Playing With Personality

An Experimental Video On Bringing Animation To Life

Quirky, colourful and amusing are three words that come to mind when watching Gavin Edward’s video or more aptly, experimental task, Character Studies.

A freelance illustrator and motion designer, Gavin had been creating stagnant characters for a long time. That’s not to say the characters lacked life or imagination but movement – they were static. “I decided to learn a plugin for after Effects called Rubber Hose in order to bring my creations to life”, he told us, “I set myself the task of completing 8 character studies in order to learn about the process”. And so, Character Studies was born.

And character studies is exactly what the short video is, it is a study on how to inject character and motion into illustrated figures. We spoke to the theatre-designer turned illustrator about after effects and animation.

TP: How did you choose the characters to feature?
GE: I wanted to do a cross section of characters performing a variety of tasks, the better to practice the principals of character animation to see what the plugin (and my skills) were capable of.

TP: How did you create it – what was the process and how long did it take?
GE: I began by coming up with the visual ideas in Illustrator, adopting a style similar to my own and one that complimented the boundaries of the software. I then rigged and animated the characters in After Effects, more or less making up the action as I went along. All-in-all the 8 characters took about 2 months to animate. As I am a freelancer I would fit in time to work on it when I had down time on other projects.

TP: Talk to us about Rubberhose – why do we need it?
GE: I have used other character rigging software for AE before but was introduced to RubberHose recently and I have to say it is a joy to work with. Compared to other rigging systems it is a lot simpler and user friendly and because it uses native AE shape layers and strokes it has great versatility.

TP: What draws you to animation? Why do you think it is so powerful?
GE: I’ve had an interest in animation since I was very young, a passion for kids cartoons that has never gone away. I think it is fantastic at portraying an engaging narrative in a style unique to each artist that no other medium has.

TP: Tell us about yourself – what’s your background?
GE: I trained as a theatre designer and worked as a prop maker for several years before moving into design and illustration. I picked up motion graphics about 6 years ago as a way of bringing those designs and illustrations to life and realising a long held passion for animation.

TP: What are you currently working on and what’s next?
GE: Being a freelancer I’m constantly on the hunt for work, ideally with studios that I admire – it would be good to utilise these new character skills on a real job. My next personal project will be something 3D and stylised I think.