Xinyue Chen

This reflection mainly analyzes my Lip-sync and Mood Change Walk projects, focusing on how secondary elements, such as hair and arms utilize principles including follow- through/overlapping, arcs, and exaggeration.

In the early stage of the Lip-sync project, I studied the physics of hair movement, specifically referencing Ariel in The Little Mermaid. I recognized that as a secondary attachment, hair would inevitably follow through and slowly fall back after body action (especially when turning or raising the head). Although such movements are slight in reality, to help the audience clearly perceive the force of character’s performance, I added three additional keyframes of hair after body stopped and made them move along an arc to them a flowing feel, strengthening the character’s body language.

Similarly, in the Mood Change Walk project, I analyzed the physical laws of body tension through reference videos and applied the Exaggeration principle to improve expressiveness of the action, making the character look more elastic and livelier. The Onion Skinning clearly illustrates the Follow Through of the arms; When the character’s main body stands upright and stops moving, arms do not instantly stop due to inertia and gravity. Instead, they keep swinging and moving slowly, tracing a distinct S-shaped arc from the lowest to the highest point.

In addition, based on what I learned in Perspective Induction course, which suggests that curves provide stronger visual guidance than straight lines in composition. Therefore, I designed a curved staircase to lead the audience to look toward the character in the background of Lip-sync project, Besides, I increased color contrast by making the background darker and the character brighter. This reduces visual distractions in background, making the lip-sync and body action remained firmly in focus. Finally, this helped me successfully achieve a new level of clarity and professional growth which was missing in my previous works.

The animation short which I choose is I See (the animation for Chapter 1 of Black Myth: Wukong), from 2:32 to 2:37.

This sequence serves as a very typical example of Follow Through / Overlapping.

While the character’s movement (turning and swinging his arms) has already stopped, the soft, long cloth continues to move forward due to inertia, and then creating a huge, “S” curve in the air. Notably, this principle applies not only to the cloth, but also the character’s head. Rather than following character’s body rigidly, it drops slowly after the body stops that movement draws a clear arc. Emotionally, it can reflect the slowness of the character as an elder and also make the movement more natural. In this way, the character itself, the character and the object all overlap in time.

In addition, just before the cloth wraps around the character, the character makes a slight Anticipation movement of pushing backward first, which generates power for subsequent “wrap”, enhancing the sense of power and providing the logic of the following Follow Through.

Regarding Timing, the sequence demonstrates a sophisticated use of frames. When the cloth unfolds and dances in the air, there are more frames and the movement slow in; Conversely, when the movement of the cloth wraps around the character, the frames decrease significantly. This enhances the visual impact of the action and highlights the importance of principle “Timing”.

In this perspective, a clear application of Squash and Stretch is visible. When the cloth is flung by the character, it is distinctly exaggerated beyond its natural length, stretching towards the camera through a perspective transformation. Upon wrapping around the character, it immediately snaps back and be squashed to the character’s silhouette, which amplifies the dynamic tension and visual impact of the action significantly .

Finally, the staging of this scene is designed. It can be observed that the light is shining vertically downward on the character and the cloth, and there is a strong contrast between the darker background and the brighter character. This precisely locks the audience’s focus on the character’s action. Moreover, the color contrast between the huge cloth that occupies most of the screen and the small character also guides the audience to observe.

In this collaborative project, I was responsible for the animation part, analyzing the storytelling of Layout and using TVPaint to do 2D part . The project has delivered on schedule.

At the beginning, I received the brief and files at the earliest possible time and established close collaboration with the second-year students. During the work , I reported the progress as actively as possible, and they gave me the feedback about opinions on the action rhythm and expressiveness of drafts, which ensured that the quality of the final outcome met the expectation. In the project, I took the initiative to get involved in the early planning of the actions. Because I actively optimized the original layout and designed perspective effects, I attempted to make the layout a more visually dynamic. This made program more complicated and challenging. However, due to good communication, the second-year students immediately agreed with me and supported my version. During this period, we shot many reference videos outside the classroom to refine the action logic. And when the reference videos did not meet expectations, I would directly give suggestions and re-shoot individual parts to analyze animation principles.

There were also some other challenges. On the one hand, I needed to complete this 10-second frame-by-frame animation (236 frames), and on the other hand, I had to keep on the Lip-sync and CGI practice, all of which were very physically demanding. I had to manage the pressure of multitasking. My approach was working on this project first while I received feedback, and then using the time when waiting for feedback to work on the Lip-sync. However, the biggest challenge was in the technical aspect of animation – handling the dynamic tension in the Low-angle rear perspective. This required me to have an accurate understanding of the human body structure and perspective. Moreover, the greatest success was the excellent communication between us, not only did it allow me to understand the character’s motivation, but also the feedback could lead to adjustment plans on the same day, which ensured the efficient progress of the project.

This work experience made me realize that animators are not only a producer of images but also needs good physical strength, patience, and the soft skills which are often overlooked like communication skills and time management skills. It also made me understand how to align personal aesthetic with project standards in professional collaboration.