Visual Playground – Day6-7

The next two days were dedicated to animation, with Henrique Barone. Since this was the only two-day workshop, it was also the one where I felt I learned the most. We worked in Flash – the only time this had happened before was… ten years ago, during my university years – I remember not liking it…).

First exercise, animating a ball on a trajectory. Sketch and clean-up – they are far from perfect (and kinda far from ”quality animations”) but I enjoyed doing them very much.

The second day, we had to animate a bouncing head, keeping in mind several rules (anticipation of movement, shape deformation, counteraction). Bellow is the head with ”anticipation” (not looped).

And the looped version.

I found animation to be very satisfying, especially the ”sculpting” aspect of it, where you go into frames and change tiny details that make the overall movement more fluid. And, while it’s surprising that the eye doesn’t catch many of the details, it’s also unbelievable how important tiny changes can be. It’s also… a lot of work :).