What's Expected of Animators?

This is an unusual project in that there's no budget, no schedule, and no real client. (Of course I'm hoping to please the band, but probably for the most part they might prefer I put less into it and be finished already) I want the finished product to be an animation showcase for the studio, as well as for everyone working on it!, and yet I too am anxious to finish.

With that competing criteria, it could be confusing to know how to handle your animation assignments. Well I'm the DIRECTOR, and I'm here to make it more confusing! The answer is, do what you'd like and we'll work from there. To suggest what that means, here's some examples.

Nobody took scene 10, so I assigned it to myself. Here's the animatic/storyboard:

The simplest thing would be to make a graphic with the thug's arms and legs flailing and just scale it up and off screen, much like the place-holder art. That might have served, but there was a lot more opportunity for fun animation. Here's what I did instead:

It's hard to see, but I really enjoyed doing some full animation (on 2s) of the thug flying through space, obviously not following the storyboards very closely, but having fun with the set up.

Here's another scene that I handled very differently:

Maybe you can tell there are no inbetweens between these poses...

Only some squash on the foot and some secondary on his cape and clothes. It's a very economical scene and I think it looks great that way!

So do what feels right for you and the scene! Send me roughs and check in if you have questions.