Red In Peace (Final Project)

"Red in Peace" is an animated short about a bouncy ball who's super excited to move into a nice house in a new neighborhood. Unfortunately, before our protagonist's new life can even begin, he meets a tragic fate by a hit-and-run! Rest in Peace, Red. You deserved so much more.

Animation

Storyboard

Principles of Animation

• Appeal - Big sparkling eyes personifies our bouncy ball, transforming it from a simple polygon to our so-called "Red," an actual character. The eyes also invite the audience to sympathize with Red because he's so cute. Furthermore, the environment is textured with soft, aesthetically-pleasing colors, creating a lighthearted cartoon-ish feel.

• Squash and stretch - Our protagonist, Red, squashes and stretches as he bounces. This prevents the animation from looking too stiff or unnatural by providing some elasticity and flexibility to Red's "body."

• Exaggeration - After taking in the magnificent sight of his new house, Red wiggles in satisfaction and starts jumping happily. These actions serve to exaggerate his excitement.

• Anticipation - We can hear a distant car honk right before the car hits Red, and see Red turn too slow, too late to do anything but look at his cause of death for a split second. This, in addition to the camera's panning, builds up our anticipation of the crash.

• Timing - The collision's timing is critical. Without proper timing, the collision would fail to convey a sense of abruptness to the audience, an anticlimactic outcome. Furthermore, I paid close attention to the timing of the audio clips. For example, when Red wiggles, the music aligns with his actions.

Selected Frames

Explanation of Work

This animation employs techniques learned from the Bouncing Ball project, the Motion Path Ride project, and the Rube Goldberg project.

Red was animated by keying the translate, rotate, and scale attributes and adjusting the tangents on the Graph Editor.

The cars were animated by attaching them to CV curves and adjusting their tangents on the Graph Editor to control their speed and acceleration.

The collision was animated using passive and rigid bodies in Maya Dynamics to obtain realistic, physics-based movement.

The shading and textures were mainly blinn or lambert, nothing too distracting or complicated; the purpose of doing so was to maintain a sense of unity in the animation's "look." The lighting also contributed to the flat, cartoon-like feel.

Lastly, the camera movement was animated, and audio was added, which brought the animation to life.

Final Notes

Overall, this course taught me a lot about both the technical and non-technical sides of animation and how creativity and storytelling can tie into the field of computer science. I'm happy with the progress I've made in my animations, and I hope you enjoy watching my last one!