In collaboration with a year 2 student Yifan Lyu, I was given the task of drawing a scene in which a character falls through the air in an animation.
Firstly, Yifan Lyu, discussed the plot of her work with me. The main story is about a girl with a social phobia, who is afraid of speaking in a crowded place, resists physical contact with others in a crowded place and is reluctant to go out and socialise with people. With the warmth and encouragement of his family, he eventually overcame his fears and tried to face life. My drawing work was mid-story when her mother called her and she was sucked in by the phone and fell through the air into her mother’s arms.
After Yifan told me what I was working on, I did a search for information on some of the poses and movements from the sky. I looked at scenes from animated and live action films for reference and comparison, mainly in relation to the position of the characters and perspective. From the references I found commonalities in the falling poses and similarities to my task.
At the same time, I added some of my own personal observations, I think it would have made the story clearer to switch the shots during the fall, where she sees her mother first and then jumps into her arms. I think it would have been better to have a progression in the sequence.
I had a lot of problems during the painting process, but I was very fortunate that I was able to complete my assignment and get the approval of Yifan. She thought she might consider adding a camera shift, which is a good point!
During the drawing process, I kept communicating with yifan, hoping to understand the character better so that I could understand her better and draw her accurately.
I think I gave my all in this project, but I still have a lot to work on in terms of the perspective of the figures. This is something I didn’t do very well and it was the hardest part of the project for me. Because I rarely see this kind of movement, I had a hard time imagining it and drawing it. And because it’s a drop, the hair swaying and the clothes swaying are both difficult. I think I could improve on the perspective and the swaying of the clothes.
In my opinion, I help the animation director to draw a sketch of the movement of one of the shots, which in animation work I consider to be the job of the animator or split-screen artist. Drawing some keyframes or storyboards.
The learning on the course helped me a lot. The life drawing of the human body allowed me to avoid many mistakes in the body structure during the drawing process, and the basic principles of animation were able to help me catch the movement, gesture and timing of the character during the drawing process.
I think I learnt and learned a lot through this experience, starting with collaboration and communication skills, as I helped the director with her split, so we had to keep communicating with each other to achieve the best results. Drawing the split drafts required me to be able to refine the storyline and character emotions through the images she drew. This has honed my visual narrative skills and will help me to better express myself in future art and design projects. Secondly, being involved in the production process allowed me to understand the various aspects of animation production, including character design, storyboarding, scene design, animation and post-production. This will be very useful for my future graduation design and for my future career in the animation industry.
After this happy collaboration, I have improved and grown a lot in terms of communication, animation flow and split-screen drawing. I had a great time working and communicating with yifan, and she also gave me comfort and advice for my confusion and distress as a first-year student in my studies, and I am very honoured to have this experience, which will be the most memorable one of my term2!
Here’s all my experience！