Trippy is an animation following an unstable character made up of simple shapes. At one point, this character trips, and all the shapes morph into a Typeface animation.
During my Experimental Motion Practices at VFS, each student was tasked to create a short animation where they would have to learn or practice a new technique. I wanted to challenge myself and try out character animation using DUIK. I also wanted to create something with much movement and personality, so I challenged myself and tried doing a run-cycle.
TRIPPY
ROLES
2D Animation
Design
Storyboard
SOFTWARE
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Photoshop
Duik
DELIVERABLES
10 - 20 Second Animation H.264 MP4
CONCEPTING
I began this project by creating several sketches of the Character. I used the shapes that would make up this Character while making sure he was made up of mainly round shapes to give him that unstable sensation. Once I had a sketch of the Character that I was happy with, I began to draw him in different vital poses.
DESIGN
Once the sketch was ready, I brought it into Illustrator and created a vector version of the Character. I also separated each Character's layers to rig them later in After Effects. The character design was planned to be very elastic, so most limbs were done with strokes and paths in Illustrator to have more flexibility.
ANIMATION
For the animation, I wanted the Character to feel as unstable as possible while also following a lot of animation principles like squash and stretch, arcs, smears, and overlap to give a lot of personality. Each of the shapes that made up the Character had to interact with each other to provide it with that instability. So, if one body interacted with another, they both had to react to their movement.
To create the animation, I followed the same principles of a bouncing ball. I established the rhythm of the torso as the main shape and ensured that each body followed the exact timing of the torso. After that, I animated the left limbs of the Character, making sure its path followed an arc. Once I had the left limbs animated, I duplicated the keyframe on the right limbs and offset them.
The most challenging part of the animation was finding a way to make the Character's shapes fall apart and morph into the typeface. I did this using a turbulent displacement map and match cuts to give the illusion that the Character had exploded. Plus, adding the rotation of the environment adds a lot more impact and makes the animation feel more dynamic.
CHALLENGES
RESULTS
I had a lot of fun playing around with DUIK and watching references of different walk cycles to get the proper movement. Overall, I'm thrilled with the final result because each shape interacts with the other, adding a lot of personality to the final animation.
CREDITS
Animation: Rodrigo Villegas
Design: Rodrigo Villegas
Special Thanks to my Instructor Shawn