Fox My Conscience

Let’s keep in touch with our inner child so we can properly care and love children from all over the world. Remember the reason why our little ones matter… they’re our future!

1. Ah Fai was a chief animator for McDull’s animated features. He’s super cool. Ultimate senpai. 

2. Previous post on breakdowns right here 

Some thoughts on acceleration and force

I presented this in the order of how I slowly understood the trick of delivering force - first an abstract concept of impact taught by Ah Fai, then a more complicated discovery on the acceleration pattern, last back to a more abstract concept of breakdowns. 

Like I’ve previously stressed, 2D animation is everything but one single approach. There’s no one rule that rules them all, but interchangeable ideas with math, or physics, or music, etc. There’s no “perfect” animation either, but what is perceived as organic and dynamic. E.g., using the Fibonacci numbers to animate didn’t bring me a perfect animation! On the other hand, a tiny change in the pattern could already make the feeling of force so much more powerful. 

Contour vs Structural Animation

A friend asked recently: how do I start animating? So here I have a quick example of happy running squirrel.

Start simple, I recommend, that is, to simplify your animation so you don’t get caught up in the details in the beginning. I observe there are two basic ways you can make a rough animation - by Contour and Structural animations. 

Animating is basically to draw a lot and link these drawings together. Some of us draw naturally with contours, the best way for them to begin animating is perhaps simply by animating the contour! So here we link all the drawings by animating the outline and silhouette that are represented by curves, straight lines, and angles. 

Some other of us draw more comfortably with the structures, because that how most of us are taught to understand forms in school. With balls and springs, it’s maybe easier for them to understand what’s happening underneath the moving body, and what drive different parts to move differently. 

Personally, I’ve always animated with contours because that’s how I draw naturally. Since it’s convenient for me, I could then focus on delivering a more dynamic action. But there are occasions where the character design is based heavily on forms which requires me to animate structurally. 

So you could consider trying either of these two by first understand how you draw - do you draw better by jumping straight to the outlines, or by first representing the body with a skeleton. Contour and structure are like the two ends of a spectrum, once you master one method, you could try the other way to improve your animation! I believe good animations are based on the knowledge of both. 

I hope this helps!

The official We Have Plenty Kickstarter is now LIVE! 

A young farmer boy living in a small village has his quiet existence interrupted by a locust attack.

A combination of careful research and spirited storytelling have given birth to We Have Plenty. This animation highlights the importance of animal diversity to humans, from tiny insects to larger mammals as well as the ones in between. It is set in South Asia and draws inspiration from Yunnan Province and other places such as Vietnam and India. This short shows that even in times of crisis, the human spirit is inextinguishable. Bringing across the message of animal conservation in an accessible and innovative way to new audiences, we catch glimpses into this strange world as he goes about his daily life in a place that has faced local extinction.

This film is a collaboration between students at Rhode Island School of Design and the Savannah College of Art and Design. We are grateful for our friends’ help in making it to the production stage. We truly and wholeheartedly believe our film can spread the message of animal conservation through the experience of a little boy - our protagonist and a representation of the next generation of people. If you believe in our vision, please help us to make it happen! Share with those who you believe would share our vision!