Cass study - Hilda

Hilda Character rigging

Analysing animation with character rigging was a challenge seeing how the principles are used through this tool, looking over a few scenes from Hilda a cartoon series that follows a young girl who live in a small town filled mythical creatures, the series was animated by Mercury Filmworks studio and it is an adaption to the comic book series created and illustrated by Luke Pearson.

 

Beginning with looking at Hilda’s character design, seeing that she has various clothing and where I would examine her main outfit which are a red jumper, yellow scarf, a beret, red shoes, black trouser and a teal colour skirt. How the rigging is done is by creating each body part, facial part and clothing separately, so that the animator would be able to animate all the parts of the body cutting down time and cost and be able to deliver high quality smooth animation.

From here I need to see how each part follows one of the 12 principles of animation and see how it help make the character feel alive.

The 12 principles of animation are:

·       Anticipation

·       Squash & Stretch

·       Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose

·       Staging

·       Slow in & Slow out

·       Exaggeration

·       Secondary action

·       Arcs

·       Timing

·       Solid Drawing

·       Appeal

·       Following through and overlapping

These are essential methods and techniques for creating animation which go into the basic of movement, speed, timing, drawing, weight, staging, and amount frames. Layering out the constructive plans for animating and even if these are important skills, it knowing where these mechanics work best for that certain action.

Beginning with slow in & out which is crucial to know for animating movement where every action has to build up speed but for this type of principle it not just about that, it focus on the slow speed for the start and end of the action. They would be more noticeable in the limbs where they would be doing most of movements and where the other parts would following along with that set motions.

Knowing how the limbs are about to move and how the rest of the other parts react with that set motion, leading to anticipation this principle is about showing the predictable process of a certain action. Looking back at Hilda’s running motion where we would see her moving back and then launch herself forwards beginning her run, here we have two stages which are the setup and action where we can say that the her legs and arms moving far back are the setup. That would give the audiences the indication that she’s about to run delivering the action and having that prediction help communicate the animation but could have many different setup. Take for example if she was falling from a distance she could roll to keep the momentum going or landing on her feet loosing that speed but safely made contact to the ground and launch herself back to running by having her legs leap forward.

Going back to the example of the landing set up using the example of Hilda launching back on to her running cycle, for that animation to feel like she bouncing upwards for this the next principle would squash and stretch. Where you would stretch out the animation to then squashing it as it would try to return to its original, stretch would mainly display the sense of the speed having the character stretched out the faster the animation and squash is to form contact where the object or character would make a direct connection towards a sudden impact creating that sense of force and by showing how soft the character or object would be. Say if Hilda were to push an object to the side her hands would appeal a bit of pressure against it making her hands look a bit flatten a visual indication of heavy amount of force used which could also be display a sense of strength. Additionally stretch can exaggerate the character’s limbs and facial expression exaggerating their actions and emotions whether Hilda is in an action sequence where her limbs would stretch out to try and reach on to something or would express frustration and tend to extend her arms out of frustration. 

            

With slow in and out and squash and stretch focusing on weight and speed making the characters body feel believable, although there is one other principal that extend the sense of speed and weight that would include the hair and clothing. Following through and overlapping is the principle used for both for those other aspects with the character, where a few frame would overlap some past frames and follow through to the next few frames, this method would be more noticeable with Hilda’s clothing and hair having a delay reaction that by having those two aspects being dragged. Developing animation to being weightless where it would be seen once Hilda begins to run or either would be fall from a tall place or actually being dragged by someone or by something displaying that sense of strength.

Though these movements would tend to move in a circular motion without it them the animation of the character would look very robotic and stiff that would be appropriate for a mechanized human, for this principle is called arcs where all the human limbs would rotate on their pivot take example of the arm where it wouldn’t reach up at the end point from a straight trajectory instead would follow an arc until it reaches its end point.

Applying all of these principles to the character rigging would be different, where animation used to be done through each single frames, now can be done through digital and setting a start and end point and press a single button fill in those frames. Though it sound like it a lot easier but it not you still need to draw the character along with its variations of expressions through it facial features and body language. Also importantly the knowing the principles, sure you set them up very quick and simple but without those methods of animation it would make the character to look lifeless and dull simply to how a puppet would act, where the puppeteer wouldn’t know how the puppet should act, leaving the performance of the character to being nothing and just a puppet with some strings attach to make it move and nothing else.

     

These few principles help create the character to feeling believable but also very human like not in a very realistic animated or art style for this kind of series, where Hilda has a cartoonish style with the noodle like limbs and a circular shape head and manage to feel and act like a person would do. Through her facial expressions and body language all of it animated through character rigging with the principles of animation and the few that I’ve mentioned are the ones that would be the most present in all character’s animation.