Stop Animation Task

Introduction: After watching the film “I Am Street Fighter” and developing my knowledge on the Street Fighter franchise, I learnt that one of the most important things in the game was the character design. The fans in the film talked about how they could recognise characters simply from colour pallets, or their silhouettes. Leading on from that, I created a silhouette for my character with the aim of using it to create stop animations of his basic moves.

Creating the Silhouette To begin, I used ‘Illustrator’ to create my silhouette. Without concept art of my character, I had to try to create something that somewhat resembled a monkey so that it the animations, it would look like my character in his early stages. To do this, I used basic shapes to create a rough outline. I used reference images of monkeys to study their key and most recognisable features in comparison to the silhouette of a human. Extending the arms more so that the legs was clearly something that I had to emphasise, as well as the shape of the head and specifically the mouth.

Once I had created the original outline for my character, I then had to translate onto the next page but design it in such a way that it would look like his profile rather than his shape front on. I adjusted some of the areas of his body, removing the majority of one arm (hidden behind his body) and turning both feet to face the same way. I did this because when my character is in game and performing his animations, he will be seen from a side-on perspective, as that is how Street Fighter is played.

Story Boarding For me to animate my moves, I first had to storyboard what they would look like and what kind of movements my character would make. I was tasked with creating an animation for a punch, a kick, a special move and a reaction to taking damages. I used four frames for each of these moves, which in hindsight wasn’t enough, but I will comment on that more in my evaluation. Starting with the punch, I remembered that in the film the fans spoke about how the simple attacks had to be kept short and simple. This was because the game is based on speed and outplaying the opponent, having simple moves with complex animation could be detrimental.

I kept the same thing in mind for the following animations as well, as only the special move is an animation that needs to be more complex and interesting. Despite that, I did want to make his simple moves unique. With the 4 frames I had given myself, I tried to design a kick move that incorporated the 3rd glove on my character’s tail. With more frames I could have shown in more clearly, but the idea is that my character leans back onto his tail and kicks with both feet, rather than just one.

For the damage reaction, I thought that his natural reaction to taking a hit would be to cover his face, due to his history surrounding a traditional boxing style. However, to once again keep it unique and in character, his tail curls around his back and the 3rd glove covers his face, as well as his left and right hand. For the special move, I wanted to design something that revolved around his ability to use his super-sized vocal cords to project a sound at the enemy. The 4 frame show him standing front on and

Stop Animating with the Silhouette After scanning and printing my profile silhouette, I used a lightbox and camera to position my character in his move stances. This was a difficult process as I wasn’t able to follow translate my animations due to the 4 frames I had allowed myself. However, this process involved going through each of the animations and positioning my silhouette in each of the different frames, and then taking a short video of each. Once I had this done for each of the moves, I took the videos into ‘Adobe Premier’ and cut them down to 4 frame videos, which showcased the movement as a whole.

Evaluation Overall, I felt this task has given me a lot of insight into how my character design will pan out. I could highlight important features of his design and his movements, and now I have the feedback from myself, my tutors and my peers to work on his design and continue to build his character. Allowing myself only 4 frames was an issue as I couldn’t include a lot of detail in my animations, but it’s also taught me how to ensure important features and movements are included in what little frames I have, and I’m also now able to see what’s missing and add it in for the next step of my character’s design.