Pose Test Results

Last week I had to submit a pose test for my animation class, which you can see below. We were trying to show a motion of a character pulling and being pulled. I had this great idea involving a snowman and proceeded to create a pose test, working out roughly the timing of each key pose in the short animation. After I was fairly satisfied, I began the in-betweening process. That involves creating all of the drawings between the key poses, thus creating the whole animation.

I had approximated the number of drawings I would need on a timing sheet, so I had a good reference of how long each would take. I wanted to test the main motion before I did anything secondary, so I left the ropes for the last bit. After I completed the first batch, I wound up with the following test:

Something didn't seem right as I kept watching it over and over again. I finally figured out that when the snowman is tugging on the rope, he is a little bit too "rubber hose" in his motion. It is a common mistake to make for new animators, so I decided that those drawings needed to be redone so that they conveyed a bit more of a dynamic sensation:

It certainly was more dynamic, but something still seemed off. The snowman's bottom portion still didn't fit with the rest of his motions. I decided that he needed to show a bit more deformation to show the tension in his pulling action:

That seemed to do the trick! I then animated the remaining ropes, composited them in After Effects, and then even put a little snow in there for visual garnish.

I don't know what my professor will think of it, though. I know that there are areas for improvement on it, but it is a good start. The hard part about hand-drawn animation is that edits are not easy to make. That is one reason why I want to do 3D on the computer. Your workflow is much easier in seeing the final results. That will come in about a month or so, which I am looking forward to. In the mean time, I've gotta keep my pencils sharp!