Stagger test.

Last tuesday we were given a task to create a stagger sequence. A stagger sequence is a series of animation drawings and instead of importing them in order, you import them in stagger so for instance the way i shot the frames were 1,3,2,4,3,5,4,6,5,7,6,8,7,9,8,10,9 etc. It took me a while to get the hang of the sequence but after a while i got it.

We were given a sheet of paper explaining what we had to do and some examples of good staggering topics like a man pulling on a rope or trying to lift a heavy object. Staggering frames creates the illusion of restraint or force against a character or a object, it makes it look like the animation had some weight and ultimately makes it look more real. Ron stated that we could do any of the examples on the street or something that we would like to do as long as we checked with Ron first. I thought that maybe a good idea would be to do a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. obviously the staggers only last a short period of time and a butterfly emerging from a cocoon takes weeks, but you can imagine it is on a quick play back - the technical word has left my head but i have seen many nature documentaries where they film over twenty four hours or weeks and they then fasten up the footage.

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DIAGRAM OF TIMING.

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I must admit whilst drawing the frames, i was become less and less confident with how it would turn up. the cocoon changing colour would work and also the butterfly wiggling out of the cocoon, but i am not too sure about flight. When i finished the drawings i put them onto dragon at a frame rate of 25fps. I kept playing it back to try and get a vague idea of how it would play. I don't like it at all. I do not mind it at the beginning as the cocoon changed but i think its too staggered for such a delicate movement. At least now i have learnt that if you are going to stagger anything it needs to be a dynamic movement and also quite a fast movement.

Staggered Butterfly

I decided to do a version of the animation with no stagger just to see if the actual animation would be smooth and just to see if i am on the right tracks.

Unstaggered Butterfly

Purely out of frustration if i have time over the weekend i will make another short stagger animation as this one did not work to its full potential.