Alana Bombino Was Here: 2014

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Animation Write-Up #2! By Alana Bombino

After completing the anticipation project, I’ve realized just how much work is put into a couple of seconds of animation. I did my project on a girl combing her hair, and those 48 drawings took hours to draw, and I ended up with a 2 second long clip! Just to try to grasp that, I found this online about Snow White, I’m not sure how much of it to believe but it’s still very amazing: “ 5. The film's production took nearly five years. It took at least 570 crew members (some sources say 750), most of them animators or water-color artists. As many as 2 million sketches and paintings were created, though only about 166,000 of them can be seen in the finished film. “ (http://news.moviefone.com/2013/02/07/snow-white-and-the-seven-dwarfs-trivia/.)

There is a lot of work put into the animation process. The PixarAnimationProcess.pdf lists the steps of the process. They are storyboarding, modeling, animating with software, shading, lighting, and rendering. So far we’ve just touched two-dimensional animation, and I am excited to try out 3D next, although I need to work a lot more on even the first step in the animation process. I haven’t been storyboarding for our assignments really, and I think that if I put more thought into planning, my work would improve. The pixar pdf states “Over 4,000 storyboard drawings are created as the blueprint for the action and dialog of a feature-length Pixar animated film. They are revised many times during the creative development process,” and it just goes to show that I need to plan out a storyboard for my next assignments.
The next assignment to come up is going to be the 3D puppet, which uses the joint tool on Maya. According to page 245 of our textbook, “A joint is the basic animation control. It is essentially a point in space connected by a virtual bone, symbolized by an elongated pyramid.” Basically, a bunch of joint is the skeleton that moves around our animated figure. Joints will make the character movement look a lot smoother and more realistic, as a joint can create a bending elbow or knee effect.

Joints are usually animated using inverse kinematics, which tells the joints where to go. Kinematics is the study of motion. There are two different types of kinematics used in animation: Forward kinematics and inverse kinematics. Forward kinematics is more typically used for arm animation, but it’s more difficult to use forward kinematics when working on leg animations. The textbook on page 250 states, “Forward kinematics refers to a situation in which each joint in the chain inherits the motion of its parent joint.” Also on page 250, inverse kinematics is briefly explained. “Inverse Kinematics causes the joints in a chain to orient themselves based on the position of a goal known as the end effector. “ Inverse kinematics is more useful to use during a walk cycle because it can prevent joints from sliding all over the place. The control for switching back and forth between the two is called Blending.

Another assignment coming up is the blend shape assignment. A blend shape deformer blends different versions of a geometric form. Like the example shown in class, with a base head and 5 other heads that were essentially the base, but with emotional shifts. Page 313 in the textbook says, “ A blend shape deformer uses one or more blend shape targets. These targets are duplicates of the original model that have been modified…”

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Anticipation Animation

Animation Write-Up #1

Up until this point, there has been a lot of ground covered on the animation front. There are many new things that I have learned about the mechanics of animation, the history, and tactics to make a drawing look a bit more realistic. I’m going to briefly talk about the four reading topics I found most important.

Everything movement in nature moves along a curved path. Arcs are a big part of making animation movement look realistic. Every movement by a person or animal or even objects take a curved path. Like the arc.pdf reading says, “…the movements of most living creatures will follow a slightly circular path.” And when we slowed down the cheetah running in class, the arcs were very visible in the movement of the legs and arched back. Arcs are something I learned about that will make my animations better.

Timing is something that I knew was important, but didn’t fully grasp before. Standard timing for animation is 24 fps, but animator’s can work in two’s at 12 fps. And I have found it difficult to take a drawing and try to plan out how many frames an action would take to evenly result with an interval of 24 frames, it is something I am practicing. Timing can add weight and emotion to the content. The reading ELEnt6_Timing.pdf states “We crowd drawings close together to create and define mood and attitude and we space them apart to give emphasis.” This is true because if a drawing is evenly spaced there is no feeling or depth to it.

Squash and Stretch is important to make drawing movement look like it’s in motion. Overdoing squash and stretch too much can also make the animation lose realism, but it’s okay if the artist wanted to cartoon to have that look for comedic purpose. The SqshNdStrch.pdf said it well. Squash and Stretch “…is one of the strongest tools or principles used to create a fluid sense of movement and life in animation.” Every living creature has squash and stretch in movement; it can just be really subtle. Animators didn’t really practice squash and stretch in the beginning of animating, and I’m glad that they developed it. I thought squash and stretch was a good thing to practice in the bouncing ball and bouncing can assignments.

Spacing between drawings and the reaction on the character is important. Quick actions have fewer drawings than long actions. Animation of an arm pointing out is an example in the Halas_Whitaker _01.pdf reading. The arm accelerates in the beginning and decelerates at the end. It takes about 12 frames to complete the action. The first 5 drawings are the anticipation, the actual hand shooting out takes place on drawings 6-9, and the arm following through is the final drawings. Following through at the end of a motion is important too to make the action believable. Another example from the Halas Whitaker reading was a dog’s ears reaction to movement. If the dog shakes his head back and forth, the ears will still react after the head stops moving. All good things that I’ve learned so far.