“Squash and Stretch”
This week at Perennial Pictures more animation cranked through on “Crawford’s Classics – Cinderella.” The image above is from a scene that introduces the Fairy Godmother character in the show. The background art and animation is by G. Brian Reynolds. Brian used a lot of “squash and stretch” in the animation to create the character’s clumsy entrance. “Squash and stretch” is a great old phrase that refers to a time-tested animation basic. Today, an animator can easily squash and stretch the art in programs like FLASH. What does not come easily is that animator’s knowledge of where and how much to use this and other animation techniques. That knowledge only comes as the result of a lot of hard work and experience.
Nice “squash and stretch” G. Brian Reynolds!
Click here to see a few seconds of the ANIMATION.
Enjoy.
BTW: Hats off to animators everywhere who share with us the fruits of their labor. Fruits that include the hours and hours they have spent honing their crafts. Bravo to you all!
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On June 3rd, 2007 at 12:00 am
the animation looks great! The sparkle effect really make’s it look sparkly even tho there isnt a large amount of glowing added to it. Bravo!
On June 5th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Thanks, Stephen! This is was a fun little scene to do. We got lucky in that the character designs for “Crawford” seem to work very well in Flash. This scene was done with only “pieces parts” manipulated in Flash. The only thing that was traditionally animated was the sparkle cycle, and that was done from another scene and lifted.
It’s fun to be able to put glows around things and transparent shadows under things without it being a nightmare to get done.
On June 5th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Wrote this once. Forgot to type in the date. If it shows up twice, I’m embarassed. Anyway, I forgot that the smoke poof was animated by hand, too. At one point, you can see where several of the dissipating poofs are duplicates which saved some time.