Simple drawing adaptations from 2D to a feasible 3.
Ok, I’m a beginner.
Creating 2D hand-drawn animations which ‘pass-off’ as 3D is not a straight forward task.
My years as a 2D illustrator working primarily on paper, has not challenged me to give life-like form to my stylised characters. My preference is to draw flat. I like to draw with simple clear outline and infill flat colour or creative hatching. With my graphics head on, my delight is in the augmentation of constructed 2D form, creating expressive characters through exaggeration, distortion of scale and playfulness. Outlines are all. Clean, intentional and adapted, in order to communicate with optimum clarity.
All good when a single image can stand alone, stake its claim and grab attention solo.
Not so ideal when needing to animate a readable sequence. For one unfeasible image (though it may work brilliantly as an illustration) to link and flow into the next, throws up a whole panacea of problems.
In my first few weeks of animation at UAL we are being taught to key-frame a simple scenario, a pull cycle where a simple character encounters a challenging battle with a very resistant rope. Key frames in place at the extremes of action, the in-betweens create the flow and continuity.
As my first figurative animation task, I have found it engaging and challenging. Bringing into play the 12 Principles of Animation we have covered so far: exaggeration; ease-in and ease-out; follow through; squash and stretch; and timing, the animation has shaped up OK. It’s rough, and in its initial stages, but it kind of hangs together.
However, animation techniques aside, I am faced with the fundamental task of making my characters hang together as believable 3D beings with body parts occurring in some sort of continuity.
Problem….as I see it. My character drawing style to date does not include necks. I really like the ‘slouchy, simple head on torso’ aesthetic. But eliminating the neck greatly restricts the feasible poses of a readable 3D character.
Buss Stop (2004), an animation by Matt Abbiss, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX0-DtcZjSg
came to my attention whilst battling the animated Pull sequence. I like it. Abbott’s style is simple and similar to my own. His 2 characters, though they are as minimal as they come, are 3D. The fundamental difference is that Matt Abbiss’s Buss Stop characters have necks.
I set to work studying the animation frame-by-frame and translated his character poses into my drawing style. Instantly my new character has a versatility – movement possibilities which read clearly as a 3D, 2D drawing. With the neck comes a shoulder, and with a shoulder comes a range of movements which read logically and with clarity, ie the drawing makes more sense to the viewer.
This is exciting. The shifting of my drawing work into animatic will require many adaptations. My task is to maintain a continuity of style which resonates with truth to my drawn aesthetic. Above all I need to enjoy it. Enjoying the process and the challenges. It’s all positive growth and building an ever broadening frame of reference.
Work in progress (understatement).
Look! A neck!