I have continued on with Exercise 3 from the 51 Animation Exercises. Ah, the heavy brick falling off the shelf. This was a quick exercise but still presented some challenges. Here is what I learned from this exercise:
- Volume: When it comes to traditional hand drawn animation, keeping the shape of the objects consistent throughout it’s movement is a huge challenge. Even for a standard cube such as as a brick. Maintaining the correct volume and size of the object was great for practising those perspective drawing skills.
- Weight: This is obvious. But figuring out how many drawings is required to give this brick some weight was another takeaway. I had to remove a few drawings from the fall just before it hit the ground to give a feeling that the object was accelerating as it fell off the shelf.
- Don’t forget the details: I love adding in those extras at the end. For this quick exercise, the impact of the heavy brick on the floor was exaggerated by adding in some red particles flying off the brick after it lands. I also added in some follow through lines as it falls. The shadow of the brick seems like a small detail, but it adds so much weight and presence to the object. I don’t like to skip this part, but I never let myself add any of these details until the basic animation and movement is good.
Next up, the character head turn! See you next week.
