A Look Back On The Pop The Top Cartoon: Part 2

My favorite drawing from the whole cartoon. Too bad you can't see it in real time.

The Animation (more so the good parts)

     The movement was the strongest part of the cartoon, and I think it gauged the strongest reaction. The most important aspect I wanted to get across was that the cartoon would be fun to look at. You wouldn't want to take your eyes off it. And for the most part, I think it succeeded. The drawings that people were interested in the most were the ones that were reacting to whatever movement was going on.

Squash and Stretch

      A lot of the new techniques I used in this cartoon were your basic animation principles. The picture above shows part of the skipping cycle where one of Tommy's feet hit the ground. As the character hits the ground, he compresses towards it, and he gets thinner on the up-rise until he regains his normal shape while in the air (for 3 drawings). This helps give the character more weight and feel more dynamic.

A smear drawing that's only on the screen for one twenty-fourth of a second

     Probably the drawings that got the most attention was the smears. This is where you take two or three drawings to move the character quickly across the screen, like the drawing above from the second sequence. You can't see these drawings in real time, but that's the point. You don't see them, you feel them.

      As I went on, I used more techniques in each sequence. In the sequence above, I drew out the leg coming in fairly quick, but not too quick. I used a smear to bring the rest of the body quickly, but I used two drawings before the final drawing to serve as a cushion into the final pose. Again, you don't really see those smears or those cushion drawings, but you don't miss that movement. Although, I could have used a few more drawings for between the smear and the final pose, which leads me to my only real criticism which I'll get to at the end.

 

     Another technique I used was staggering. I used it in the sequence that introduces the soda bottle (at the 10 second mark) and in the soda bottle opening sequence (at the 47 second mark). For this effect, I repeated the last drawing before I went on to the next one. So instead of going through the drawings in the order of 1,2,3,4,5,6,ect... these sequences went through the drawings in the order of 1,2,1,2,3,2,3,4,3,4,5,4,5,6,5,6,ect....

What Ultimately Could Have Been Better In The Animation

     Most of the sequences have have pretty good movement; a lot of people really liked the sequence where Tommy puts the helmet on. But there were still some parts that could have been better. The sequence where Tommy pokes his head out from behind the sandbags and goes into his crazy eye pose felt too straight ahead. I should have had him antic (duck down in this case) at the 44 second mark before he flew into the air. Then the movement would have been easier to see.

     I also wish I could have had more sequences done at 24 frames per second. There were a few parts that ran at that frame-rate, like the staggering parts, the smears, and the sequences I mentioned in the last paragraph. But most of the cartoon ran at my usual 12 frames per second. Now this worked out for the most part, but I wish I could have done some more fluid sequences.

    However, the biggest problem I had was that the whole cartoon started and stopped. Something would move and then it would hold for a second or two before it moved again. Now those held poses had to be drawn out more or else the cartoon would have gone by too quickly and nothing would have sunk in. You can see that problem in my original pencil test, which I'll try to post soon.

     Now here's a short animation one of the freshmen at KSA worked on. One thing that I really like is that there's movement the whole time. I also like how she studied from a live action model. This makes the movement more believable and its very fluid. Even more impressive than that was that she got it all to work on Windows Live Movie Maker! And I thought After Effects was a bitch, but at least it has a timeline at all.

     But seriously, the animation's fluid and works out pretty great. My only issue is the drawings. They don't feel like they have much construction or form to them, especially when the head's shown from the side view.. It's kind of weird, though; when the drawings are in motion, they look more solid than they really are. And I can safely say the drawings need work, because that's also my biggest weakness. And, hey, she's still got three years at that school. I didn't start taking animation seriously until near the end of my college career.

The Story

     The story is a pretty simple, even generic plot. A little boy has to open an old time soda bottle, but doesn't even know what a bottle opener is. It has no deep personal meaning, but it serves its purpose. The reason I chose this story was because I had already done it before. And rather than waste brain cells thinking of a new story (God forbid), I went with this one, since it already worked and I wasn't satisfied with the original.

     My biggest disappointment with the new version was that the middle of the story felt rushed. The part where Tommy used the machine gun and the flame thrower didn't provide enough build up, which wasn't a problem in the original. Sure, the original had crappy drawings, horrible animation, and piss-poor editing (just look at the ending where it glitches up - Yikes!), but it had a better flow to it. The original used an anvil, a pickax, a chainsaw, and a whole assortment of items to try to open the stubborn bottle. My sister told me after watching my new version that she missed the car sequence. And to be fair, I miss it too. I don't know why I didn't go ahead and reuse more of the gags from the original. The rest of the new version feels pretty well paced. It's just that sequence right after he messes with the straw that feels criminally underdeveloped.

     But that's enough for this post. Next time I'll wrap things up by talking about some of the process, how the cartoon got critiqued at an art school that isn't teaching animation yet, and what I'm hoping to do next.