Induction Week

Past, Present and Future.

Before I arrived at Cardiff Met I had the sense of wanting to gain more knowledge with how to create more fluent and realistic animated characters. I feel more comfortable with hand drawn animation with my tablet since the process is easy to pick up and with enough practice is a wonderful way to create life within the movement in hand drawn animation.

I’ve used the book “The Animators Survival Kit” as a base start with in my work to understand and practice the use of hand drawn animation. His walk cycle tutorials were the perfect starting off point, giving me knowledge with timing and spacing. I still need more practice with this technique since I feel I need to practice with different body types as well as different types of animals to really understand movement within animation.

After reviewing and collecting my drawings I completed for the summer product I’ve noticed an ever-growing interest in stop motion. This new love for this type of animation would be due to how perfect it blends into the horror genre creating a discomforting and unpleasant scenario whenever it is used.

This image is from an animation created by Suzie Templeton with the simple title of “Dog”, the animation dives straight into being uncomfortable, due to the almost but not quite realistic characters she uses, which makes the animation feel more grounded. This helps make whatever the characters do within the story more impactful thanks to the realistic story Suzie is telling.

Both hand drawn and stop-motion would be amazing to dive right into and see how I can improve with them both. On one hand, hand drawn animation gives me the visual freedom needed so I’m able to deform and exaggerate their expressions giving a more cartoonish but more variety within their performances.
While stop motion works far better within more realistic movements, creating a more discomforting experience due to its link to being uncanny.
Both types of animation have gained my interest and I would like to experiment with both types of styles, maybe even blend the two types together with simplistic and more inviting hand drawn animation mixing with the uncanny and unpleasant movements stop motion can offer could lead to an interesting visual spectacle if done correctly.