This week, Ting’s class focused on Creature Animation. The teacher introduced the basic research process for creature animation, including choosing an animal topic, collecting many video references, and observing how the creature looks, walks, blinks, moves, and behaves. We also learned that we do not need to become anatomy experts, but we should understand the basic structures that are useful for animation, such as leg types, body proportions, spine movement, and gait rhythm.
This week, we will work as a group on a Creature Study. Our group plans to research the movement of insects. There are three people in our group, and our rough division of work is: one person will study crawling insects with legs, one person will study wriggling insects or larvae, and one person will study flying insects. This allows us to compare different types of insect movement, including crawling, wriggling, and flying.
Through this class, I realised that creature animation should not be based only on imagination. It needs careful observation and research. Next, we will continue collecting insect movement references and analyse their gait, body weight, wing movement, and body deformation to prepare for the creature locomotion animation.