Aardman Academy – Weeks 4 and 5

In Week 4, the task was to do a bucket swing. After getting feedback from my mentor, Maraike, I wanted to have another go at it. When I was getting frustrated, I decided to break it down to just the basic movement of arm that’s swinging, so I did the version on the rostrum, using broken up cotton buds painted different colours to distinguish the different parts of the arm and bucket. I found this really helpful, because it made it easier to focus on the motion of each part individually. Once I was happy with that, I went back to the armature. By now, I was pretty bored of the bucket swing, so I was ignoring things like accidentally casting shadows, and I made his wrist bend behind him in a strange way.

Thing is, I find it hard to stick to what I’m “supposed” to do in animation. I like making things behave differently to how they normally do, that’s the fun of it.