A New Animation - WIP Nervous Phonecall

Here's a new animation I've been working on in my spare time between Jungle Book and Thor Ragnarok. It's still in stepped at the moment so the spline stage will come next.

WIP - Nervous Phonecall - Acting Piece from James Saunders on Vimeo.

For this animation I really wanted to focus on animating visible thought process without dialogue. I like the challenge of communicating an idea or story without dialogue as it really helps me focus on what is important in a good animation.

I also wanted to incorporate a story into the animation. Rather than have a static camera and a full body acting shot it felt more interesting to build a whole scenario around this character trying to phone a girl.

I learnt a lot by forcing myself to work in a stepped mode since it's the workflow I use the least. It helped me focus in on the key poses but also figuring out more interesting breakdowns. We'll see how it translates once I've moved into spline. 

Here's some notes I scribbled as I tried to think of a good backstory to my character that I was animating (hope you can read them!) :

 

So far i'm happy with the block so will try and get this one finished as soon as poss!

An Old Animation

I watched this old animation I did from two years ago. It made me laugh and wonder why I'd never published it before. So here it is:


Door Walk from James Saunders on Vimeo.


Sometimes i think it's good to publish old work or even work in progress sometimes.