Our final project for Studio 1 is to animate a character navigating and obstacle course. Along with this, we also had to replicate the movement style of a character, and decide between doing 2D or 3d animation. I decided to do 2D animation and use Goofy as the style to follow.
Research and Planning
Goofy’s movement style is quite well summed up by his name. Acting is very important to his movement, as you will never see him animated in a way that isn’t clumsy or awkward. All of his movements are highly exaggerated and comical, and rely heavily on squash and stretch, heavy anticipation/buildup and slapstick. He takes large, loping strides and swings his body around wildly, and is quite limber. Goofy’s proportions are also quite essential to his movement, especially his large feet and long snout.
Keyframes
This is my first pass. I tried to make the keyframes as goofy-like as possible, despite the drawings lacking his signature visual features, because at this stage I was expecting that I would have to use the Norman rig.
This version has a few changes after I got some feedback from Martin and Chris. They suggested making goofy have a more difficult, clumsy time, especially at the part where he has to jump from pole to pole and at the stairs at the end.
Breakdowns
I added a few extra frames in between the key frames to further help achieve the movements I was after. At this stage I found it easier to show any squash and stretch, arcs, slow in and out, and anticipation.
Here I replaced the rough key frames and breakdowns with some of the the final art I would use. I changed how Goofy broke the flag at the end from a suggestion of Martin’s and exaggerated the scramble up the wall at the poles because of Chris’ feedback.
Inbetweening
I added extra variations of symbols for the hands, face and feet to make it look more natural along with adding the inbetweens. At this stage I felt it was pretty much complete enough to be presented, so I exported it at the required 16:9 aspect ratio at 25 frames per second, though I wish I had more time to add his ears!
CAYEL 