Interaction

Well I have finally finished my animation of the two characters interacting, and I am quite happy with the results. I think I have managed to use all the rules we have learnt quite effectively in this. One thing that I do need to improve is my pauses to allow the audience to register what is going on as well as the characters. For example when the smaller character kicks the ball at the larger character, the larger character gets up immediately to go over to the smaller character. Where really he should be looking around first to see what happened and then get up once he realises. Another example is when the smaller character starts crying the larger one almost immediately goes to scratch his head where really he needs time to register that the smaller character is upset and then scratch his head in guilt. So really I just need to make sure I space my animation a bit better in future. Otherwise I am happy with the movement of the characters, I really like my smaller characters’ jumping when he first comes into the scene. It was made up from some really nice poses. Another good thing that I find I am doing is starting to draw out the frames a lot quicker , they do look a bit rough but I think it still works. So overall I have found these sessions to be extremely useful especially in learning the principles of weight, anticipation, stretch and squash, volume, balance, staging and timing. I also think they are going to be extremely helpful when animating in Maya to stop it looking too stiff and lifeless.