Transformation animation Research

As part of the research for the transformation animation we were asked to find examples of animations that we had found to take our sessions with Rick. This was so he had an idea of what we liked and to explain to us how they had been done so we could work create our own animated shorts. The brief for the animation was simply to create a short animation or “illumation” that ends where it begins and was open to whatever we wanted to do.

Whilst looking around for examples I found some really nice animated gifs by an animator called Zac Cohen. Above are four of my favorites from his website. What I liked about these animations was that they weren’t over complicated but they were very effective. I particularly like the one of the guy riding the computer hard drive and the smoothness of the transition between the characters. I studied these gifs in great detail and found out I could open them in photoshop and find out how each frame worked, which was really helpful to understand how many drawings I should do to make things move smoothly.

I also found some flash animations on his website and one I liked in particular is called The Chair Not Taken. The animation is about a bunch of politicians all fighting over a stool that’s the only chair left unattended and is meant to symbolize the struggle for seats in parliment. The whole thing had been created using Flash and then edited in After effects. There are some great slow motion bits in it during the fight scene, and the use of close ups and wide shots make it appear very cinematic.