Project 4: Roller Coaster

3/25/2020

This is my work for the roller coaster project. The task was to animate a roller coaster from a first-person view while utilizing 3 of Disney's animation principles. I decided to make my roller coaster underwater themed. I created everything in the environment to represent the ocean, and made the first-person perspective from the inside of a submarine.

Storyboard:

Animation Principle #1: Slow In and Slow Out

To represent the acceleration and deceleration of the roller coaster, it was crucial that I used the Slow In and Slow Out principle. This allows the roller coaster to move more realistically as it would in the real world. To do this. I key-framed all my points and adjusted the curves on the Graph Editor.

Animation Principle #2: Arcs

The movement of the roller coaster had to move in arcs. Otherwise, there would be sharp angles along the ride which would not represent a realistic roller coaster. Arcs allowed curves which results in a smoother and more physically accurate ride.

Animation Principle #3: Appeal

I used appeal by sticking with a consistent underwater theme, and by creating a first-person environment that sticks with that theme. I also added a surprise at the end to make the animation more exciting.

Note:

I realized a bit too late that the slow down as the roller coaster is going up the inclines was a little too slow. This resulted in the animation length being longer than the 10-20 second specifications for the project.

Final Animation:

References:

Fish: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/claret-tall-seaweed-6a07131b52b34d8992861d3c3ba82a29

Seaweed 1: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/claret-wiggle-seaweed-3f11b36110704b38abafc624a8e99d9c

Seaweed 2: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/angler-fish-inktober-day-3-f7192d3520c348b2a7bc31f8e178abd7

Ocean Sounds: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bN6VNTXrIE