International Sheridan Animation Portfolio 2018
2. CHARACTER DESIGN & ANIMATION
The second section of the portfolio changed a lot this year. Poses and expressions were replaced by character animation (24 - 48 drawn frames of a character doing a recognizable action). This was one of the most intimidating aspects of the portfolio to me because I had not prepared to do character animation. Luckily they’re not assessing line quality. Instead they are looking for motion, clarity of communication, and consistent character. As for the character rotation, nothing has changed. It was online submission this year and because they only gave one spot for character rotation, I have all of the poses on one image. I also included a GIF of the character rotating. It’s the most satisfying part of the process to see your character successfully rotate. I didn’t use this method when I was doing my rotation, but I think this video is extremely helpful when figuring out how to rotate your character and I wish I had seen it before I did mine. I think I would have had a lot less redrawing to do if I put that much planning into it.
I didn’t focus too much on choosing a design for my character. I don’t think the design matters as much as your ability to rotate the character, so I sort of chose one of the first designs I came up with and slightly changed things from there if my tutor recommended it. One of the biggest things to look out for when doing your character rotation is making sure your character's feet look firmly planted on the floor and in perspective. Referring to professional character rotations is helpful to see how this is done right. Some sort of light table is extremely helpful for these things. I was constantly correcting drawings: making the changes in Photoshop with my tablet, printing the fixed versions out, and tracing over them with my light table. Having your drawings traditionally drawn is preferable for line quality (and personally I find it easier). I didn’t include them in my final drawing, but guidelines are necessary if you want everything to match up, so make sure you use them.
As for my animation… I didn’t spend too much time on it. There are a lot of resources online and in books for how to animate, so I would refer to them. As long as the movement looked good and my character was mostly consistent I was satisfied. I don’t know how high their expectations are going to be for an applicant’s animation proficiency, but I can’t imagine it’s super up there. I also drew my animation out traditionally because that was faster for me. Because they’re not assessing line quality I would assume you could also do digital without risking losing points.
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For the rest of my Portfolio:
Character Rotation Score: 12/15
Short Animation Score: 13/15