Animating the Snowman

The main idea of the project is to really show off the ability to animate the character without the use of voice, voiceovers or speech bubbles. This means that the person watching the animation needs to be able to understand what feelings and emotions the character is trying to portray just from his facial expressions and actions.
The main part of the animating on the Snowman comes from his facial features. The Snowman has cartoon style eyes, a carrot for a nose and individual pebbles that make up his mouth. All of these parts of the Snowman are able to be animated individually to really be able to create the perfect look.
I created the facial features in this way so that all feelings and emotions could be emphasized just through the use of the face if required. The pebbles are able to move freely around the face and mouth area because the Snowman is obviously made of snow therefore making it easy for harder objects to move around.
After conducting research into how humans react in different scenarios it was important I tried to re-create this with the Snowman. There are a range of feelings and emotions that are shown by just the facial expressions of the Snowman.
Snowman Sad
When the Snowman is sad, his top eyelid closes down and his bottom eyelid droops. His eyes focus on a point below him to really get the feeling that he is about to cry. The nose has been animated to point and flop down to emphasize how upset he is. The final expression is created through the pebbles that make up the mouth. I decided to create the Snowman with these pebbles to allow him to show different emotions just through the use of his mouth. When the Snowman is sad, these pebbles move into an upside down smile and really make the Snowman look sad.


Snowman Happy
To animate the Snowman being happy, the opposite was done to him being sad. The eyelids are wide open really making his eyes visible, which are both looking up into the sky and in front of him. His nose is pointing up and forward making him look good. The pebbles that make up his mouth morph into a huge smile that really is over the top but effective as it shows him being very happy.

Snowman Worried
The Snowman is very eager to go outside and make friends with the penguin but he doesn’t realise what he is about to do. When he heads outside onto the edge of the cliff to meet the penguin, he is very happy as he is about to make a new friend. Once he reaches the penguin, he looks over the edge of the cliff to see how deep the drop is going to be. He now becomes extremely worried as he does not feel confident on his skies.
The camera moves position to be as if it is from his point of view when the Snowman is looking over the edge. After a few seconds of this view, the camera switches back to catch the reaction of the Snowman. It was quite hard to work out how to animate the Snowman being very worried and anxious about skiing down the hill but I think the way it has come out is very good.
As he approaches the drop off the cliff, the Snowman’s mouth becomes squiggly with the end 2 pebbles dropping down alongside the middle two. This gives the impression of the Snowman screwing up his face in fear of not knowing what is going on. The Snowman’s head is shaking as if he is saying “What am I doing this for????” and he continues to move off the edge. As he finally moves off the edge, his head looks down to where he is about to fall and he shakes the head to say “No!!” but he is now too late.


Snowman Sleepy
At the beginning of the animation, the Snowman is waking up and I feel that this is shown very well by the use of his eyes. When a human wakes up they usually will open their eyes for a few seconds, get their surroundings and let their eyes start to adjust before closing them again. This is just a natural reaction to waking up and allows your eyes to adjust from being closed whilst asleep to suddenly opening them.
A person will then re-open them up and may blink a few more times before they finally adjust to the scene that they are in. The Snowman does these actions in the same way as a human because I feel it really gives the Snowman a human feel and making him very lifelike.

Snowman Shocked
When the Snowman falls off the edge of the cliff, I really wanted him to look scared to go along with the cartoon drop that is about to happen. When a human is shocked they usually will open their mouth widely and the phrase “jaw dropping wide open” is usually said about someone who is shocked. I wanted to create this same reaction but it was hard to do it because the Snowman doesn’t have a normal human mouth with lips.
The closest thing that I could think of using for this idea was the Internet Emoticon for a shocked face (:o)

This is the face that is used in many online chat programs and online forums to represent a shocked face. I thought that I could possibly try and encorporate this into the Snowman’s facial expression as a way of showing that he was shocked whilst still being quite comical.
I attempted to create this affect by adding in 2 extra pebbles to the mouth that came out of the Snowman’s face in the same way that the nose did earlier. I placed these on top of 2 of the middle pebbles to create a round shape. Unfortunately this turned out quite poorly and basically looked like the Snowman had a moustache.
I showed this animation to a few classmates and although it was highly amusing, they agreed it did not look great and I should change it. One classmate liked the idea of doing the Emoticon smiley face and said that I should attempt to move the pebbles into a circle to create the “o” look of the mouth.
As the Snowman is about to fall down onto the cliff, I animated the pebbles to morph into a circle and create the look of the Snowman opening his jaw wide open. I rendered this animation and was a lot happier with how it looked and decided to go with this animation as I really feel it gives the human effect of being shocked. I also feel it is rather comical and suits with the rest of the layout in the animation.

Snowman Hands
From the moment I decided on using a Snowman as the main character in my animation, I had decided that the hands would be created similar to those of Mr Potato Head from the Disney Pixar animation Toy Story. The arms would be independent from the body and individually boned so that they could freely animate without relying on the position of the body or rest of the Snowman.
When the Snowman is Happy, the Snowman has his hands raised up in the air to really show that he is happy. When he is sad the hands of the Snowman drop down by his side to help assist the facial features to show the sad feelings.
When the Snowman is flying down the hill on his skis, he is holding his hands up in front of him and waving them about in the “Stop” motion. Unfortunately as he is on skis and flying down a mountain, this is very unlikely to happen unless he runs into an object to stop him.
In the initial scene, we see the Snowman waking up and changing his heads. I used the hands to animate the removal and placing his new head back onto his body in the same method that a human would. I feel that this really shows how effective the hands are of the Snowman with them twisting side to side to ensure the head is on correctly.

Snowman Head
The Snowman’s head is animated at multiple times throughout the animation to back up the feelings shown by the facial features. There is obviously a limit as to how much animation can be put into the movements of a head because I didn’t want to turn my animation into an example of the Exorcist with ridiculous head movements. This is to ensure that it is suitable for the target audience.
When the Snowman replaces his head, the Snowman tilts his hands to twist the head to ensure that the head is on properly. This small movement makes the Snowman look like he’s an object and just screwing in his head. It is mainly just for a bit of comical effect to show off what the Snowman can do.
When the Snowman is flying down the hill, his head shakes from side to side to show that he is not happy about skiing down a hill. The idea of him shaking his head gives the impression of a person saying “No!!!!!” or “Stop!!!”, which seeing as the animation does not have any voices in, this is the best way of doing it.