Slither, Swoop and Splash – Advanced exercise with 3 characters

Just to remind folks --- I like showing people how to do animation. I've taught almost 2,000 people how to draw animation, and how to use 2D and 3D animation Software. My brother and I started drawing when we were in diapers. Eventually that got us to where we could make some $$$ at it. I'm not saying it's easy. But it's a way to make a living, if you hustle. •••••••••••••

For this exercise, students are supposed to animate 3 critters moving through the scene, with an upper limit on the number of drawings and layers. That's fairly typical for shot assignments in a studio production... For this exercise, they're supposed to make two critters interact – their choice. One might attack another, bite and miss, or bite a chunk out of the other, or they both can tangle. I've never set a requirement that all three have to still be alive and intact at the end.  Well, come to think of it, there was a certain bird that went for a worm. I don't recall which one prevailed.

This is an exercise that students have had a lot of fun working out. I usually require that ALL students use the same background, because it can CONFUSE things to have to deal with a LOT of different Issues at the same time, since it can be impossible to figure out which decision caused which unexpected result. Seriously, just designing your own characters and working out the animation are TWO substantial tasks. Students always learn a bunch from seeing how those design decisions play out. 

Just one or two new problems for each assignment challenge seems to keep things from going off the rails...

Most students had no problem getting the thing done in less than two weeks, showing their planned layout FIRST, then a quick test of the basic paths and rough movement before cleaning that up and doing all the detail work. But this was an assignment for a SECOND course, so they had ALL done ten basic challenges BEFORE trying this one -- Bouncing Ball, Walk Cycle, Bird on a Wire, Fish on a Ribbon, Endless looping stream of Envelopes, et cetera.

Anyhow, when you work in a studio, much of the design is already established, and you're expected to use the given designs and NOT depart from them. For your own designs, you get to insist that the artists that YOU hire CONFORM to your designs! Yay, right?

There are some trashy artifacts seemingly introduced by the conversion from a Toonboom output a few years ago to a Quicktime movie.
Once I get a handle on constructing this Howtube site, I will address that.