My specification
In future my goals are to become an animator to create and bring life to anything that comes to my mind. Specifically I wish to work towards traditional animation style (2D hand drawn) so this is what I will focus on in this Unit.
2D animations can be made in many different ways and styles of which I will explore throughout this unit. Traditional animators usually draw each frame by hand, using usually a graphics tablet and digital pen, They don’t usually draw full scenes by themselves as they often work as a team with some people drawing characters and keyframes, while others draw backgrounds and in-betweens.
Animators can make many different aimations, even in 2D, such as Whole movies, short episdes for a TV serise, even animations for, and just in games.
To be an animator I must understand Key terminology such as keyframes, and the 12 principles. I should be good at drawing characters repetitively very quickly to spend less time on each frame. I should also be good at creating and managing my own schedule. And an animator should have a burning passion for their industry.
And finally an animator must be good with working as a team, as they will need to work with the directors and other animators to create the animation.
Barotrauma:
Barotrauma is a multiplayer horror survival game set in the Rusty hull of a submarine plunged into the deep icy sea caverns of Jupiter’s moon Europa after all contact with Earth was cut mysteriously.
Barotrauma is a unique experience and can be both played single player or multiplayer on random servers or with friends. The game is a 2D side scroller that is very immersive, you can only see what is in your characters line of sight, this normally includes the entire room you are in, you can see through windows, but you can’t see through walls and floors. Everything in your view is lit up by a bright light, and everything out of your view is plunged in darkness.
Each player or NPC can select a Role onboard the ship, these include: Engineers, Mechanics, Medics, Captains, Security officers. Each role edits the players stats allowing them to do certain tasks more effective for example captains have high steering, and engineers have high engineering skills ,each role has three separate skill trees that can be leveled up in any order. These unlock all new abilities for each role.
Barotrauma’s animation style is very interesting as each limb is a separate sprite attached to the others, this means that limbs can be procedurally animated, this means when the arms aren’t being used they swing down to the side, and if you start walking up a staircase the legs don’t clip through the floor, each feet lands and stays on the staircase. One other thing this style of animation allows for is Ragdoll physics, which happens when you press space and lie down, get knocked out or killed, this makes deaths feel more real as they don’t die in a scripted animation, they flop down like they really would. It can also be quite funny to watch. These animations are applied to every creature not just the human players and NPC, from everything to a tiny Crawler, or a Mud Raptor to the Endworm.
This animation style is known as puppeteering, it works in animations but limits freedom, however it can also be used in games as shown here. In games it allows easy animating of a character with limb physics attached, in 2D animations Puppeteering saves time as you can spend less time redrawing the same limbs in different poses, and instead move the limbs frame by frame. Barotrauma: Urban Expanses – [Update Trailer 2022] [Barotrauma. 2022]
Applying what I learned
There are multiple styles for animation that can be used in both 2D and 3D, for example Barotrauma’s 2D puppeteer style, this is good because it will save time compared to hand drawn! Hand drawn allows for more freedom on characters movements and expressions, however Puppeteering works particularly well in game animations but not so effective in 2D animation as it can look awkward and not fluid.
There are other sub styles for both 2D and 3D Which can make things easier or harder, these include CGI, Mocap, Stop motion, hand drawn and puppeteering, I can learn which of these will be best to use for my own projects.
Good Job
This Short Film titled “Good Job” is made by GOEBLINS a French film making company.
Good job follows Mimi a cat working as a graphics designer in a tech company, who needs to gain approval from her uncaring supervisors.
Good Job is a 2D short film, with a whole crew of people working on it, however I will be focusing on the animation side of things. The animation takes on a cartoon approach, like the animation was made for kids as The color scheme is very bright, all the characters are animated as cartoon animals and the environments tend to have a more childish look, for example the playground slide background shown here:
The strange childish themes in an otherwise professional area may be how Mimi perceives the workplace, while everyone else is having fun and enjoying themselves she is stressed out and working, So she perceives the environment around her as fun and childish.
While watching there were a few things I didn’t understand, for example I didn’t completely understand what the theme is for this animation, or why everything in the workplace seemed so childish, so I was forced to make an assumption.
Sadly I cannot find a development blog for this short film, which means I cannot analyze what tactics they used to animate it, what software they used, or how many frames per second, however due to how snappy the animation seems I assume it was 12 frames
This short movie shows just how clean an animation can look with a full team working on the same project, however sadly we are unable to find any of the development of this animation. Many of the different roles that play a part in this animation include: Sound design, Sound engineer voice, foley, foley, mix, Animators, a development team, coordinators and a pedagogic team and production managers.
Good Job is a great example of a professional animation, showing what can be achieved when an animation is created by a whole team with different people doing different jobs. This is proof that an animation requires multiple people to make, however is is not impossible to make with one person, it is just more difficult.
This animation also shows how you should consider your audience when making an animation, as the world of this is very bright and colorful to appeal for a younger audience, while also simplifying a work experience however it still manages to show how stressful a working environment can be. Good Job. (2021).
Night in the woods Animated tribute
This animation is made By the youtuber Whatchagonnado.
Watcha gonna do shows the full development process leading up to this animation from them practicing to the animatic.
This animation is a tribute to a game called Night in the woods(NITW). NITW is a story based game where you follow the main character Mae, a young cat who’s moved back to her parents house in the old mining town of Possum Springs after dropping out of college. This animation shows many of the main events and conversations that happen in the game. This is unique as it shows the important factors of the game, which some fan animations avoid to avoid spoilers, however because NITW came out in 2017 and the animation was made in 2018, most people had already played the game or watched someone play it, so spoilers were not a big problem. And another plus is the animation was made as a reminder to those who already played the game.
The animation is really good because it is done in a similar style to the game which captures the beauty of the world around, and the characters movements and actions represent themselves rom the original game. One minor problem for this animation is that anyone who learns about the game from this animation will get quite a few spoilers for when they start playing, which will cause some scenes to not surprise the player. Night in the woods animated tribute. (2018).
Development
What is great news is that The animator made many progress videos, starting with this one, which was the animator testing their own animation skills before beginning the project. This video goes over the animators practice of the 12 principles of animation, so the animator may test themselves so they can understand it. [12 Principles of Animation with Mae Borowski. 2022]
Here is how the animation begun, The animator of course started off making a storyboard animatic, just getting the idea and framing right before making it look nice, this means that they can get all the characters actions and placements right properly before starting. [Night in the Woods Tribute – VERY ROUGH DEMO 2022]
This is when the animator begun to clean up the line art, and begun adding in-betweens to the animations of characters, this means that for the final part of the project they just have to add colors, and not focus on the line art. [NITW Tribute Animation – Update 1 2022]
applying what I learnt
From this series of animations I’ve learnt how to slice up my work, take short snippets and videos to show as progress and development, this will be a useful skill so that I can show future employers how I made my work.
What I have learnt
There are many forms of animation that can be used in just 2D animation alone, for example I could draw a character and use layers and editing tools to move limbs at the joints to make the animation progress much faster , or I could draw it traditionally frame by frame, which may take longer but it can be much more create and allows for more freedom. Following the night in the woods Project above I can follow that style of multiple videos showing the progress and development of my animation.
I have learned many different ways and places animation can be used. For example all sorts of animations can be used in gamed for different affects on he game. Using puppeteering animation like Barotrauma makes the game feel unscripted and random, as the characters can move unpredictably. Whereas scripted animated walking cycles, can make it feel like the game has a sense of order, which has the game feel like everything is planned out and well made.
In Cutscenes and videos, animation can be created Hand drawn or rigged and modeled , puppeteering will look more unfinished however it will be much faster to create, and much more simple for newer animators. Hand drawn animations allow things to be made with more detail, making things look more beautiful.
Daedalic Entertainment. (2022). Barotrauma: Urban Expanses – Update Trailer. [Online]. Youtube. Last Updated: 20 April. Available at: https://youtu.be/V9No1YGhj3E [Accessed 4 November 2022].
GOBELINS. (2021). GOOD JOB – Animation Short Film 2021 – GOBELINS. [Online]. Youtube. Last Updated: 10 November. Available at: https://youtu.be/PuCnyAQf00U [Accessed 4 November 2022].
Undertow Games, FakeFish. (2019). Barotrauma. [Online]. Barotrauma. Last Updated: 5 June. Available at: https://barotraumagame.com/ [Accessed 26 September 2022].
Whatchyagonnado. (2017). Night in the Woods Tribute – VERY ROUGH DEMO. [Online]. Youtube. Last Updated: 17 Sept. Available at: https://youtu.be/PvPNkFCTG0E [Accessed 4 November 2022].
Whatchyagonnado. (2017). 12 Principles of Animation with Mae Borowski. [Online]. Youtube. Last Updated: 24 September. Available at: https://youtu.be/pddqnGjThQM [Accessed 4 November 2022].
Whachyagonnado. (2018). NITW Tribute Animation – Update 1. [Online]. Youtube. Last Updated: 27 Feb. Available at: https://youtu.be/iJHF0-GZAJY [Accessed 4 November 2022].
Edimation 