AfterLives : Week 6

Metamorph-uh-this?

I got a substancial amount of animation done this week, and this had to be done in tandem with my team. One scene required quite a lot of characters morphing from one to another due to the indecisiveness of the interviewees, and this is where I came in! Since I did a lot of animal morphs in the Context of Practice module, I volunteered to do all the morphs.

Some morphs I did in the 501 module

There were a lot of characters and therefore, a lot of morphs. And there are many ways of animating these morphs. I explored all sorts of smears, warps and transitions but in the end we settled with a bouncy, organic transition that wasn't too gross but was still slightly stretchy.

The final morphs

I also used this 'morphing skill' to help Damo out with the character design of the chimera which was meant to be a strong animal + a mysterious one. It might as well be a halfway morph of an elephant and bat!

What went well:

• Animation was well on the way, using my experience with morphs meant we didn't lose momentum.
• Feedback on the morphs from my team kept me from animating morphs that didn't fit the narrative style,
• The anticipation, follow thorugh and overshooting of bits like hair, ears and feathers really sold the speed and direction of the morphs.

What could be improved:

• The sitting position of the morphing charcters shifts slightly but only because characters were designed to be flat and side-facing,
• The voices show no change while morphing, but this can be easily overlooked.