I started to introduce a wee bit of character interaction with my lifting object animation, and this next motion pushes that idea a little further.

Originally I just wanted to practice animating a character laughing. Simple enough! But it needed some context; What was the character laughing at? I could’ve kept it simple and had the character laughing at something off screen. But why not add a little bit more complexity? So I added a whole other character to the scene. And as with everything in animation, doing so was simple in concept but a whole lot more complicated in practice.

Adding a second character to a scene not only means extra animation, but it also forces you to think more about staging and pacing. Much like creating a composition for a painting, you really have to consider where you want the viewer to look. What should draw their attention at certain points of the motion?

I think this is where I struggled the most with this animation. Shifting the viewer’s focus between the two characters means having moments where each character is at rest. This allows the viewer to move their focus from one character to the more active one. But I didn’t quite nail that here. Both characters remain pretty active throughout. And this leads to the motion being a bit too busy. It’s a little too visually overwhelming.

That being said, I do really enjoy the interaction between these two character. I’m pretty proud of the two character contact when Aisha pets Squirrely. Getting that to feel authentic was tricky, but I think it worked out fairly well! I also feel that the laugh itself (the whole reason I created this motion in the first place) reads well too.

I definitely have a lot to practice when it comes to character interactions. Figuring out how to lead the viewer throughout the motion is something I’ve been focusing on ever since creating this animation. Hopefully I’ve improved a bit since then!

If you’d like to see earlier versions of this animation, check out this SyncSketch link. As usual, I’d like to give a giant THANK YOU to SyncSketch users NYC and Roman for giving me essential feedback throughout the animation process. It made a huge difference!

Thanks so much for reading, and I hope you’re doing well. Next post will focus on a character sitting and standing. Ooh, exciting!

Aisha Rig by Sagar Arun, Mia Pray, and Rijah Kazuo
Squirrely Rig by Josh Burton and David Andrade

My Links: ArtStation / Instagram / Vimeo / YouTube