In today’s world animation is being used as a tool to communicate creatively. Animation is not only being used in the film industry but also in the corporate sector in the form of infographics, presentations etc. Animators with the help of character animation software like Autodesk Maya and Autodesk 3ds Max bring animated characters to life. Character animation is also used by corporates, especially in Powerpoint Presentations to make it engaging and visually appealing.
Animation has some basic principles such as clear staging, timing, follow-through, squash and stretch, secondary action, and anticipation, to give an identity and add life to the characters animators create. Also, in animation, it’s very important to understand the psychology of the viewer, suppose if we are creating an animated character for a kids’ movie we should keep in mind the psychology of a child’s brain.
There are a lot more things to be kept in mind some which are:
Find out inspirations from the real world
Taking a real-world example can be helpful while creating the facial structure of a character. An animator can also build a character out of his own face with reciting the dialogues in different voices. Animators can also add voice-overs while recording their dialogues and later on add to the characters they have built in the character animation software or 3D animation software.
Understand the psychology of movement
To build your animated character you must first understand its movement, not only in the action but also the reason behind it. Animators usually spend hours understanding their animation character to make it look more realistic. This helps to understand the actual thought process and then give the character a more realistic look. It then gives clarity of what the animators actually expect out of their animated character.
Timing your character’s movement
Everything today revolves around time and timing forms a crucial part of character animation. Irregular shots or wrongly timed scenes that include the animated characters may result in a poorly animated movie and leave a negative impact on the minds of the audience. Quick and crisp movements are usually the ones that are error-free and highly engaging, as compared to the slow and monotonous ones. It’s important to keep these points in mind while building expressions and dialogues for our animated character.
Speech movement
One of the most important things to consider while animating your character is the speech and mouth movement. The movement of the mouth should go in coordination with the letters being said to avoid poor animation. Do not let the character pronounce each and every letter of a word. This results in quick mouth movement and gives a faulty and irregular appearance to the character.
It is indeed a big challenge to create animated characters. But, again it is a fun activity too! Once you join an animation school, you will learn the best use of different character animation software along with many more interesting tips and tricks that will keep you going.
