Animation Fundamentals: Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

Katelyn Zacharko
Sep 8, 2018 · 3 min read

For my choice in video, I wanted to bring back the old school Pop-tart commercials that all of us loved watching growing up. I believe that this animation exemplifies a couple of the fundamentals to animation. Also, I picked Pop-tart’s “12 days” commercial because it’s never too early to get into the Christmas spirit!

Secondary Action:

0:16 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

One fundamental I noticed in this animation is secondary action. In this screen shot, you can see that the person on the right main action is eating the pop-tart.

0:11 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

A secondary action to him eating is to show that he is hungry. By rubbing his stomache, it shows that he is hungry and wants to eat something.

Overlapping Action:

0:19 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

Overlapping action is being displayed here when the girl dressed as a bird is bobbing down as the bird eats the crumbs on the ground.

0:17 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

In the next frame, the hair is lagging behind as the body bends lower to the ground. The hair continues to move and lag behind as the bird continues to bob up and down.

Exaggeration:

0:05 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

The last fundamental I wanted to point out is exaggeration. In this frame shot, we can tell that the pop-tart is a ballerina based off of him wearing pink ballerina shoes that wraps up a leg a little bit.

0:08 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

In order to convince us that he is a ballerina. As the pop-tart jumps in the air, he crosses his feet back and forth really quickly as a ballerina would !do rather than just having him jump straight up and down.

Bonus! Anticipation:

0:07 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”
0:08 frame shot from Pop-tart’s “12 Days”

Ok, I know that we only had to do 3 but just wanted to continue the fun with another bonus fundamental. Anticipation can be displayed at this frame shot as the pop-tart squats down before jumping up in the air. This helps him gain more power to push him off the ground to go higher off the the ground. It also makes it more realistic.

Had a lot of fun watching a bunch of pop-tart commercials that I haven’t seen in ages! Definitely will do another blast from the past in the next post.

BetweenTheFrames

Animated analysis from UMBC's Intro to Animation class

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