Part 3: Obstacle Course

The Obstacle course was my most experimental piece of work in this project.

To begin with I planned to use After Effects to animate my character running and interacting with various obstacles. I created a fully pose-able overweight man using Photoshop and imported it into an After Effects document to see how things would work.

Photoshop Wireframe Man

However I found that I didn't like the way that it moved and found it to be very robotic and unlikeable. I decided to go with what I know best and try using plasticine for a Stop Motion obstacle course.
I recreated the overweight character in 2d and planned on animating it in a similar way - by rotating the limbs and head around the torso in front of a blue screen.

Plasticine Overweight Man

After animating a very bad run cycle I realised that this method was not going to work out. It was difficult to animate and felt too similar to cut out animation. I embarked on making an armature for a fully 3d character. Using ball and socket rods, yellow foam and duct tape I managed to make a mostly working armature.

Armature

I was very nearly ready to begin animating using this (wearing action man clothes) when I discovered that the limbs became loose very easily due to the parts of the armature being overused. In the end I decided on using an actual Action Man figure, attached to a rig.

Animation Set Up

Unfortunately due to a lack of a real rig I had to create a makeshift rig using a stand, a camera clamp and a custom made metal rod which had to be glued to the back of the action man.

The glue came unstuck countless times and reapplying the glue actually became more time consuming than the actual animation but despite the issues I was still able to complete my obstacle course in time with some smooth animation. The backgrounds were intended to look like they were home made from other small objects such as paintbrushes and plasticine blocks and were added in using After Effects.

Frame of Finished Obstacle Course