Linear Stage

After blocking out the animation, I showed it to a few people to get some feedback. My tutor suggested that I could lose the part where he picks up the sandwich because it is quite obvious what it is from the way that he is holding it. Another suggestion was that the camera could be a bit closer to the character so that the facial expressions were focused on more. Here is the result of trying out these suggestions:




I think this works better than before because it fits in the time a lot better with losing the first section. However, I feel that it is not clear that he eats the fly at the end and this was confirmed when I showed it to the group because everyone said that I needed something to let the audience know what was happening. They also said that, now that I don't have him picking up the sandwich, I need something at the start as well so that we know it is something that he is going to eat.

At this point I switched to using linear curves so that I got a feel for how the timing of all the moves was working. I also added in extra animation to make it more obvious what is going on. This is shown in the movie below:



As you can see, I've added in a couple of little bits. The main change is where he licks his lips at the beginning. I think that this addition leaves us in no doubt that he intends to eat something. I'm pleased with that because that is the whole point of mime, to make it really obvious to the audience what the character is doing by performing an action.

However, I still need to add something at the end of the piece to show that he has eaten the fly. The obvious gesture would be showing that it doesn't taste very nice. I tried this out and this is shown in the video below:



I think the part added to the end works really well. Again, it has been made really obvious that he has swallowed something and that it didn't taste nice. This, along with the gestures that suggest a fly has landed on his sandwich, indicate that he has eaten the fly. I have also added some extra inbetweens so that the movement flows better. I think the movements also have a lot more anticipation now although the part where he shrugs his shoulders needs more anticipation, it happens far too fast.