Session 4 - Idea Generation & Storyboard

For this task, I decided to use a rig that wasn’t too simple nor too complex. So I did some research to find a rig that was suitable for my needs. I then found this free squirrel rig by the AnimationMentor.

Now that I had my rig, I had to decide on what animation I should do. I had to make sure that I followed the brief and it specifically states that the animation should not have any fancy render or appealing visuals. Instead, it should be a simple render of the animation which should demonstrate that we don't need fancy renders to make an animation look great. Ideally the animation had to be short and had to display a great use of the principles of animation.

I decided that since my main animation project was going to be conveying the anger emotion, I thought I should animate my squirrel based on this emotion as well. Once, I had a brief idea, we then had to create a small storyboard which shows the animation process.

I decided to use scene props to help exaggerate the emotion shown. These will end up playing a vital role to help express the characters/squirrels emotion. The props will be translated and rotated in conjunction with the squirrels actions, so for example the props will be flipped and and pushed. Both of the props will be manually key-framed instead of having rigid body dynamics since I retain alot of control when manually key-framing.