Cooped - Mike A Smith

This nine minute short animation created by Portland Oregon Animator Mike A Smith, is an innovative amalgamation of traditional 2D aesthetics and modernistic technique and design. Mike A Smith has a sharp and exaggerated aesthetic to his animations as well as sharp and exaggerated movement. Let’s go through these aspects of this animation that are quite genius!

Character Design

The shapes these two characters are made up of are quite clear; in other words, their anatomy can be broken down quite easily into fundamental shapes. They resemble one another quite a lot which highlights the similarities in their lifestyles. Lastly, the bodies are exaggerated to an extreme degree to a point where the man barely looks like a human but is still recognisable as one.

Smear Animation

Smith pushes the his characters to their limits with interesting and risky techniques. For instance, here are some screen shots from a particular shot in the short in which this dog is rattling chaotically at a doorknob. Smith uses a form of smear animation to blend movement however instead of creating a transition frame that smoothly smears from pose to pose, he doubles, triples and even quadruples the aspects of the dogs face to create a more chaotic transition.

In contrast to smearing his transitions:

Staging

The staging in this short is quite genius. Smith takes his time to establish situations and effectively guide the viewers eye through each scenario.

In this scene, the dog is frustrated with a book that draws his attention to his lack of opposable thumbs. He proceeds to shred the book until he stops and notices something out of the corner of his eye; he doesn’t move, as we watch another dog blissfully float through the sky on a hot air balloon. the crazed dog then finally looks at the dog outside, only then does the outdoor dog bark with glee.

In this scene, the man realises he is trapped inside the house. He looks over to his dog who is lying unconscious on the ground. The close up shot of the man widens into a low angle shot right behind the dog to create a dramatic transition and pull our attention to the dog. After a pause, the man chaotically scrambles over to the dog.

These kinds of shots appear all throughout the short animation. Mainly a still shot, the character is mid action but the body is relatively still drawing your attention to the action and creating a humorous pause. For example; the first shot is of the man opening a can of dog food. The movement is steady and consistent while his head is thrown back and the steam from the coffee maker consistently rises. 

In the second shot, the man stares dead-eyed into solace as he pours coffee all over the counter, narrowly missing the mug as his phone vibrates with the sounds of his boss screaming at him from the other end. This is a brilliant yet subtle shot creating a scenario of panic and shock.

The low angle shot here is quite brilliant, drawing our attention to the door as the man drags himself to it. I particularly like the extreme exaggeration of perspective.

This shot is completely still but when preceded by a chaotic dog ransacking the apartment, it creates a quite humorous contrast.

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