Line Boil as a design aesthetic, the importance of detail and movement in the scene.

Line Boil is the noticeable wobble of lines as a result of drawing frames for a piece of animation. While initially seen as a mistake by some animation purists, over time animators have made it an aesthetic of their animations. Line boil is often used to give the illusion of movement where there is none to avoid the freezing effect that comes when an animated drawing ceases to move.

For my animation I have chosen to make this sort of excessive line boil a part of my animation's aesthetic in order to retain a hand drawn style and emulate classic Bob Godfrey animation 'Roobarb'. In Roobarb, the linework gives the animation a feeling of perpetual motion, making characters appear more energetic and separating it from other childrens animations at the time. I felt that in order to address concerns I had with my previous animation regarding a perceived lack of motion in the scene, implementing line boil would be an effective way of ensuring characters appeared to have some semblance of life to them. This is a principle that 3D animation takes to heart, as it is important that to truly sell the idea to the audience that a 3D model is in fact a living breathing character, there must be some sort of movement on the character at all times, whether this be a secondary or overlapping action, hair blowing in the breeze or a character blinking or adjusting their eyes. This is something I have taken on board when animating my characters as I feel that adding small details such as the scarf blowing in the breeze and the glasses falling down our character's face add a sense of authenticity.

Another aspect of the animation I have paid particular attention to is the movement and composition of the scene. I was inspired primarily by a video essay (linked above) highlighting director Akira Kurosawa's use of movement in a scene to emphasise character emotion and create richly dense cinematography.  In order to counter a sense of stillness in my animation I made weather effects an important element of the composition. Leaves blowing past the camera feature in most of the shots in my animation as a way of depicting a change in emotion in the scene as well as to show, for the audience, placement of characters in a scene. For example, when we cut to the girl peeking over the fence, the leaves are blowing in the opposite direction to where they were blowing in the shot of the boy facing her direction, implying that they are parallel to each other in the scene. The wind also intensifies when the boy glimpses the girl over the fence, as emphasised by the wind intensifying on the scarf and the boy's glasses falling down his face. This sort of attention to detail in the mise en scene is something I wish to build upon and develop in future animations.