PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION
As part of an advanced animation course, students were split into groups, then tasked with creating a style guide for, then producing, a series of brief animated sequences demonstrating the 12 Principles of Animation, as written by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston in The Illusion of Life. Each team member animated a set of segments individually, so a strong style guide that kept consistency between the segments for a consistent and beautiful final product was essential.
This project was created in collaboration with the remarkable Jisoo Park and Caroline Essex.
Storyboards
To create a design language, we first needed to plan what assets we would need in the first place, and what we would want them to do. Our team settled on a space theme loosely inspired by the ironically soft and playful aesthetic of the atomic age. Each of the three of us would need to create 4 different sequences. I was placed in charge of Anticipation, Squash and Stretch, Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose, and finally Secondary Action. If you don't know what any of those mean, you will be happy to know that the whole point of the final product is to show you, so keep scrolling!
Style Frames
With the plan in place, it was time to start nailing down the look we wanted. We would need a clear idea of exactly what we wanted so that each of our separate works would fit together as a cohesive whole.
Assets
After a round of critique on our style frames, preparation for animation was the next step, but to do that, we first needed to revise our assets to be as attractive as the force of gravity. The round, wobbly shapes that create texture were inspired by lava-lamp blob patterns found on 50s diner tables, and the soft geometric silhouette of the ship take after the boomerang shapes that were a staple of the era.
MOGRT, Motion on the Go
Despite the name resembling a dairy product popular in the late 90s, a MOGRT is, generally, inedible, given that it is short for Motion Graphics Template. In this case, a .mogrt file is used as a template that the designer can hand off to an editor, where it will automatically adjust to various entries. For this project, we would create a set of titles to introduce each principle.
AN OUT OF THIS WORLD FINISH
Finally, each member of the team animated their sequences individually, following a strict time requirement for each, and aligning with voiceover provided by Morgan Williams. The sound effects in each sequence were also done by the animator, and this version features the titles and credits I designed, as well as a music track that I edited.