Lamp Animation!

In today’s lesson with Matt I started and finished the lamp animation. In the lesson this I only needed to get the lamp blocked out because next week Matt is giving the class time to finish out animations off.

Animation blocking is a technique animators use. They use it to create the key poses which is used to get the feel for the timing and placement of a character/characters. Animators use this as they can work out every single movement.

Here is the animation. This is what my animation looks like when it was only blocked out.

The principles which I have used are anticipation. Anticipation is used when the lamp squashes down and gets ready to jump. Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for something which is about to happen so when the lamp squashes down it is preparing for a jump. In this animation I used pose to pose. I started with the start and ending and filled in the in between adding in key parts like the squashing down and stretching up. As you can see when the lamp jumps the foot of the lamp trails behind and when it is coming down from the peak of the jump it prepares for the landing. This is an arc movement. Arc is a natural action so when the lamp jumps, the foot trails like it would normally.

This is what it looks like when it is smooth.

As you can see at the end it looks unrealistic as it slows down stops for a second and then plants the foot of the lamp. I will fix this in next weeks lesson with Matt. Therefore it will look a lot better than this weeks. To improve the ending I will have to edit the key frames and change the way the foot of the lamp is positioned.