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Doing More with Backgrounds on GoAnimate

If you've ever watched a cartoon on television or at the movies you'll notice that most of the time you never see just one view of any scene. The camera position changes quite often depending on which character is talking or if the director wants to show the scene from a more interesting angle or just a different point of view.

In doing this it creates the illusion that the characters are in a more complete environment much like live action film or video.

With a bit of creativity you can create alternate views of GoAnimate's existing backgrounds using existing props and minimal custom prop creation. Take a look at these examples that I created for various animations.

Enigma Sunshine's Bedroom

Everything in Enigma's bedroom, from my Enigma Sunshine animation, is an existing GoAnimate prop except for the mobile phone on her desk. The room its self is the Comedy World theme's 'girls bedroom' with the addition of a desk and laptop computer.

Different desks were used between the wide shot and the other two shots. Notice that in the central mid shot the bed and mirror are actually in the wrong position in relation to the desk but it still reads as correct unless you really study the relationships between each piece of furniture and where they should actually be.

Hospital Ward

This hospital bed scene (pictured right, top) is another standard Comedy World background that I created an alternate view for in Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.

The new view in the scene bottom right is looking at the same bed but as if you were standing in front of the curtain looking back the other way. The view reveals a second bed on the ward.

Notice the floor is the original floor from the scene. The beds and drip bags have been flipped and I used the square shape to recreate the back wall and block out the curtain. A window prop has been added.

The only custom part of the scene is the lights on the wall which I simply took a screen shot of from the original scene and turned into a .PNG file prop.

The scene works but those of you with a keen eye will notice some inconsistencies. The switch for the lights is on the wrong side. A set of drawers on the left of the scene is completely missing in the flipped scene.

Note that although the drip bag is positioned on the wrong side of the bed, in my animation I moved it to the other side - which is why the feed is on the opposite side in the new scene.

Original GoAnimate Background
Office Cubicals

Much like Enigma Sunshine's bedroom above with GoAnimate's Comedy World Office cubical scene I added in a whole new cubical in the foreground for an animation that I created for a business client. It's almost the same scene but with the camera zoomed out even further to reveal the foreground cubical.

New foreground cubical.
Everything in this scene is a standard GoAnimate prop though not everything is what it seems. The back of the office worker's monitor is actually a big screen TV from a Comedy World lounge room scene. Most of the desk props come from the Lil' Peepz theme. The original background has been made lighter by covering the whole scene with the stick figure theme's window prop colored white.

Side view of cubical.
For the same animation I also created another view of the foreground cubical. this time a side view. Can you spot the inconsistencies between the two views?


As you can see, extending scenes and creating alternate views can really set your animations apart and give a sense of more three dimensional environments for your characters.

What's more you don't need to do very much in the way of making custom props. Often you can make a new view of a scene with just what GoAnimate has available. Try it in your next GoAnimation.


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