Isobel Wilson’s Animation Blog

For the first week of animation principles workshop, we focused on the bouncing ball exercise. I haven’t done this exercise for many years, so it was a lot of fun to try it again and also have a go at different animation mediums once again. I have yet to master TV Paint but I’m sure with practice it will come to me. We got the chance to have a go with lots of different types of balls; beach, bowling, ping pong, tennis etc. To see how they all moved and we dropped them and rolled them around the classroom. I found this to be a very useful exercise as I could create a solid comparison between the bowling ball and a ping pong ball. I will use these examples for my assignment later on I think.

I enjoyed the examples that Christina gave in the presentations on how the bouncing ball is used in animation in a way that doesn’t particularly relate to the ball itself. Successfully showing the weight of an object is something I struggle with in my own work, so I really think learning these basics again will help to do this later on.

I have added in my bouncing ball attempts below. For the first, I just tried the traditional ball with the squash and stretch. For the second, I wanted to try and create the lazy slow arches of the beach ball.

These two were done in procreate on my iPad but I also did some on paper and on a screen tablet in the studio. I am excited to explore this further and see how it help me better my animation skills!

We had our first life drawing class of the term last Thursday evening! There were quite a few of us there, so it was a bit of a squeeze but we all managed to find a space. The model was excellent! She really knew how to move and pose her body so we got a good mix of standing and sitting poses which was great. I had done life drawing over the summer but only online and so I felt a bit rusty overall. But I think many of us were in the same position!

I have always enjoyed the shorter poses when doing life drawing previous, for me anything over 10 minutes was a waste of time. As there were only so many details I wanted to include in a given pose. So I was excited when Vanessa said we wouldn’t be doing anything over 3 minutes win her class. It really got me to think about each stroke and focus on the movement as a whole rather the smaller details (which is usually what I get lost in). I really felt myself get looser as the class went on. I didn’t end up getting any feedback from Vanessa as there were so many of us that I think she struggled to answer everyones questions. I am looking forward to next weeks class 🙂

I have attached some of the drawings I did in the class, there is a mixture of 30 second poses and all the way up to 3 minutes.

I don’t have too many specific goals for this term, only to make sure I involve myself as fully as I can into university life again! I want to make sure I don’t miss out on any opportunities that might arise or on any contact hours with tutors.

As far as I know, this term is all about learning the principles of animation which is actually exactly what I need to learn and revisit. So I am excited to tackle these exercises as well as I can! When doing my undergrad, I never had the opportunity to learn any of these things and I felt like a missed out on important lessons and key elements of animation history.

I want to try my hardest in these exercises to put my best foot forward 🙂

Some other little goals I’d like to work on or complete;

• visit lots of galleries and sketch
• build up my online shop even further
• practice stop motion techniques again
• Collaborate with other students