In my second year of university I had the pleasure of working on a short animated film called Reach Out. The idea behind it was that it had three characters. Two were quite extrovert and one was quite introvert. The tree of them are trying to climb a wall, something the more introverted character struggles with the most. The other two work together and reach the top of the wall first and with relative ease. The introvert struggles, yet eventually manages to reach the top of the wall when they accept the help of the other two. The moral of the story was that it is ok to accept help and ok to give it. It directed by Emma Hygate, a [then] third year animation student. This project was a lot of fun as I was able to try out a lot of things and I learnt alot under the direction of third year students. It was also nice to be working as part of a larger team. We discussed how the characters were to be differentiated from one another. For instance the two extroverts where still individuals. One was described by the director as 'effortlessly cool' and so had a lower energy level. The other one was constantly over trying and so did everything at a hundred miles an hour. It was the chance to work on character pieces without dialogue that really pushed me and gave me so much more of an understanding of character animation. Here are a couple of examples of the shots I animated on the film.
The shot above is one of the first times I played about with trying to get a thought process across with the eyes. Originally it was prevised as the character purely reaching up and struggling. I didn't quite know how to fill the number of frames I had with that action. I eventually decided to have the character who had been introverted throughout film doubt themself. It made sense that he would probably doubt himself before making his last effort. The director approved and I was aloud to continue with the shot.
In the shot above I wanted to try and differentiate the two characters. The red character is constantly trying too hard and does everything at a hundred miles an hour. As a result he beats the wall repeatedly with his fists. The orange character is more 'effortlessly cool' and so tries to beat the wall with a single kick or action.
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