Shape tweening is a common feature used in Flash adobe, it allows you to make shapes move in a smooth action. Shape tweens work best with simple shapes e.g. circles that represent balls, so that it will appear that it is bouncing at the bottom of the stage. To achieve this you draw a vector shape at one specific frame in the Timeline, and change that shape or draw another shape at another specific frame. Flash Professional then interpolates the intermediate shapes for the frames in between, creating the animation of one shape morphing into another.
Thursday 16 October 2014
This is a Cut Out Animation this method uses a picture to create a moving image. I took this picture photo of Finley with his arms and legs slightly outwards. I uploaded this picture and used the Magic Eraser tool and rubber tool in Photoshop to remove the background. Using the Polygon tool I then selected his body parts i.e left arm and right arm, left leg etc and saved these as separate PNG films. Saving the images as a PNG meant that the background could be transparent and I could overlap them and add motions to all the separate body parts. Reposition it all so it flows smoothly, often resulting in a 2D marionette effect.
MOTION TWEENING:
Motion tween is a feature available in Adobe Flash that allows you to easily animate the motion of an object. This feature is only successful for simple moving objects like driving generally objects that don't change their structure when moving. Instead of defining the location of the object in every frame, you can create a motion tween, which will automatically move the object from the beginning location to ending location. To do this simply select a layer in the timeline and drag an object onto the stage. Then select the number of frames in the timeline you would to use for the duration of the animation. This is an example of what can be produced through motion tweening. However I would improve this animation by slowing down the pace of the cars to make it a lot smoother smoother.
This stickman walking animation was created in Flash CC, In this software it allowed me to use frame by frame animation where each frame is a still drawing, making multiple frames of slightly different pictures can manipulate the images to look like theres a movement, in this case it was my stickman walking. I used different tools in Flash CC such as the onion skin effect leaving a faint outline of the previous frame so you can figure out what your next picture will be. Making the following picture closely to the previous means you can make the final product a lot smoother.
Sunday 12 October 2014
ANIMATORS RESEARCH
various other artists like the Artic Monkeys.
HANNA-BARBERA PRODUCTIONS
(Founded-1957
Defunct-2001)
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated American television animation for nearly four decades in the mid-to-late 20th century. It was formed in 1957 by animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera (creators of Tom and Jerry). Over the years, Hanna-Barbera produced many successful animated shows, including The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and The Smurfs, earning eight Emmys, a Golden Globe Award, and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, among other merits.
Like most animation studios, Hanna-Barbera had a particular style and appearance which it is well known for. Although they were not the pioneers of the process, Hanna-Barbera were proficient in "limited-animation" style, in order to meet the "time vs. expense" demands of television production, which gave their cartoons a unique look for the time. Their overall style consisted of appealing but simplified character and setting designs, with straight-line sides contrasting the opposing projecting mounds and rounded angles, and a bolder edge line quality, all adding to the overall stylistically flat appearance. Most of their shows involved animals as central characters, with a range of anthropomorphization, from more "realistic" animals capable of understanding human speech and concepts; to talking animals with varied fluency in the English language; to upright walking animals wearing clothes and using props.
WALT DISNEY
(1901–1966)
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in the Hermosa section of Chicago, Illinois. His father was Elias Disney, an Irish-Canadian, and his mother, Flora Call Disney, was German-American. Disney was one of five children, four boys and a girl. He lived most of his childhood in Marceline, Missouri, where he began drawing, painting and selling pictures to neighbors and family friends.
Walt Disney was an American motion-picture and television producer and showman, famous as a pioneer of cartoon films and as the creator of Disneyland. Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was born on December 5, 1901, in Hermosa, Illinois. He and his brother Roy co-founded Walt Disney Productions, which became one of the best-known motion-picture production companies in the world. Disney was an innovative animator and created the cartoon character Mickey Mouse. He won 22 Academy Awards during his lifetime, and was the founder of theme parks Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
Walt Disney holds the record for both the most Academy Award nominations (59) and the number of Oscars awarded (22). He also earned four honorary Oscars. His last competitive Academy Award was posthumous.
Walt Disney was a chain smoker his entire adult life, although he made sure he was not seen smoking around children. On November 2, during pre-operative X-rays, doctors across the street from the Disney Studio, discovered a tumor in his left lung.Five days later a biopsy showed the tumor to be malignant and to have spread throughout the entire left lung. After removing the lung on November 11, the surgeons informed Disney that his life expectancy was six months to two years. Ten days after his 65th birthday, Disney died of acute circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer.
YELLOW SUBMARINE
(Release date U.K - 17th July 1968,
Release date U.S.A - 13th November 1968)
The film was directed by animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate. Initial press reports stated that the Beatles themselves would provide their own character voices, however, aside from composing and performing the songs, the real Beatles participated only in the closing scene of the film, while their cartoon counterparts were voiced by other actors. The Beatles' animated personas were based on their appearance in the promotional film for the song "Strawberry Fields Forever", with the exception of Paul being without his moustache.
The yellow submarine animation is a good example of rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is the transfer of an image from live action film into another film sequence using a rotoscope.
The animation won a lot of awards and nominations for grammy awards. The animation influences The Simpsons, South Park, Toy Story and Shrek as they contain many references to the film.
Saturday 4 October 2014
12 PRINCIPLES OF ANIMATION
The 12 principles of animation where a list created by workers at Disney Studios, These principles came as a result of reflection about their practice and through Disney's desire to devise a way of animating that seemed more 'real' in terms of how things moved.
They included of;
1. Squash & Stretch
This action gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as it moves. Also squash and stretch is useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions.
2. Anticipation
This movement prepares the audience for a major action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation
3. Staging
Staging directs the audience's attention to the story or idea being told. Care must be taken in background design so it isn't obscuring the animation or competing with it due to excess detail behind the animation.
4. Straight ahead and pose to pose animation
Straight ahead animation starts at the first drawing and works drawing to drawing to the end of a scene. Fast, wild action scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned out and charted with key drawings done at intervals throughout the scene. Size, volumes, and proportions are controlled better this way, as is the action.
5. Follow through and over lap animation
Nothing stops all at once. When the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing etc.
This is follow through. Overlapping action is when the character changes direction while his clothes or hair continues forward. The character is going in a new direction, to be followed, a number of frames later, by his clothes in the new direction.
6. Slow out and slow in
Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more life-like.
7. Arcs
All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow.
8. Secondary action
This action adds to and enriches the main action and adds more dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the main action. Example: A character is angrily walking toward another character.Think of the walk as the primary action and arm swings, head bounce and all other actions of the body as secondary or supporting action.
9. Timing
A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement.
There is timing in the acting of a character to establish mood, emotion, and reaction to another character or to a situation.
10. Exaggeration
Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. Its like a caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your film more appeal.
11. Slow drawing
The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to animation as it does to academic drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life.
12. Appeal
A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will capture and involve the audience's interest.
SOURCE
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_principles.html
They included of;
1. Squash & Stretch
This action gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as it moves. Also squash and stretch is useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions.
2. Anticipation
This movement prepares the audience for a major action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation
3. Staging
Staging directs the audience's attention to the story or idea being told. Care must be taken in background design so it isn't obscuring the animation or competing with it due to excess detail behind the animation.
4. Straight ahead and pose to pose animation
Straight ahead animation starts at the first drawing and works drawing to drawing to the end of a scene. Fast, wild action scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned out and charted with key drawings done at intervals throughout the scene. Size, volumes, and proportions are controlled better this way, as is the action.
5. Follow through and over lap animation
Nothing stops all at once. When the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing etc.
This is follow through. Overlapping action is when the character changes direction while his clothes or hair continues forward. The character is going in a new direction, to be followed, a number of frames later, by his clothes in the new direction.
6. Slow out and slow in
Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more life-like.
7. Arcs
All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow.
8. Secondary action
This action adds to and enriches the main action and adds more dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the main action. Example: A character is angrily walking toward another character.Think of the walk as the primary action and arm swings, head bounce and all other actions of the body as secondary or supporting action.
9. Timing
A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement.
There is timing in the acting of a character to establish mood, emotion, and reaction to another character or to a situation.
10. Exaggeration
Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. Its like a caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your film more appeal.
11. Slow drawing
The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to animation as it does to academic drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life.
12. Appeal
A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will capture and involve the audience's interest.
SOURCE
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_principles.html
THAUMATROPE AND PERSISTENCE OF VISION
The invention of the thaumatrope, whose name means "wonder turner," has often been credited to the astronomer Sir John Herschel. However, it was a well-known London physicist, Dr. John A. Paris, who made this toy popular. Thaumatropes were the first of many optical toys, simple devices that continued to provide animated entertainment until the development of modern cinema.
A Thaumatrope is easily made using;
-2 rubber bands
- piece of card
- pen
- Scissors
An image is drawn on each side of the disc, but in a way that when it spins it seems superimposed into each other. To spin the disc, one string is held in a hand, and the disc is rotated to wind the string. Then, both strings are held, and the disc is allowed to rotate. This motion causes the disc to rotate, first in one direction and then in the opposite. The faster the disc rotates, the greater the clarity of the illusion. For example:
Although the thaumatrope does not produce animated scenes, it relies on the same persistence of vision principle that other optical toys use to create illusions of motion. Persistence of vision is the eye's ability to retain an image for roughly 1/20 of a second after the object is gone. In this case, the eye continues to see the two images on either side of the thaumatrope shortly after each has disappeared. As the thaumatrope spins, the series of quick flashes is interpreted as one continuous image.
SOURCE:
PIONEERS AND DEVELOPERS OF ANIMATION
(14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883)
Joseph Plateau was born in Brussels, At the age of fourteen he lost his father and mother, he spent a lot of his time with his uncle instead. He studied at the University of Liège, where he graduated as a doctor of physical and mathematical sciences, He was a very cleaver and achieved high grades at his studies.
Plateau was best known for being the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistoscope.
(example of phenakistope)
The phenakistoscope (also spelled phenakistiscope or phenakitiscope) was an early animation device that used a spinning disk of sequential images and the persistence of vision principle to create an illusion of motion.
It used a spinning disc attached to a handle. Around the disc's center were a series of drawings showing phases of the animation. The user would spin the disc and the scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture. This invention was the beginning of the early animations and very influential.
William George Horner
(1786 – 22 September 1837)
The eldest son and born in Bristol, He was educated at Kingswood School. At the age of sixteen became an assistant master there. In four years he rose to be headmaster (1806), but left in 1809, setting up his own school, The Classical Seminary, Bath, which he kept until he died there 22 September 1837.
A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid motion of pictures. It is a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder is a band which has either individual frames from a video/film or images from a set of sequenced drawings or photographs. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits at the pictures on the opposite side of the cylinder’s interior. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together so that the user sees a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, the equivalent of a motion picture. Here is an example of how pixar animations uses it today: http://youtu.be/3-rPn0a56WE
Charles-Émile Reynaud
(8 December 1844 – 9 January 1918)
Reynaud was a French inventor, responsible for the first projected animated cartoons. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888, and on 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris.
The praxinoscope was an animation device, The Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.
Théâtre Optique was a moving picture presented in 1892. It was the first presentation of projected moving images to an audience. Predating Auguste and Louis Lumière's first public performance by three years.
Eadweard James Muybridge
(9 April 1830 – 8 May 1904)
Eadweard James was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion, and early work in motion-picture projection. Muybridge was born in Kingston upon Thames and he emigrated to the United States as a young man and became a bookseller. He returned to England in 1861 and took up professional photography.
Today, Muybridge is known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion in 1877 and 1878, which used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-motion photographs, and his zoopraxiscope, a device for projecting motion pictures that pre-dated the flexible perforated film strip used in cinematography.
The zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures, The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes. A second series of discs, made in 1892–94, used outline drawings printed onto the discs photographically, then colored by hand. Some of the animated images are very complex, featuring multiple combinations of sequences of animal and human movement
Thomas Alva Edison
(February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)
(February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931)
Edison was born in Milan, Ohio, and grew up in Port Huron, Michigan. He was the seventh and last child was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.
The phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone or a record player, the first device for recording and replaying sound. The two names were originally those used by rival manufacturers. While other inventors had produced devices that could record sounds, Edison's phonograph was the first to be able to reproduce the recorded sound.
The greatest invention Edison created was the motion picture camera, which is a type of photographic camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on strips of film. Movie cameras are used and produced today, especially for the production of full-feature movies, this idea instantly traveled worldwide and improved to the the modern cameras today.
The Lumière Brothers
Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas (19 October 1862 - 10 April 1954) and Louis Jean (5 October 1864 – 6 June 1948)
The Lumière brothers are credited to be first filmmakers in history. They patented the cinematograph, which contrary to Edison's "peepshow"- one viewer a time, the former allowed viewing by multiple parties at once, like current cinema. Their first film, Sortie de l'usine Lumière de Lyon, shot in 1894, is considered the first real motion picture in history. Curiously, their surname, "Lumière", is French for "light".
Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895.
SOURCES:
wikipedia
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