Analysis of Trick or Treat [IDD 301]
I decided to take a look at some animations by Todd Gallina to see if I could notice any of his techniques about the way he animates. I chose to watch 'Trick or Treat' a million times to see what I could notice.
In the beginning of the short three characters are shown walking outside at night on Halloween. I notice first off that the last character is a static character and 'appears' to be walking by moving up and down and sliding to the left. The middle character has his arms changing positions and has his head tilt back as he slides across the screen. The first character has his arm move ever so slightly back and forth to give the impression that he is walking although we never see their legs until the first character "hops" onto the stairs. There are also only two scenes in this animation and a variation of the second one. There is one variation with the door open and the owner of the house along with a close up of the first character in red while he knocks on the door with a simple back and forth movement of his arm.
When they start throwing the toilet paper onto the house each character has a simple launch and release movement to make it appear like they are throwing toilet paper. The toilet paper is also repeated several times and mirrored back and forth to give the allusion of it flying upwards.
When the owner pops out it is just a static image other than the tentacles on the Medusa head moving back and forth with screams as background noise. When the three characters deposit something into their pants they each have the same animation just with a variation in color to match the costumes.
Each character is then redrawn appropriately and given a simple animation to reach for the much needed toilet paper that they threw all over the house. The motion of reaching is repeated several times for each character until they end stop, each with a different ending.
The sound effects in this animation add the feeling of movement so the animation doesn't seem static.
In the beginning of the short three characters are shown walking outside at night on Halloween. I notice first off that the last character is a static character and 'appears' to be walking by moving up and down and sliding to the left. The middle character has his arms changing positions and has his head tilt back as he slides across the screen. The first character has his arm move ever so slightly back and forth to give the impression that he is walking although we never see their legs until the first character "hops" onto the stairs. There are also only two scenes in this animation and a variation of the second one. There is one variation with the door open and the owner of the house along with a close up of the first character in red while he knocks on the door with a simple back and forth movement of his arm.
When they start throwing the toilet paper onto the house each character has a simple launch and release movement to make it appear like they are throwing toilet paper. The toilet paper is also repeated several times and mirrored back and forth to give the allusion of it flying upwards.
When the owner pops out it is just a static image other than the tentacles on the Medusa head moving back and forth with screams as background noise. When the three characters deposit something into their pants they each have the same animation just with a variation in color to match the costumes.
Each character is then redrawn appropriately and given a simple animation to reach for the much needed toilet paper that they threw all over the house. The motion of reaching is repeated several times for each character until they end stop, each with a different ending.
The sound effects in this animation add the feeling of movement so the animation doesn't seem static.
posted by Tim A. at 2:11 AM
2 Comments:
Good start, Tim! Why did you choose this animation? What are the sound effects that you mention and why do they work (or not)? You also have a lot of repetition in your writing - you use the same words and phrases over. You might want to watch this.
After reading your blog I headed on over to Trick or Treat to check it out. The main thing I really learned from watching this animation was what you had first mentioned, about the walking. Gallina doesn't show the legs or feet in movement, nor does he have to. He successfully creates the illusion of walking by animating the characters in ways so they appear to be doing so. For two characters he simply moves the body up and down every frame, to create a hopping effect, and for the other he switches the arms position to create the sense of walking. I look forward to implementing such techniques when the time comes. Good post!
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