Animation - Making things interesting

There are a lot of things you can do to make your animation more intersting, here are a few simple things you can think about that will help add depth to your work.

Varying Speed

Not everything needs to move at the same pace, for example you might have a mouse running around at speed, and a snail, which will move slower. Making these elements work together will require some planning of shots to ensure that everything moves at the correct pace.

Moving the Camera

It’s easy to position the camera in one place for the duration of the animation and forget about it, however, varying the camera position allows you a lot more freedom, and really draws the viewer into your animation. It’s good to think of the camera as just another element in your animation, which can be repositioned with each shot.

Adding Realism

Depending on the feel you’re going for, realism may not be necessary in your animation, but even the simplest 2D animation can benefit from a little realism. If we take a bouncing ball as an example, simply animating the ball to move straight up and down at a constant speed doesn’t suggest any external forces (such as gravity) acting on the ball, and therefore it’s unconvincing. We know that a ball bouncing will slow as it reaches the top of the bounce, and accelerate towards the bottom, it will also bounce lower with each subsequent bounce.

Thinking about things like this can really help to add depth to your work.

This clip from Coraline sums up the above points nicely, the scene contains a lot of well observed moving elements, alongside a moving camera position to create a complex but believable scene.