Three Projects That Taught Me.

----Distinct Project Goals!----
= Capture the 'worn out detective that's been on the force too long' vibe!

 - obstacles- Pikachu being scruffy and unkept was a must. This style would hinder me if i were to do any large movements with line work, colouring and lighting, however there was only one movement i wanted from a shot like this. ↓↓↓↓

= Lighting a cigarette with his electric cheek!
 - obstacles- Animating lightning was going to be the major animation centre piece so I was going to need to figure how to have that be flourished and stylised to warrant that attention.

This was my first time using a pseudo puppet style for a shot, but it payed off with dividends since the stillness of the shot is constant. It allowed me to have that mood lighting made out of textured brushes that adds much needed depth.

Striking the cigarette like match was a strong idea from the rough stages, however one problem i didn't expect was trying to get Pikachu to do it with his limited wrist movement and stubby hands. Naturally it would be difficult so difficult for him do this action you could draw up a separate scene of him struggling and it would be entertaining. This was not the scene i was after though.

Fortunately cheating rules and by covering the cigarette's rotation with a smear in the flick hides the unnatural curve it takes. Combined with the lightning that takes attention away from the cigarette, I feel this gets hidden quite well.

Animating the lightning was very fun and tricky. To help it linger on screen i gave it the arc of a gooey string but gave it more lightning-esque shapes. It starts with sharp strong shapes and as it gets further from the source and gains more circular shapes and starts to break apart.

Throwing in a clear frame near the end gave it that small flicker that made it feel more like electricity. On top of that throwing in embers that spiral away from the source provided more clarity since the electricity doesn't stick around for long.

----Distinct Project Goals!----
= More Movement! to combat my usual laziness
- obstacles- Often I try to get away with as few frames as i can but i really wanted to see how much pezaz i could throw into a scene. Detail was gonna need to go way down for me to maintain in-betweens.

= Landing a Pantomime Joke!
-obstacles- Keeping track of a scenes moments and movements to tell a story was something completely new to me, especially one so long winded.

(left)
Having a very 'Birdbox Studios' style really helped with having a simple but charming character and setting to help me loosen up about my keys and in-betweens. Many of the scenes more motion heavy moments were because of this characters shapes and i couldn't have done them without him.

(right)
The pacing and rhythm of the scene was most important. Keeping the attention of the viewer while not outshining the punchline to balance out the payoff was tricky, gauging where the current energy level was at any given moment helped keep everything connected.

(down)

Drawing water that appears in an instant without a visual cue was tough. Making sure i gave the viewer as many anchors to hold onto was important, throwing in iconic sea foam and few interior lines are the biggest of those anchors. Being able to see through the water with low opacity and few interior lines helped unclutter the scene and gave more context to what this big blue shape meant to the scene.

(up)
This frame in particular says alot about the punchline. A large problem to be solved was how much was suddenly happening at once. On top of that the bus that was the cause of the water splash hadn't been shown once before so viewers were bound to need some time to process what was happening even if it were so quick.

I felt giving the bus a Looney Tunes style solved many issues, not only did it free up screen space to let people see whats going on. But it also gave the scene another beat to work off of, now the water and the bus could both come up and fall back down like a wave and breathe more time into the moment.

----Distinct Project Goals!----
= Stress testing my object tracking
-obstacles- At this point i was very undeveloped in setting my foundations, through this project i learnt about visual anchors and volume control.

= Combining pose-to-pose and straight ahead animation techniques

-obstacles- straight forward enough, practice in blending where those techniques overlap in the scene to make it as seamless as I can.

The addition of the bumps on the plants stem were completely due to the difficulty of tracking such a large curve in the scene, with no anchors or checkpoints I had no control over the midsection of the curve when
in-betweening. Plus they add in some nice reality and depth.

Tracking each flower top and its respective small stem on top of the larger stem was awesomely difficult. By simplifying the route of each flower to be in its own depth, the flowers themselves don't interact with each other but they feel like they do because of how they fold in and spread out with the sway of the plant.

Learning how to draw in 3D space, I will always account this project for being the kickstarter for that skill.