November 18, 2011

Robotnik Skipping



This is a pencil test I shot about a year ago for school. It's not the best one I did, but it's my favourite. We had to animate a character jumping, and then skipping (I think the original idea was to have the character jumping rope, but there was a miscommunication and our class ended up doing this instead). Anyway, we had the option of either designing a character or using a pre-existing model sheet to work from, so naturally I picked Milton Knight's Robotnik design from Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog.

At one point the teacher commented that it was too rubbery and stretch-and-squashy. He questioned whether it was "on-model," so I showed him the hilarious model sheet, which includes the legendary direction "Keep it loose and distorted. Draw EXPRESSIVELY, not WELL." This clearly bothered him, but he allowed me to continue with the animation. He eventually had me correct a few things and tone some of the stretch and squash down, but this is an earlier version that I like better. The biggest mistake that sticks out to me now is the popping of the stripe on his back during the skip. I should've just left that off.

3 comments:

ADC said...

Wow, that is absolutely hilarious. There is some great consistency here though. You have gotten to be very good.

Can you imagine if you had animated a John Kricfalusi character? The model sheet would have been more like: "Don't repeat any of your drawings, make each one a bit different to help express the character fully." Or at least something along those lines. I think your teacher would've gone purple with rage.

Good job otherwise, would love to see more work. Are you still working on the storyboard for the next Fester Fish?

Brubaker said...

Heh. Milton Knight linked to your post on his Facebook page. He found the teacher's reaction amusing.

Aaron Long said...

Yes ADC, I did some work on the storyboard tonight in fact. It's gonna be a while before the next cartoon is done, but it is coming.

Brubaker: Whoa, cool! Thanks for pointing that out to me.