Animation start-up assignment

This start-up assignment is designed to get you started animating the characters of the final project. The assignment won't be graded. This is your opportunity to get a good start learning the current characters and to get used to working with the other animators. All the animation of the final character models will have to be done in one week... you get the picture.

We have video footage of fishies. It's in the lab next to the vcr. If someone could get some footage of cats, that would be great. We can dub it and make it available.

The assignment

Get together with the other animators and divide up into a cat team and a fish team. There are more actions to animate for the cat, but the fish's character will be harder to develop. You should all, but especially the fish team, get together with the story people and make sure that everyone has the same goal in mind. If we are confused about the story we are telling, the audience will be too!

The models you will be using for these experiments are not the final models, but the final models will likely be very similar. Keeping notes about what worked to get a certain effect is a good idea, since all the poses and curves will have to be re-created once the final models are done.

Cat team

Using the current cat model, try to achieve the following expressive actions:
  1. hungrily watching fish swim to and fro
  2. getting ready to pounce
  3. shaking head after smack
  4. nonchalantly moving off camera ("sour grapes")
  5. noticing fish swimming around outside, after landing in tank

Fish team

Using the current fish model, try to achieve the following expressive actions:
  1. swimming in mellow, fishy way
  2. coming up to edge of tank to look at cat
  3. blowing bubble
  4. pausing in swim to watch cat approaching again
  5. swimming upward, through plant (maybe imaginary for now)
  6. somehow (??) indicating that move outside was intentional