Character animation
2022
My first time rigging and animating a character in Toonboom. Designed a turnaround for my character, Erin Greef, an aspiring young writer with an interest in storytelling, but is too shy to share her stories with others. She is also a medium with the ability to communicate with the dead and helps unrested spirits come to peace before moving on past the mortal plane. She does so by investigating their lives and writing them into stories, her primary job being the ending and resolution. Once she finshes each spirits’ story, Erin ensures that their stories do not go untold and publishes them under her pseudonym for her town’s local newspaper. When she’s not busy with her writing and helping the dead move on, Erin tends to keep to herself She usually hangs out around her parents’ hotel, most attractive spot in a seemingly dull town. While a bit moody, Erin manages to keep level-headed and find intrigue in the mundane.
The idea was to animate Erin with her reflection to present the kind of paranormal scenarios she gets involved with. This process included designing the character turnaround, setting up the rig in ToonBoom with Master Controllers, and ultimately creating a short animation demonstrating a range in acting and expression.
As part of my class in animation production, the goal was to create a short in Toonboom Harmony through hand-drawn animation. I decided to do something with slapstick based on a personal experience involving the toaster.
During my class in character animation basics, one of our assignments was animating a character pushing a heavy object. My piece was done in ToonBoom Harmony through hand-drawn animation, showing a character trying to push a tree over only to get a surprise in the end. The goal was to demonstrate character acting through sense of weight and anticipation.
One of the other assignments I completed in character animation basics was a flour sack jumping over an object. My flour sack tries to jump over a cactus, but gets a bit cocky and ends up hurting himself in the end. This assignment was an exercise in character expression, acting, and maintaining consistent volume of the figure.