Animation Project: Dialogue - January 2021

 Animation Project: Dialogue

January 2021

In this project, I wanted to practice animating with audio queues and dialogue. With two characters in the scene, but only one portraying the bulk of animated movements, the task was relatively straightforward. Only one character is speaking and moving through space, so i tried to keep the focus on them, despite the second character being stagnant in the foreground. This animation was meant to help my understanding of timing movements to dialogue from the torso, head, arms, legs (with footsteps) and more.

 https://youtu.be/SGj3TUyP0-I

The toughest part of this project was getting the speaking character from point A to B to C in the time allotted. What I did to start this animation process was block out poses for the major actions I wanted to take place. From there, I animated the holds and in-betweens, which went smoothly. However, when the time came to animate the character moving through space, it then occurred to me how troublesome it might be to retain a sense of balance between realistic and cartoony motion. The dialogue provided did not allow enough time to move while taking a reasonable amount of steps without stretching joints into awkward positions. I feel that I compromised where I could, and perhaps for the future, I should consider earlier on whether I want a more grounded look and pace of actions or a more eccentric style like video games and cartoons.

If I were to devote more time to this animation, I would likely begin work on the second character and their potential movements. While the focus is the main character with the speaking role, I would like to learn about how to make the scene more lively with extra foreground and background movement but without taking away from the primary focus.