Aug03 0

Lovely Accent – New Acting Test

Posted by Avner Engel in Animation, Flipbook

BEWARE; Rambling ahead!

During my time in class 5 at Animation Mentor, I had a big dilemma about which audio clip I should animate. Since then a lot of time has passed and I took a long break from animating which helped me with recharging my batteries. When I decided it’s time to get back into my personal tests I still didn’t find a piece of audio that truly inspired me, that’s when I decided to dust off the notes of the planning I did and sit to work. It’s been a while since I animated something just for fun.

While I am rambling, I wanted to mention that thanks to the elaborate planning I did back then, I found it easier to get back into the mind frame I was at while I was thinking about who the characters are.

Planning your shots, and identifying the specificities of your characters is key.

Once I read the notes and watched the video reference I did I stared at the blank paper and set to work. Even though it felt like I already did a whole lot of work back then, most of what I did was just the beginning. Still, I had to figure out what camera angles I want to use, when to cut, on what action and so on and so fourth.

Below is where I am at, this is just a very rough initial planning that still took a few hours to figure out. While I was trying to familirize myself with the shot, I had to think of many things such as rhythm, beats, accents, lines of action, negative space, path of motion, leaving myself somewhere to go (with the acting choices) and above all, clear silhouettes. At this stage I am not too concerned about the facial expressions nor the lip sync.

Hopefully the following posts will elaborate a bit more about my process (I am still figuring it out myself).