pencil & paper or digital drawing tools. You will have to put all your knowledge of timing and spacing to good use by planning and imagining how you want the final result to look while striving to keep volumes consistent.

 "Robot Elephant" - hero of "(notes on) biology". Also my hero.  

We'll start with a simple bouncing ball exercise. Try as many different weights and styles as you can using the knowledge you gained from your 3D bouncing balls. If this is really easy for you, branch out to something more complex.

First we'll try some flip-book animation. Flip-books are one of the few things in this world that are FAST, CHEAP, and GOOD -- see how insanely fun these can be to create watching this awesome flipbook tribute film: "(notes on) biology"

We'll move on to the world-famous half-filled Flour Sack.

We'll study some tricks for drawing 3-dimensionally and test our skills by creating drawings of the flour sack in 4 distinct moods. For example:

Sad
Confident
Wasted
Shocked/bamboozled 


Reminder: Please BRING YOUR TABLET PENS to all classes for the rest of the term.