The courses learnt in unit 1 were very good in consolidating the basics related to animation. I would like to categorise these courses into three main parts, which are viewing and reference from life, character design before animation, and the final part about animation production.

Firstly, I think the life drawing course on Thursday night was very helpful to me. In my previous sketches, I tended to pay more attention to the details, especially the folds of the clothes, and neglected the more expressive lines of the body. In the life drawing course, the model’s body is naked without clothes, which makes me to focus more on the direction of the muscles and the expression of the model’s movement and emotion.

Secondly, there is the part of character design before animation. One part of the character design course was to draw the silhouettes of the characters. When a character turns black, all the details hidden in it disappear, and we can only understand the body parts of the character through the edges of the shape. This is where the shape of the character is very important, it needs to be something that allows one to relate to parts of the character through the shape, such as hands, clothing, and dynamics. This theory is not new to me, but in my previous practice applications, I rarely noticed or even cared about the importance of silhouettes.

Finally, there is the animation making part. The most basic and important thing in this section is the 12 principles of animation. All character movement is based on these 12 principles. I found timing a bit tricky to master. However, after practicing the coursework, I became more proficient in timing. Comparing my earlier assignments with my more recent ones, I realised that it was important to leave enough time for the characters to react to events. In the earlier assignments, I left too little time for the character to react, so the whole animation had a sense of haste and unnaturalness. In the later assignments, I slowed down the character’s movements, and the expression of the whole movement became more natural. (355 words)