Animation Fundamentals Discussion

Alexisj1991
Sep 6, 2018 · 2 min read

I chose this Dove music video commercial featuring characters from the cartoon show Steven Universe because I feel it demonstrates some great fundamentals of animation.

The first principle I noticed was anticipation.

Here we have the character Amethyst with the expression of her closing her eyes about perform a specific action. The end result is her stretching out her neck out which I could imagine took a lot of effort.

The second principle I came across were arcs.

In this scene you see the character Sapphire go behind the character Ruby in a curved motion. Here you get a great sense of angles staying consistent and never having the shape of the body shrink or increase in size.

The third and final principle I noticed was stretch and squash.

In this scene with the character Stevonnie, they have formed into a huge being. So the action here illustrates the squash movement of the knees bending downward for Stevonnie to reach down towards to reach the camera. This is where stretching comes into action where the left arm stretches outward towards the camera and changes in scale to emphasize the realistic movements of the arm when viewed from the front.

BetweenTheFrames

Animated analysis from UMBC's Intro to Animation class

Alexisj1991

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BetweenTheFrames

Animated analysis from UMBC's Intro to Animation class

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