2d animation...staging

In our 2d animation class we were asked to do 6 different drawings throughout our 9 days of classes. We were asked to specifically set up a pose that shows what the subject was doing at the time. I will caption below each picture to tell you which project is titled what. We were only given a couple of minutes to draw each one, so these drawings are sketches and just trying to get basic lines of action and ideas down quickly. The teachers said that they do this at disney all the time to set up scenes and to make sure that a particular action is going to work for that scene. The objective is to have someone from the audience be able to understand what's going on in a scene without much thought. So our job as animators is to guide a person along without them having to think much, so stuff just makes sense. They say that "you can tell when there is good animation, when you can't tell its animation at all." So if you're watching an animated movie and you forget that you're watching drawings, computer graphics, etc, then the animator is doing his/her job = ) But, the downside to that is if they make a mistake, someone will point it out very quickly! My teachers tell me to "NEVER UNDERESTIMATE THE AUDIENCE, people are smarter than they seem." Anyways, on with the pictures.


On this one, we were told to show "Interaction with an Animal" So since I hate cats!! I decided to show a person kicking its ass! Notice the extra emphasis on the big foot, lol. Will it land on its feet?...i hope not!

This project was to show "you're waiting in an elevator, but how are you waiting?" I decided to draw a crowded elevator with 2 fat people squishing me. I'm sure all of us have been there at some point in time where people are too close for your comfort....I have a zone people!! acknowledge it!


This is was "giving a gift" Now it's the spy vs. spy guy, but the only thing i'm kind of bummed about with this one is that I didn't draw the other guy to show him in a birthday hat, etc. waiting to accept the gift, so in my opinion, this one takes a little too long to think about. Well he's got a bomb behind his back...who's he going to give it to? is it a gift? you decide.



This one is "avoiding a puddle" Now this one I made very clear, so there's no confusion as to what's going on. The other thing with this one that the teacher's liked is that I had a secondary action...the umbrella. Animators like to show and have a secondary action. I was trying to keep the scene simple, yet interesting, I think I did that with this one. (I thought it would be funny and ironic if there were a car to come by and splash him since he's being so careful to avoid the puddle. maybe i'll draw something like that later on)

This is titled "helping an old person" I decided to show a guy giving a purse back to an old lady from the burglar who took it from her. it's an ok drawing, i'm sure I could have made it more interesting.

This is one I like also; "putting on a trenchcoat" I was trying to be humorous in this one, but i'm not sure if the trenchcoat I drew is necessarily a trenchcoat, this one could have been more interesting, or i guess, more understandable. Hopefully people get that he put his leg through the arm part of the coat because he's dumb. I tried to add extra emphasis w/ the question marks, but I think this might take someone too long to think about.


On a side note, I was at downtown Disney last night at the Virgin megastore and I came across this book: To Infinity and Beyond; The story of Pixar Animation Studios. I haven't put it on my wishlist, but this is definately a book that I would love to get.




So I hope this update was good enough for the time being, I have to pull some of my other projects off the school server so that I can get those uploaded on here. I thought I already had, but I looked around on my hard drives and they're not there, so expect those to show up here in a couple of days.