Push-Pull Animation




When I started working on this project, the main goal I was trying to achieve was to portray a character that has an energetic anticipation at first, then slowly gets demoralized as each attempt fails. On top of that, I wanted to practice working on the animation principles of exaggeration, timing, and secondary action.

There were three main principles I wanted to improve on, them being exaggeration, timing and secondary action, but there are elements of anticipation, overlapping action, and follow through as well. I attempted to personify the principles in the character’s failed attempts, specifically how they start with an anticipation of them doing a rotating stretch with their arms, their hands quickly adjusting themselves as they pull on the lever, and even having one foot being placed on the device for extra leverage. Timing and secondary action is seen when the character places their hands on the lever one after the other, and start to lean their weight outward in the final attempt, with some follow through being used in their head leaning back and their arms twitching every now and then at the end to help the exaggeration aspect of it.

The main area I struggled in was to get the timing down as some sequences revealed it too slow for what I originally intended it to be. Other times I found that some timings did not really convey the principle of overlap as well as I first set up. In order to remedy the issue, I had to create multiple play blasts as tests to see just how it would look without the program chugging to keep up. Other times, I found that the initial key frames did not have the timing/pace down as I would have liked, so for that I had to adjust the keyframe’s positions to get it right. The last thing you may notice is that the ending between the thumbnails to the final render is vastly different. This was done primarily to time constraints, because if I still intended to finish the animation as originally planned, it would have gone on for at least another 5 to 6 seconds over.

The main area I struggled in was to get the timing down as some sequences revealed it too slow for what I originally intended it to be. Other times I found that some timings did not really convey the principle of overlap as well as I first set up. In order to remedy the issue, I had to create multiple play blasts as tests to see just how it would look without the program chugging to keep up. Other times, I found that the initial key frames did not have the timing/pace down as I would have liked, so for that I had to adjust the keyframe’s positions to get it right. The last thing you may notice is that the ending between the thumbnails to the final render is vastly different. This was done primarily to time constraints, because if I still intended to finish the animation as originally planned, it would have gone on for at least another 5 to 6 seconds over.

If anything, the main thing I would do is to create multiple versions of the thumbnails with different routes for the animation to follow. Therefore, if I later find that the original path is no longer feasible (in terms of time or clarity), then I could fall back on the second route, thus saving me a considerable amount of time.