Animation Fundamentals: Stuck in the Sound
Stuck in the Sound starts out fairly slow and simplistic. Many of the first shots are just a series of still images and the characters have very minor to no expressive change. The main character remains in the center of the frame as he changes and his environment changes around him, setting up the story of his life and his aspirations. It exemplifies the sober seriousness of the main character’s lack of interest in anything but his goal.



However, as the narrative unfolds and the world literally explodes, we see the animation become more exaggerated in direct relation to his panic regarding his new situation: stuck on the moon, the last man alive. The world shrinks minimally for a singe frame before exploding, an almost unnoticeable moment of squash and stretch as the surprise and suddenness of the world exploding is much more potent and important.



We see a much better example of squash and stretch with his initial outburst. His face stretches as he rears his head back and squashes together again before stretching with his movement downward as he screams. It also contains an additional overlapping action as his jaw follows through with the movement and continues moving to the left while the rest of his head moves right and as the spit flies from his mouth in his anguish.




In his rage, be begins to tear apart the inside of the ship, tearing wires and attempting to kick the inner panels of his spacecraft. The kick is a great example of anticipation, follow through, arcs and secondary action. We see him rear back to kick the wall, his hands balled into fists and his body tensed up in a very tight arc. As he releases and makes contact with the wall, his arms swing outward in an additional secondary motion, adding to the feeling of pure rage and attempting to give him balance. However, his movement isn’t quite thought out as his kick sends him falling backwards in the follow through, his arms trailing behind him as an overlapping action and his body falls back away from the wall in an arc.




The character eventually finds out there is another astronaut out there and makes frantic plans to escape the moon. At one point he is looking out the window with excitement, only to be suddenly startled by a toy hitting the window. This sequence utilizes both anticipation, timing, exaggeration, arcs, and staging. The window and the main character are both set in the frame at the rule of thirds lines and he is looking out the window with anticipation, drawing our eye to the window to suddenly be surprised by the Spongebob toy.
His whole body tenses up and his features squish together before his whole body explodes dramatically outwards in fear. His arms flail wildly in arcs, followed by smears to exaggerate the motion. He stops in a pose of tensed fear before fainting out of frame. This is when he first notices the pending danger of debris from the explosion headed his way.



He jumps from his spacecraft in an arc, however his leap doesn’t follow the the traditional ease in and out for the jump but rather slows down as he descends due to the gravitational qualities of the moon. He bounces from the impact and his limbs flow about like a ragdoll



The use of these principles continues throughout the whole animation, there are many more examples than I think anyone would want to read in a single post. I won’t spoil the ending for you, you’ll have to watch it to find out ;)

