Research
I did some research into cartoony animation whilst the 12 principles of animation apply here of course, there are also many of other principles and techniques that should be taken into account. I found these online and which were very useful for me moving forwards.
Planning
This animation project proved to be much more difficult than I imagine. Whilst originally I was excited to produce this work there were a few technically difficult along the way that made it much more difficult than expected.
Originally I was going to go with a much more complicated scene with a tree falling on MR buttons and him slowing being squashed and deformed however due to how the amount of crashes and the fact many of the plugins for MR buttons weren’t working I decided on something simpler.
Development work
For whatever reason the Mr Buttons rig caused frequent crashes, and so could only work on him for 10-15 mins before he would randomly crash, weather it was due to me scrubbing the timeline or swapping from step to spline. Regardless, it was a good learning experience, the style was more fluid and would often use more than just rotating and moving around IK chains, it allowed me experiment with inflating a deflating certain parts of the character
I experimented with exaggeration, when Mr buttons winds back his punch it would seem rather unnatural as it looks dislocated. However, due to how Mr Buttons looks it worked quite well, it was also part of my reference footage with Jerry’s cousin winding back in exaggerated and unnatural way but it was a good way to show the power and momentum of the punch.
This is the piece that I’m working with now. It’s much easier but allows me to experiment with the rig still. I went on to use woosh lines and image planes to have cartoony onomatopoeia appear in the scene as well.
Reflection
Looking back on this animation I wish I had experimented more, the action I decided to animate was a relatively safe one. I should’ve tried harder to try and get the plugins working as I went for a rather basic way of getting my cartoony animations like the inflated fist done. Regardless I enjoyed working with this rig despite the technical difficulties.
Acting in animation 