Unit 34 2D Animation: 2014

Wednesday 8 October 2014

Dancing animation

Dancing Animation

To create this animation, I first took a video of a girl doing a dance, converted this video to a flv. for web video on a website called zamzar.com and then uploaded the video to Adobe Flash CC. I dragged this video on to the screen and the videos frames were shown along the bottom. I added a new layer and inserted a new frame. On this new frame I added a key fame to the same size as the video. I then used the brush tool and traced over the first frame and then skipped a rame and pressed the F6 key to create a new frame. This allowed me to save half of my time as i only had to draw over half the frames, and the animation still looked smooth as i only skipped every other frame. After i drew over all the frames i deleted the initial video and exported the animation as a video.

Wednesday 1 October 2014

Bouncing Ball Animation

I created this animation on Adobe Flash CC. To create these bouncing balls i first drew the ball and coloured it with a gradient to make it look more 3D. After this i inserted a shape tween and dragged this to frame 20 for the smaller ball and 30 for the larger ball to show the difference in weight and then added a new keyframe. In this new key frame i first made the balls shrink and then I dragged the ball again to off the screen where i wanted it to be. This meant that the animation would show the balls bouncing down to the ground and then fly of the screen after.

Matt Groening

http://www.slideshare.net/PULLEN11/people-of-animation-matt-groening-presentation

Thursday 25 September 2014

Famous Animators

The Gorillaz

The Gorillaz were formed in 1998, by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. Jamie Hewlett was the original animator. Jamie studied at North Brook college. By 1992 Hewlett had become a major creator in the comic industry. At the beginning the Gorillaz started as a 2-D band. However as technology advanced they were able to animate their characters in 3-D. Gorillaz are the most well known animated band and have been put in the Guinness book of world records as the most successful virtual band. An example of “secondary action” where a ghosted image repeats the actions of the main body. This is also an example if slow in and slow out. This scene exaggerates the time he is in the air compared to the time he is on the ground while he s running. ( character slows down in mid-air and speeds up when stepping on the ground. Reviews about the Gorillaz are "It's always exciting to see a new Gorillaz video" and "Always intriguing to watch a Gorillaz song".

Hanna Barbera

Hanna – Barbera Productions was founded in 1957 by William Hannah and Joseph Barbera. William Hanna was born in New Mexico and Joseph Barbera was born in New York. The two first paired whilst working at the Metro Goldwyn Mayer cartoon centre in 1939. Their first project was called ‘Puss Gets the Boot’ in 1940. Their first major success was the Huckleberry Hound show in 1958. The company used many limited animation techniques such as ‘ring around the collar.’ This allowed them to produce cartoons on a low-budget, quickly enough to meet the television schedule. Ring around the collar is a low budget animation technique which shows the character wearing a simple item of clothing around their neck such as a tie or scarf. They were influenced by older animations – such as those by Walt Disney. E.G, Dumbo, Snow White, Pinocchio.

Walt Disney

Walter Elias “Walt” Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American cartoonist, filmmaker, voice actor and many more. He is a ‘cultural icon’. He influenced many and contributed to entertainment during the 20th century. Walt Disney was influenced by artist and educator, Louis Grell, as he was taught by him at The Chicago Academy of Fine Art. He also met a cartoonist named Ubbe lwerks, who also inspired him. Walt Disney’s animations have similar styles. The drawings and sketches are similar to each other. For example, the facial expressions have a lot of detail and the body structure of all the characters is realistic. Some techniques that Walk Disney used are as follows:

The dreamer: Spins fantasies, wishes, outrageous hunches, bold and absurd ideas without limits or judgment.
Realist: Imagineers the dreamer’s ideas into something realistic and feasible. Working out ideas into meaningful orders.
The critic: reviews all the ideas and punch holes in them by playing the devil’s advocate. If things make sense and how it looks to a customer.
The purpose of Walt Disney’s animation was too entertain audiences. The main audience was young people.Most animations are used for positive purposes. All of Walt Disney’s stories had morals and that is why these animations would be aimed at younger audiences.

some reviews:
The Lion King- Rotten Tomatoes – “Emotionally stirring, richly drawn, and beautifully animated, The Lion King stands tall within Disney's pantheon of classic family films.”
Beauty and the Beast – Roger Ebert - “Beauty and the Beast reaches back to an older and healthier Hollywood tradition in which the best writers, musicians and filmmakers are gathered for a project on the assumption that a family audience deserves great entertainment.”

The 12 Principles of Animation were introduced by Disney animators, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in 1981. They used the basic laws of physics and created them.

Yellow Submarine

The Yellow Submarine’s animation was directed by Bob Balser and Jack Stokes.
Jack Stokes, born on the 2nd of April 1920, was an English animator and animation director.

He trained at the South end College of Art. By the early 60s he had his own studio, called Stokes Cartoons where he produced work for cinema and television. The most famous example of Jack Stokes work was the animated film, The Yellow Submarine. In this animation they used Rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is when animators draw over footage frame by frame, it is usually used in live action and animated films. Live action films were taken and projected onto a frosted glass panel, which animators would draw over to add their own style of drawing and accentuate movements and expressions. The Beatles created the animation in attempt to finish a contract with United Artists, in which they had to create three separate films. The band was uninterested in creating more films, especially after the lack of appeal to their TV special, Magical Mystery Tour. The animation influences The Simpsons, South Park, Toy Story and Shrek as they contain many references to the film. For example: Lisa's dentist dream sequence turns into a missing scene from the Yellow Submarine film. "Look, it's Lisa in the sky", "No diamonds though."

Car Race Animation

In this animation i first inserted a picture of an already saved image of a car. I dragged this image from the side of the screen in to the frame and drew over it using the brush tool. I then selected the drawing and converted it into a symbol so when i moved it it would all move together, rather than the individual brush strokes. After I finished this I deleted the initial image of a car and then duplicated the image of the car and placed it into a different layer so that i could make them move at different speeds, and placed it above the first car. I then added a motion tween, where i dragged the image of the car across to where i wanted it to end up and decided how long i wanted it to take to get there. I did this again for the second car, and chose to give it more time to move across the screen, making it seem like the first car was faster than the second car. Then on another layer i added a background for the cars so they looked like they were on a road rather than just floating in mid air. I did achieve persistence of vision in this because the motion tween allowed the cars to move smoothly through the screen. The motion tween is not always the right thing to use though, because it makes the object move smoothly whereas a human for example would not move smoothly and would move there arms and legs around more.

Wednesday 24 September 2014

stickman walking

To create this stick man walking along the screen, I first opened Flash and drew out the initial figure. I then pressed the 'F6' key to create a new frame and pressed the onion skin button. This button shows the previous frame, but more faded, this meant I was able to draw over the previous figure but just slightly across, so that the figure started moving, without having to try and remember exactly where the stick man was in the previous frame. I kept doing this until the figure had walked across the entire screen, moving each of the different parts of the stick man each time to ensure it looked like the stick man was walking across the screen, rather than just floating across. To stop the stick figure from moving across the screen too quickly, I added a blank keyframe after every frame, which is just an empty frame, meaning that the movement would be slower. In another layer, I drew out a background for the scene. I created it in another layer so I didn't have to draw it out for every single frame. This type of animation is called frame by frame animation and is where you draw each frame separately. This allows you to have full control over what happens, but it does mean it takes a lot of time to create even a short length animation. In this animation I think I did achieve persistence of vision at some points in this animation. The parts that I didn't were because I drew the frames too far apart so the transition wasn't smooth enough and it looked like the stick man was jolting across. In this animation i did not use the twelve principles of animation, but they could be used to make the animation better by subtly helping the viewers understand all aspects of the animation, like by using squash and stretch to indicate how much the stick man weighed.

Monday 15 September 2014

Pioneers of Animation Timeline

1824: Peter Roget presented his paper on the persistence of vision.

1831: Joseph Plateau created the phenakistoscope.

1872: Eadweard Muybridge started his work on animals in motion.

1889: Thomas Edison created the kinetoscope.

1896: Thoma Armat designed the vitascope - to project Thomas Edison's films.

1906: J. Stuart Blackton created the first animated film.

1910: Emile Cohl made the first cut out animation called En Route.

1914: Winsor McCay created a cartoon consisting of 10,000 drawings.

1926: In Argentina, the first feature-length film is created called "El Apostol".

1923: Walt and Roy Disney created Disney brothers Cartoon Studio.

1927: Warner Brothers introduced combined sound and images in "The Jazz Singer".

1934: Urb Irwek created the multi-plane camera - used to give a three dimensional look.

1945: Harry Smith produces an animation by drawing directly on to the film.

1961: John Whitney created the film title sequence using differential gear mechanisms.

1987: John Lasseter at Pixar published a paper on the traditional animation principles.

1988: Willow used morphing in live action film.

1993: Jurassic Park used CG to create the realising living creatures.

1995: Toy Story was the first full-length 3D feature film.

Wednesday 10 September 2014

persistence of vision and The twelve principles of animation

Persistence Of Vision

Persistence of vision is the phenomenon where the eye sees an 'afterimage' for about one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina after the image has been seen. This helps create the illusion of motion, which is important in animation because it helps the sequence seem to flow. It helps the sequence flow because the eye doesn't notice the individual movements in each frame because the persistence of vision fills in the gaps.

The Twelve Principles Of Animation

1. Squash And Stretch

Squash and stretch gives the illusion of weight and volume whilst a character is moving. It also makes a characters facial expressions more dramatic and animated. Animators often use this technique on anything from a bouncing ball to the body of a character walking.

2. Anticipation

Anticipation is where a backwards motion occurs before the forwards action takes place. It can be used to express a characters personality. An example of anticipation could be when a character is about to run, jump, kick a ball or change expression. When about to kick a ball the character will bend their leg backwards before kicking the ball forward.

3. Staging

Staging is about the position of the camera and the variety of different shots you can take. Staging helps the audience get a feel for whats going on, and helps set the scene. An action or pose would be used to connect the audience to the characters and is used to clearly communicate the mood, attitude or reaction of the character. Staging is used to direct the audiences focus on to the story.

4. Straight Ahead And Pose To Pose Animation

This technique is where the animator will draw each frame from the first to the last of the scene, where they are able to plan out each individual pose. This technique is used to produce fast, wild action scenes. It is not used that often because there is more of a chance you can lose size, volume and proportion.

5. Follow Through And Overlapping Action

Follow through is where the different parts of a character stop at different times. For example a characters coat, hair, ears or any other clothing will stop moving after the main body does. Overlapping is when a characters hair or clothes continue to move in one direction for a few frames after the main body of a character changes direction. An example of this when snow white starts to dance and her dress takes a few frames to move in the same direction of her body.

6. Slow-out And Slow-in

This technique is where an action will have more frames drawn at the beginning and end of a pose and fewer in the middle. This is used to make a characters action more realistic and it is used to make a movement seem faster. It is also used to soften the action which also makes it more life like.

7. Arcs

Arcs are used to give animation a more nature action and better flow. all natural movements like arms swinging, heads turning and eyes moving are all executed on arcs.

8. Secondary Action

Secondary action is when another action is added to the initial action to enrich and emphasise this first action. For example if a character is walking, a secondary action may be the character talking or swinging their arms. All these actions are used to support each other.

9. Timing

Using a range of timings is important is to make the action more realistic and make the show more interesting. The more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action and the fewer drawing make the action speed up.

10. Exaggeration

Exaggeration is used to make the animation seem more appealing to the audience. In animation, the characters must move more broadly to look natural. Exaggeration is used in the walking, head turns and eye movements.

11. Solid Drawings

Solid drawing involves taking into consideration volume and weight. Solid drawings are created using pencil sketches and drawings and colour and movement is added on top afterwards on a computer. The purpose of the colour and movement is to give the illusion of three diminutional movement in space.

12. Appeal

All characters in animation need appeal whether they are heroic, villainous or cute. Appeal includes clear drawings and personality development, which is used to capture and involve the audiences interest. Characters need to appeal to they mind as well as the eye.

Initial Assignment

Media Production - Initial Assignment

Joseph Plateau - 1831

Joseph Plateau was the first person who was able to show the illusion of a moving image. He created the phenakistoscope ("spindle viewer"). To create the phenakistoscope, Plateau mounted two disks on the same axis, the first disk had multiple slots around the edges and the second disk had drawings around it of a motion. This means that when you look through the slots in a mirror while spinning the phenakistoscope the pictures appear to be moving. Joseph Plateau with considered influential because his work was used and developed to this day.

William Horner - 1834

William Horner was a British mathematician who in 1834 invented the daedaleum, also known as the zoetrope. The zoetrope is a devise used to create an illusion of action. The zoetrope is much like the phenakistoscope, however it has been developed so the animation is easier to see because of the larger slits. William Horner is considered influential because his work was used to inspire animation today. Both Pixar and Studio Ghibli have used zoetropes in their animation.

Eadward Muybridge - 1872

Eadward Muybridge was an English photographer. He developed stop motion which involves taking multiple photographs on an image that slightly changes each time. After all the photos are taken when you look at the sequence in quick succession the image appears to be moving. Eadward Muybridge was considered influential because his work was the first in the motion picture industry.

Thomas Edison - 1889

Thomas Edison was an American who invented the light bulb and in 1890 started developing the motion picture camera. In 1904 Edison created the first silent film, and went on to attempt to add audio to the silent moving images. Thomas Edison was considered one of the most influential figures of the millennium. This is because people believe that Edison was the most responsible for creating the modern world we live in today.

Emile Reynaud - 1892

Emily Reynaud was a French inventor who in 1892 created the first animated cartoon which consisted of 500 individually painted images. Emile Reynaud created the Praxinoscope which was the successor to the zoescope. The Praxinoscope uses a strip of pictures on the inside of a spinning cylinder. The Praxinoscope differs from the zoetrope by having an inner circle of mirrors rather than slits to look through. This is an improvement because it stops the image from looking distorted. Emile Reynaud’s animation techniques are considered influential because he helped move animation forward and started using depth of field.

Lumière brothers - 1895

The Lumière brothers are generally considered the inventors of cinema. The brothers invented the cinematograph which was used to allow multiple people to view a film at once. To create their films, the Lumière brothers used a single camera to both take the photos and projecting them at 16 frames per second. The Lumière brothers work influenced all other film makers and helped create the films we watch today.

George Pal - 1942
George pal was born in 1908 in Hungary and was an animator and a film producer. He became an American citizen after leaving Europe to become an animator. George Pal is remembered most for producing several science fiction and fantasy films.

Thaumatrope

The Thaumatrope was a disk with a picture on each side that has two pieces of string attached to it. When you spin the string quickly the disk flips round and the two pictures appear to blend into one. The Thaumatrope was used as a toy in the 19^th century.

The Thaumatrope works because of persistence of vision. This is where an image you see will persist in your eyes retina for one twenty-fifth of a second; therefor meaning you are able to see the two images together as one.

To create my Thaumatrope, I first cut out a circular piece of cardboard and stuck two pieces of plain white paper on to it. I drew a picture of the sun on one side and a face on the other. After this I put holes through each side of the cardboard and then attached the elastic bands to either side.