Category: Rotation – 2D

Frog & Mushrooms

Moodboard

Idea & Character Design

Key Frames

In this rotation, the most meaningful thing for me is that I learned how to use Ae and Ps to produce animation. For the study of using Ae to create a bouncing ball, I surprisingly found out that we even need to apply the first/second derivative in math and knowledge in physics, which makes me clearer that all the subjects are connected somehow.

To talk about the concept of the story, the most difficult part is to fit my storyline and characters into the soundscape assigned. Initially, I decided to show the emotion of “excitement” by telling a story of a frog’s hallucination after eating poisonous mushrooms. I linked how the music is abruptly stopped with how the frog is suddenly back to reality, spitting out the poisonous mushroom. This also brings the ending as a surprise. What I can improve is adding more movements to the background. For example, I can also animate the mushrooms swaying. This can help the animation to communicate its concepts better.

For my final work of 2D motion graphics, I used Ae, Ps, and Pro-create together to make the animation. In pro-create, I drew the characters and background. I did the blooming of star shapes in Ae. Mainly, I adjusted the position, rotation, and scale of the shapes on the timeline and repeated them to create the illusion of blooming. The part I can improve is learning more about how to use the polygon tool in Ae. In Photoshop, I composed all the frames together on the video timeline. However, I didn’t draw all the frames on Ps as I’m not familiar with using this software and Wacom. This is the part I need to improve in further study.

Overall, I also tried to use the 12 animation principles in this project. For example, I applied Squash and Stretch to the frog when they are jumping and to the mushrooms when they are landing on the ground. What I can improve is applying Ease in and Out. Viewing my animation, I think the timing in each frame is almost the same. However, Ease in and Out can help me to better pace the film.

This was my first time to use Ae to make animation. I felt the difference when adding gravity to different kinds of tings, such as the heavy and light ball. With only imagination, it is hard to me to think about how they might land and jump on the ground. In this case, it is better to try how the balls will fall in the real circumstances. This can apply to many other situation. For example, when I don’t know how characters react to certain things, I can act in front of a mirror and get inspired by the reactions.

The hair of the girl should be lighter and move less than I draw in this animation. In my animation, the hair seems like to be alive as they jump up themselves. What I learned is that I should always keep the volume of objects the same while they are moving.