It’s been a while since the last post, eh?
Anyway, I came upon this months ago, and thought it’s about time I posted it. I know it’s probably been around even longer than that, but maybe you haven’t seen it before.
It’s a cat in a suitcase. And it’s hilarious and endlessly amusing.
download (right click and save as)
~3.6mb, mp4
It’s basically one event repeated over and over and over. But it’s still entertaining! And it’s a good lesson when applied to animation. How to you repeat an action several times but maintain the appeal, and keep the audience’s attention? It’s something I struggled with constantly while doing cycles for background characters. There was often a need for many variations on the same action. (ex: Go from a sitting position to a standing position in 3 different ways)
So how do you keep the same action, repeated many times, entertaining? I would have to say the main thing is to vary the timing. Check out that cat… sometimes he waits just a bit longer than the previous time before popping out. Sometimes his paw comes out a few frames later or a few frames sooner. Sometimes his paw goes into a ‘hold’ at the end of the swing, and waits until the very last possible frame before coming back into the suitcase. Sometimes he is back into the suitcase well before lid closes, but sometimes he cuts it really close. The list goes on. All these things keep you watching, and keep you entertained.
Another thing you can change is posing. Obviously the cat never really lands in the exact same pose every time he pops out. Sure that’s almost physically impossible in real life, but in animation it might be easier to fall into traps like that if you are starting with one variation and copying it as a starting place for the next.
