I've been asked why I chose to animate a hamster for yesterday's JSVB post. The answer is because my Francis Xavier Hamster character is very close in shape to the student animator's best friend, the flour sack.
Since the early days of Disney, the animated flour sack has been the proven model to test the skills of budding animators as well as an excellent starting point for those wishing to learn animation art. The construction of the sack is very simple, yet its apparent weight and mass lends itself to a variety of realistic motions. Although we call it a flour sack, animators construct the character around the most basic model possible: the bouncing ball. If the ball gets squashed, so does the sack. If the ball stretches, then the sack stretches as well. Wherever the ball goes, it takes the sack with it.
It takes very little to suggest arms, legs, hands, feet, and a head if we use the basic sack shape as the torso of a character. FX Hamster is very much sack-shaped.
Back when I was teaching animation courses, I realized I needed a real sack model to help the students visualize the range of motion the character could achieve. I picked out some realistic burlap, and my wife sewed together "Professor Sack", my personal teaching assistant. She based the real sack on drawings I provided. Notice the pleasing proportions. The feet lay flat on the ground, and the ears create visual appeal by pointing at different angles. We stuffed the upper half of the sack with polyester fiber fluff and the bottom half with buckwheat so that Professor Sack would have some heft and could stand up on his own.
Professor Sack enjoys retirement now, spending his august days quietly watching television. He was pleased to be featured in today's JSVB post.
To see FX Hamster in a very short, very limited test video, please click here.
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