Songyue's Blog

Planning:

My work:

In the bouncing exercise with the squirrel-tail ball, I focused on the follow-through and secondary motion between the character’s actions and the prop. The ball’s delay, swing, and rebound during the bouncing process provided clear rhythmic references for the character’s movement, helping me better understand the relationship between primary action and secondary motion. By continuously adjusting the bounce height and timing, I realized that follow-through not only enhances the sense of realism but also adds vitality to the overall animation. This exercise made me aware that well-designed secondary motion can enrich action layers and make character movement more natural and expressive.

This week, we explored the fundamentals of character performance. We learned that acting isn’t limited to human roles – animals, plants, objects, and even something as simple as a ball can become compelling characters through expressive movement and exaggeration.

The key to believable performance lies in ensuring every action serves a clear purpose: conveying emotions, revealing personality, or illustrating circumstances.

Ultimately, successful character acting requires that each gesture and movement authentically reflects the character’s inner nature, making the performance both convincing and engaging.

Here is the first version of my animation. The main storyline follows a juice box that wakes up after a fall, struggles to its feet, discovers its injured companion, and immediately administers first aid.

Sad emotion:

Regret emotion:

Using spacing and timing to convey the fall of juice boxes with different physical properties.

This time, I experimented with animating based on my intuition rather than reference footage. It was a valuable exercise, and I look forward to creating a new version after filming reference to compare and refine my work.

Hero pose:

Angry pose:

Sitting pose:

Understanding the follower and joint movement.

Here’s my rough sketch.

Here is my work.

These are some of my daily sketches that help me understand human anatomy and movement.

Pose a golden pose from the rig provided.

Hero pose:

Standing pose:

Happy pose:

Pose Turntable：

Creating a ball bounce animation from a side view to demonstrate the fundamental principles of animation.

Here’s my rough sketch.

Here is my work.