Animation Scripting and Methods - 604

This course comprises of a vigorous 14 days step by step process of an introduction to character design and character animation.

Animation Scripting and Method is a 2 week module conducted by Prof. Phani Tetali with two adjunct assistants, Vajra Pancharia & Samidha Gunjal. The module is specially designed to get a hands on experience on designing character and adding life to it

The process of character creation is an interesting procedure which starts from selecting characters provided through random chits. The characters which were provided by the mentors to the students are more from our daily surroundings eg. dog, tailor, electrician etc. After getting the character, students try to do a bit of research on their subject by studying and observing their body language, expression, gesture, posture, features, behavioral aspects etc from the real life. They try to build up his own fictional versions by implementing all their studies and adding exaggeration to make it emote. The result of  the character creations are recorded on a character sheet conveying information about the character. It is a less formal description of the character's physical appearance, personality, personal back story and possessions.

Apart from using words a lot of sketches are being done to come up with a final look. After deciding the final look, Model sheet is the next target to be achieved. Model sheet is a pictorial document used to help standardize the appearance, expressions, dynamic poses and gestures of the character to be animated. Once the model sheet is done, the students need to focus on the animation of the character. For animating their character they initially do some acting, record it and use it as reference. Referring their action, they then plan out the ladder for spacing their frames , draw the key frames quickly and do a line test.  The line test helps to show whether the action is going right or not. Once they are satisfied with the keys, they start working on the in betweens and then the timing . This is the basic way an animator does his first rough animation followed by the process of clean up, coloring and adding background to the character. The whole animation is mostly done on light box except the coloring process (ink and paint) which is done through digital medium.