Blog 01: My First Animation
This entry is about my first finished animation ever. I have had a lot of WIPs since high school and some flipbooks born out of boredom since elementary. If I remember correctly, none of them ever saw exporting. Or my proud face.
It is also my first time to be using Adobe Animate. Normally I would not touch an Adobe software because it is not...budget friendly. But as humans, we are resourceful— so I found a way. I must say animating on Animate as oppose to Krita is lighter. It is not as stressful as seeing a lot of things around Krita's workspace. It is simple and straightforward. Though since I am a newbie in Animate, I would not be confident enough to say that it was an easy transition.
I was culture shocked at 1am as I finished my sketches and turned to Animate. "What am I doing here..." I whispered.
Finished:
I have loved the Avatar franchise since I was 10. It is one of the shows that made me want to put my name during the credit roll when my friends would change the channel. Why not start at that childhood dream?
There are numerous things that I found hard navigating in Animate when I was familiar in Krita.
》 Principles of Animation
The most notable principles of animation that I exercised here are:
Anticipation
Pose-to-Pose & Straight Ahead animation
Arcs
Slow In and Slow Out
Secondary Action
Anticipation was used in the first few frames. They (the avatar) have their left leg pulled back before they stomped the ground and raised earth. It is also in the way they retracted their upper torso in order to add the illusion of power when they breathed fire. Lastly, it is also used when the avatar crouched down before jumping. This is done in order to build up potential energy to release a kinectic one through movement.
Pose-to-Pose was used largely throughout so I can better control where the avatar is going to land and where their appendages are going to be. However, during my draft animation, I mainly used Straight Ahead to just put my ideas into the stage and think about it more later. Straight Ahead can also be observed in the movement of the elements, except for water.
An arc was used when I animated the right arm to catapult the huge mass of water, which in turn, also used an arc. It also there when the avatar recovered from the upside down flip to an upright position towards the end.
Slow In and Slow Out were mainly used with the Anticipation (see above). This is to create the illusion of inertia.
Secondary Actions are all over the animation. In order to bend the elements, several body movements must be done first. I mainly use it here when an element is nearing its time, another part of the body will do something in preparation for the next element. Although since this animation does not contain a plot, the secondary actions do not serve the purpose of telling about the character or the story.
Next: What are the steps I took to make this? 🤔
Step 1: the sketchpad drafts
Here are the scribbles that I made on my sketchpad prior to the computer animation. See here, there's supposed to be lightning bending!
Here we are the supposed first element was fire. The avatar was supposed to do either a front flip or a back flip with their legs bending fire. The second element was still water, but here water would flow around the avatar.