The Animation of Barry the Sqrrl
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Have you ever wondered how cartoon characters seem to be alive? Well, of course you have and I am pretty sure you know how animators made it happen, but in case you don’t know how animators “give life” to your favorite characters, for example in 2D animation, they literally draw objects and characters on paper or in the computer and then position them in frames to create the animation. There’s different kinds of animations like 2D or 3D, and different ways of making them, like using key frames, doing it frame by frame, or using computer-generated animations. So, I decided to bring to life a squirrel for my animation assignment, which later on would help me with my Friendship Down animations. How hard could it be? It is just a squirrel. Well, that is what I thought. I started with Barry’s design (btw I named the squirrel Barry the Sqrrl). An appealing absent and cute squirrel.
After making a very simple squirrel, I went for a very simple story line, not really a loop. You know, squirrel is hungry, it wants an acorn, he gets it. As simple as that. WELL IT IS NOT AS SIMPLE AS THAT. An animation requires frames. A smooth animation requires lots of frames. And I wanted a smooth amazing animation. I chose to make a frame by frame animation at 24 frames per second using some of the 12 principles of animation. I started by making Barry get hungry, so basically I made a very exaggerated animation of his tummy rumbling in order for it not to be static and dull.
Secondly, I wanted the viewers to know what he was looking for, so I made him think about his acorn staging that what’s important is the acorn.  After that I wanted to make a bit of a four legged walking cycle. I used arcs to make the motion of his legs, so that it could look more realistic.  I also wanted to use some of the anticipation and squash and stretch technique, so I added a very peculiar and comical jump. It starts with a bit of anticipation, then he stretches on air to finally get squished again on the tree.  To make a long story short, he climbs the tree, finds the nut and eats it. All this using the same principles as before, arcs, anticipation, and exaggeration.
Finally, after creating lots of frames, I realized I still needed more frames! How fun is that? I ended up adding easily 35 more frames to the animation I had initially. By the time I finished with the animation, I had made 179 frames, to make a “simple” animation.  Anyway, in case you didn’t know how animation works, well now you know. This is what I went through when I made Barry. More than 15 hours of pure joy (I actually did enjoy making him, so I mean when I say pure joy). And no, animation is not simple, it is time consuming and requires a lot of conscious design choices and thinking, but absolutely very worth it. Why did I mention Barry the Sqrrl for this course though? Well, creating Barry has given me some insight into how to animate better the characters in Friendship Down and their loops. It helped me realize that I needed more frames to make the characters run smoothly. Also, practicing with the 12 principles of animations, made me see more clearly that my animations looked static and dull and that I had to make them a bit more exaggerated and better. So, for the walking animation, I added a bit of exaggeration, a tilt, one that would give more realism and weight to the characters. I have also changed the idle animations, I gave the body of the characters a bit more arc while “breathing” so that it wouldn’t look so boring.   So, for a word of advice, try to make a different animation, outside of your game, to have a different perspective and views, later when you come back to your game animations, you will know how to improve them! Ps.: If you would like to see the finished video animation, send me a text! I would love to show it to you Ana Laura Mtz  |
