Animation 1 curriculum overhaul and character design advice

Hi @Tgibs2 ,

I'd say: Embrace flatness!

This is what is easy to achieve and comes natural to Flash.

Going against the medium will only create complications.

When teaching inexperienced designers you face two sets of challenges at the same time:

- artistic

- technical

This is a bad enough combination - the students don't know both what to do and how to do it.

Setting meaningful constraints on both what and how and limiting their freedom of choice usually can lead to better outcomes as they can focus on a goal within a clear, narrower range.

The 'what'

Robots are very forgiving and designing one can be an excellent, well-received and inspiring task.

There is no uncanny valley with robot design. There is very little to worry about joints, since you can expose them and that is fine. Also almost anything goes in terms of proportions.

With robots it would be much easier to have functional designs with outlines, which solves problems with contrast against a background. 

Organic characters are way more challenging, both technically and artistically, which can often lead to disappointment, esp. at a young age.

The 'how'

As for turnarounds, things don't really need to always be perfectly aligned as long as the perception of the same character being shown from different angles is not broken. Look at model sheets from some Flash animated shows from the 2000s, like "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", "Powerpuff Girls" or "Samurai Jack" and you'll see.

Simple is always better.

If you need detail, cluster it in areas where it wouldn't get in the way of functionality.

While full turnarounds may sound like a 'must', in reality a 3/4 view is the most important, and in most cases we can get away with only that or a little variation with two more views - something very close to front and something that is an almost side view, but still a little 3/4, because full profiles look unpleasantly flat.

(People who have not done much life-drawing or properly studied anatomy have serious difficulty producing decently looking profile views of characters as they do not understand volume, construction and mechanics.)

Tasteful use of gradients is very rare. A good way to avoid awfully amateurish look is to ban gradient use.

It is also worth discussing color palettes, but I don't have a good recipe here. Some colleagues like to sample colors from existing shots in animated feature films, which carry the right mood.

Learning from other people's mistakes

Often it is very educational to look at bad examples.

Here is an excellent illustration of this, which I came across a few days ago.

Someone who is half-knowledgeable of the technical side of things, but very focused and hard-working is proudly presenting his cringy, sad, mediocre achievement. He has put countless hours developing to the minute details a bad, bland design, which should have been discarded as unappealing seconds after it had been sketched.

https://www.reddit.com/r/adobeanimate/comments/1bh2d74/an_overview_of_my_rig/

It is pitiful and painful to watch, but is good to show to students what not to do.

As teachers it is our duty to try and prevent them from making such obvious mistakes.

background info: animate displays 2d objects in 3d space.

that said, trying to display a ~3d object by having a figure pirouette isn't (imo) worth the trouble with animate.  you can give some depth by using an oval for a belt as shown in your leftmost figure.

if you want to display 3d figures and use coding check unity 3d or other game engines.