Name Game

This was the last project for my first animation class at Ringling. The biggest challenge with this piece was the effects animation. I have tons of experience with frame-by-frame character animation, but I’m completely inexperienced with effects. That is, until I did this project.

I love airplanes because I live near SFO airport, and every plane that lands there flies over my house first. I’ve memorized routes, types of planes, and airlines that fly into SFO so I know exactly what is flying over me. I also want to go to flight school sometime in my life. So I turned this passion into my final project!

The start of this project was the easiest. Ideation came easily, and creating storyboards and style frames was fun; I knew exactly what type of plane I wanted to draw and how I wanted it to move. The storyboards and style frames immediately got passed, and I moved on to the animation.

After the style frames came the challenge. I needed to learn effects animation and find references online for what I was doing. I had no clue that a plane splitting clouds was physically impossible, and that there would be no references online at all. On top of knowing nothing about effects, not having references was a challenge. After watching some other animated films and lots of trial and error, I finally got the hang of it and completed my assignment how I intended to.