Animation progression

Animation ideas

I chose to use the 3rd sound clip for my animation, the first thoughts i had where to have a character sneaking up on someone, but then i decided that that would be too predictable. After listening to the sound clip i noticed that the male voice was quite posh sounding, at this point i had come up with an idea for a fox character as they are sneaky sly creatures. So eventually i came up with a fox character that was dressed in posh upper class clothing.

I had trouble trying to figure out what i could have as my female character that the fox would be going after, i thought about what foxes were notorious for doing and came up with a chicken. Foxes are known to farmers to go after their chickens, and so my idea was set and i could start coming up with my storyboards.

1. The first panel sets the scene which is simply a chicken coop, i wanted to keep the design simple and kind of comic book like.  

2. The fox struts up to the coop looking all smug and sly. 

3. Casually leans on the coop "I'm coming to get you Barbara."

4. Fox grins smugly as chicken is alerted. Fox hides behind the coop and waits. 

5. Barbara the chicken runs out in a panic flapping around madly. 

6. Fox jumps out and runs after the chicken. 

Animator comparison

Hayao Miyazaki and Tim Burton have two completely different animation styles and techniques.

Miyazaki is a world famous Japanese animator with a style that is very distinctive, and his drawing style is very much his own, as is clearly seen in the Ghibli films that he has worked on. He is primarily a 2D animator but small parts of his films are done in CGI when 2D would be ridiculously hard to pull off. It is mainly in the newer films where CGI has been brought in, like in Howl’s moving castle where all the different parts of the castle were drawn separately then put into a computer program and put together, by doing this they were able to animate each part separately from the other. The result was a very convincing mechanical castle that hissed, creaked and clunked along the beautifully painted backgrounds of the film that Ghibli are well known for. The backgrounds themselves are breathtaking, usually large open landscapes all hand painted and generally water colour style.

In comparison Tim Burton has to build scale models of the environments for his animations so that his character models to move around in. Burton creates 3D stop motion films using models instead of drawn characters, these models usually have some sort of metal skeleton to make them easier to move and keep their shape. Where Miyazaki’s films have a bright and airy feel to them Burton’s tend to be a lot darker and quite creepy. Examples of his films are A nightmare before Christmas and The corpse’s bride.

Uses of animation

Animation is used in many different ways. The most common use for animation is, of course, animated films such as Disney and cartoons. It is also used in many TV adverts some examples of this would be tony the tiger from the frosties adverts and the loyds TSB adverts. Tony the tiger is an example of 2D animation being used in adverts while the loyds advert is CGI. Animation is also used in video games to create believable 3D character that the player can interact with. CGI technology is also used in modern films to replace the use of stunt doubles and large sets. Although some films still use the old methods mixed in with computer generated imagery. Animation is also used a lot on the Internet to create interactive web pages, adverts and games. 

History

1950s

Sleeping beauty 1959

Sleeping beauty is one of Disney’s classic 2D animations, and is often thought of as one of the early additions to the Disney collection. However its was made when the animation studios were well established and experienced in this field of animation, having good twenty years to develop and master their skills. Their first full-length film was snow white in 1930.

This film shows fantastic, beautiful hand painted backgrounds, flowing detailed characters that you can’t help but fall in love with, and much more.  My favourite part of the film is when the prince and his horse are arguing, as the horse cannot talk a brilliant use of body language and facial expressions are used to get the point across. This form of story telling always amazes me and I respect the amount of work and planning that would have had gone into the final scene.

1970s

Disney Fantasia 1977

 Fantasia was a compilation of short animations set to varying tracks of classical music. The most famous of which was the Magicians apprentice staring the famous Disney star Mickey mouse. Everyone remembers it for the music when the brooms come alive and march along to the music.  Fantasia is made up of eight sequences set in symphonic concert with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia orchestra; the film was shown in ‘fantasound’ an early stereo system made by Disney. When it first came out it was only showing in fourteen different cinemas because they were the only ones with the right equipment to screen it. It went on to win awards for its brilliance. 

Life drawing

Life drawing lessons have consisted of a series of task set to improve our basic drawing skills. I have found it useful to go over the basic disciplines again after not having life drawing lessons for almost six months. However unlike my usual method of drawing, which is quite sketchy and rough, we have been told to keep the drawings as clear and tidy as we can. This involves using as little lines as you can and not going over the same lines again and again.

one of the first drawings that i did was still sketchy, it was quite hard for me to draw in a new way, i had to try really hard to stop myself falling back into old habits. 

The two pictures above are example of fast, one minute sketches. again we were asked to refrain from using too many lines. this would slow us down and the whole figure wouldn't be captured in the short amount of time that we had per drawing.

Another task which i found quite challenging was to capture the figure without using lines, only the light that fell on the body. For this you really had to look closely where the light was most visible and where it faded out. I really liked how unlike with line drawings, the drawing looks more realistic and there is depth to it, this way of drawing is good for capturing a 3D like appearance.  

12 principles of animation

1. Squash and Stretch - defining the rigidity and mass of an object by distorting its shape during an action. The volume of the object must stay the same when it has been distorted otherwise the object will appear to get larger or smaller. Every object will squash or stretch in some way when in motion, and in animation you have to show the forces working on an object to make it realistic, this does not apply to object that are made of rigid materials such as wood or rock, these items would stay rigid while in motion. Squash and stretch is also used when animating characters, especially their faces. Animators pay attention to hoe the muscles in your body and face move while making different expressions and movements. To make a character look alive and “animated” these movements are exaggerated. For an example of squash and stretch I have used an animation by Adam Phillips, it is completely animated on Flash and follows a creature that is the last of his kind. He is extremely fast and squash and stretched is used to enhance the illusion of speed. Sometimes the character can be so deformed that it hardly looks like its original form anymore. In my second example the character is stretched so much to demonstrate the speed which he travelling.  

2. Timing and Motion  - spacing actions to define the weight and size of objects and the personality of characters. The heavier the object the longer it takes to gain momentum and the lighter the object the faster. The weight of objects can affect the way another object interacts with it, if a lighter object hits a heavier one it will bounce off. The amount of force used on the object is also an important factor that needs to be addressed; if something is thrown the harder it is thrown the further it will travel. When drawing the animation is the smaller the movement between the frames the slower the movement of the character or object that is being animated, but then the bigger the difference in movement the faster the animation will be.

3. Anticipation  - the preparation for an action. This is pretty self-explanatory anticipation is building up the scenario that is about to happen; it prepares the viewer for an action that is going to happen. This could be a character crouching down in preparation to run or them reacting to something that the viewer cannot see yet as it is off screen, like the panic before they are going to be hit by a ball. In the example the character is pulling his arm back in preparation to throw something.

4. Staging - presenting an idea so that it is unmistakably clear. Making sure the viewer is directed to where the action is going to happen. The attention of the audience must be drawn to the most important part of the frame or sequence. There are many ways of achieving this such as the placement of a character in the frame, camera angles and placement of the camera, using shadows and light to emphasize something. In this example the focus is on the main character that is all by himself looking longingly at his reflection. The scene is meant to clearly show the audience that he       is lonely.

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action - the termination of an action and establishing its relationship to the next action. This is used as a way to make the animation more realistic, other parts of the character will continue to move when others have stopped, like the tail on a cat or hair blowing in the breeze. It is the movement of an object that is a reaction to another movement.

6. Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action - The two contrasting approaches to the creation of movement. Straight ahead animation is when the animator just draws the animation frame by frame as it comes, however with pose-to-pose animation, key frames are drawn first then the gaps are filled later.

7. Slow In and Out - the spacing of the in-between frames to achieve subtlety of timing and movement. Every action has to accelerate and slow down when in movement. By expressing this in animation it gives a more realistic feeling to the movement. Like a bouncing ball that speeds up as it is falling but as it goes back up it slows down as gravity takes hold again and pulls it back down.

8. Arcs - the visual path of action for natural movement. When in motion things don’t usually travel in straight lines, like when an object is thrown it will arc upwards and then come back down to the ground. Another example would be the movement of limbs if the movement were drawn in straight line the animation would stiff and jerky, by giving the movement an ark it makes it look more realistic.

9. Exaggeration - Accentuating the essence of an idea via the design and the action. Exaggeration is used a lot in animation as a way to express motion and make it more obvious. The extent of the exaggeration depends on the style of animation, if it is more realistic then it might be very subtle but if it is a very cartoon like and stylized it might go to the other extreme.

10. Secondary Action - the action of an object resulting from another action. 

11. Appeal  - creating a design or an action that the audience enjoys watching. This all comes down to the individual that is watching; everyone has different interests and likes and dislikes.

12. [Solid Drawing] - The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight. The animator has to be aware of the environment that the character is in and how it would react to that situation. This would also include perspective and relation of size to other objects.