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.

Types of animation

Computer generated imagery (CGI) is a fairly new development in the history of animation. One of the first computer generated films I remember was Toy story that was released November 22^nd 1995. Ever since the art of 3D animation has grown considerably and now a lot of blockbuster films use it for dramatic action shots in movies or to create realistic looking objects or people. It I used to replace actors or stunt men and women when the stunt would be too dangerous or impossible to film.

The amount of detail they manage to get in the animation these days is spectacular, such as fur effects and skin textures etc. All of these making the whole film much more believable and appealing to watch.

A recent example of a 3D animated film that has specifically impressed me was Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole. The animation in this film was fantastic every individual feather on the birds was considered and the visual affects and backgrounds were spellbinding. One of my favorite scenes was when they are flying through a storm; they use slow motion in this scene to show off the animation. You can see every droplet of water running off the owl’s feathers while the sky light up with flashes of lightning.

2D animation

2D animation is typically what we describe as drawn animation; this technique however can involve a variety of different methods and media. Some of which include: drawing on paper with a pencil and other things including ink and paint, things such as oil on glass can be used to make a moving image.

Cell animation is when the drawing is transferred to acetate with ink; then the colour is added after the line ink is dry. The picture is flipped over so the line art is on the front; the artist has the task of carefully painting the cell. It took many hours sometimes days to complete one cell depending on the detail of the animation, it was a very long, time consuming process but I think that some of the best animation was done in this way. Large groups of artist would be hired to paint the cells so that more would be done in the same amount of time. This is how early hand drawn animation were given colour, these days it has been over taken by digital colouring which is cheaper and quicker than hand painting every frame, programs that are generally used are programs like Animo. Companies hire a lot fewer people than cell animation as computers cut the time it takes to complete one frame drastically quicker.

Stop motion

When on the topic of stop motion animation the first thing that jumps into your head is plasticine, like Wallace and Gromit, though this is stop motion it is also referred to as claymation because of the media used to create it. In fact stop motion can be done using anything, as long as the basic structure of what you are animating can still be moved.

Stop motion is quite simple to understand but is not easy to do. Every time the character is moved the tiniest amount a still shot must be taken with the camera. This process takes a very long time and it takes many hours just to shoot a few seconds on film. One downfall with this type of animation is that you cant go back and alter things, if you have mess up one shot in a sequence the whole thing has to be shot again.

Animators often use frames or skeletons to keep models in shape and make them easier to move. Depending on what material you are using, studio lights can cause a problem. Take plasticine for an example, when the lights get hot the plasticine will also heat up making it go really soft, this can deform the model. That is where the skeletons come in, they also use them to stabilise models that could be quite hard to balance, this can depend on what you are using to animate.