Squash, Stretch and Drag Animation
Clip Studio Paint Ex
I made this animation so that I could practice the principle of animation, squash and stretch. I had just gotten a new Huion tablet and wanted to practice animating on and getting used to it. I had been animating for about a year prior to the new tablet, but only on an iPad. I made the sketches of the ball on each frame and for this project I used the straight ahead method of animation. I wanted to push myself as well by adding my own twist on the animation. This is why I decided to have the ball transform into the body of a bird and cat.
I already had a pretty good understanding of how squash and stretch worked without looking at a reference. The first image seen is an example of the principle while the image on the right is the different frames I drew on my own, at 12 frames per second.
I used the principle drag, in this animation as I added a pink-ish fluid that follows and drags behind the ball. I then used the fluid to have it turn into the wings and tail feathers of the bird, as well as the legs and tail of the cat. One challenge I encountered was having the fluid transform into the parts of the animals. In order to overcome this, I tried to get the fluid to slowly move up the body of the animals so that the transition looks unnoticeable when the video is played.
