[Uni project] Elroy Simmons animation talk

THE LECTURE

It's always an interest of mine to hear stories from animation professionals of how they got into the industry, so when we had a full lecture from Elroy Simmons about how he got into the industry and how things have been since then, I was incredibly happy. You can view his demo reel here. It's always a strange feeling to meet people who've worked on animation you've watched as a kid, there's a strange sense of accomplishment just from meeting them. I also took the opportunity to get some feedback on my own work from Elroy, I showed him the first two chapters of Oddball and we had a small talk about how they were produced. Coincidentally  he suggested that I have other projects in the works too to show that I can handle variety, Oddball is largely dialogue based, so he suggested I try something that shows more movement and has a different art style, which is the exact reason I'm working on my new series. This made me feel as if I'm taking a step in the right direction as I got praised for my work and also got given advice that was similar to my own trail of thought.

Back to Elroy, he showed us a variety of animation, by himself and by others. I find occasions like this very useful as it really puts your own work into perspective. After watching a variety of well made animations, my notes simply said something along the lines of "god dammit Anthony IMPROVE". At first this felt like a defeat, but I realized this is how I progress. I get to a certain happy level with my work, then sit there for a while. It takes a creative kick up the backside to get me up to the "next level", which I then repeat the cycle in.

All in all the talk from Elroy was inspiring as I have some reference level to what animation skill I need to be showing right now.

THE PRACTICAL

The next day, we were all set up in Electric Press with a light box each. After I got over my excitement of actually feeling like an animation class and learning techniques, the session began. Our goal for the day was similar to our workshop with Tony Garth, create a traditional hand drawn animation that showed anticipation, one of the 12 principles. I'll quickly describe anticipation for you:

Anticipation is a negative movement before the action designed to lead in to the motion and give the audience a clue as to what will happen. This isn't always the case however, as anticipation can be used to set up jokes and break the viewers expectations. An example in the Animators Survival Kit shows a man reaching back dramatically to play the piano, only to fall backwards in the action stage instead. Traditionally however, the action will have three stages, anticipation, action and reaction.

Without further delay, here's my short loop I made;

As you can see, I used one of my new characters as practice to see how adaptable they are for animation. These work slightly different to my usual style as the focus is more on the lines than the form. I felt that as I was practicing my new characters, I was drawing too slow compared to the rest of the group, so I may need to practice with these characters a bit more. I also brought in my character book full of reference art on that day, which was extremely helpful when drawing Viare.
I feel that animating on paper with a lightbox is a lot more stressful, as you can't preview your work, but it forces you to think more due to this, and also cuts out the shortcuts you may exploit in digital animation, like copying frames and sections and re positioning them. I'm not disappointed in my hop cycle, but I feel as if I could have done better. Also, to clarify, the original animation isn't a loop, this was a later edit in flash when I was drawing it digitally. The original shows anticipation by having Viare bend down before springing up.