Research into Animation

Synchromy No. 4: Escape (Mary Ellen Bute - 1938)

For my piece I want to emphasize colours, lines and geometrical forms. I want to explore the relationship between these and their forms to create an intriguing visual composition.

The following video by Mary Ellen Bute explores this with her use of bold lines and contrasting colours. The piece was made relatively early on and so is quite a statement with it's use of shape and pattern. I like the use of a dark background with a bright colour above it, it helps to draw attention to the foreground and contrast well, this will be something I consider for my own piece. The symbolism in this piece is of the triangle trying to escape, It gives the suggestion of freedom.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YRmu-GcClls&feature=player_embedded#!

Rules of animation; Solid drawing and appeal

http://johnkstuff.blogspot.com/2008/11/solid-drawing-preview.html

Solid drawing

Solid drawing refers to the animator having to think about the 3 dimensional properties of what is being drawn or animated. This is give objects properties such as volume and weight. Skilled animators need to be able to understand different aspects such as weight or light and shadow they must also understand perception as to allow characters to look real in their 3 dimensional space.






Appeal
Appeal is as important to a character as charisma is to an actor. For a character to feel appealing it must feel real and intriguing to it's viewer, this also applies to villains and monsters as being appealing is not always necessarily being sympathetic. To help a character better connect and appeal to it's audience, there are several principles that can be applied; a baby-like or symmetrical face can be used to create a likeable character. Where as a too over complicated face will be hard to read and may lack appeal.

Rules of animation; Timing and exaggeration

Timing

http://www.epichuynh.com/2010/08/am-assignment-6-overlapping-action.html

Timing is the animation principal that determines the number of frames or drawings for any given action, this in tern dictates the speed of the action the more frames there are the slower the action. Timing is important to give the correct physical properties to an animation. Timing is also important in creating a characters mood or emotion as well as their reactions to different things.



Exaggeration


Exaggeration is the technique of adding over natural movements to characters, simply copying natural movements in animations can make them look dull and static. So animators often add exaggerated movements to give more emphasis to the action.

http://www.animationbrain.com/exaggeration-2d-animation-principle.html

Rules of animation; Follow through and overlapping action

Follow through and Overlapping action

Follow through and overlapping action are two closely related animation techniques that help render more realistic movement in animation. Follow through is the technique of making separate objects such as arms for instance will continue to move after the boday has stopped moving. Overlapping action is the method of having different parts fall at different speeds due to the different weights that one wants applied to the objects. This can be seen when a person jumps their arms are lighter than their body so the arms will be dragged behind the body.

http://www.awn.com/interstitial/interstitial.php?referer=http%3A//forums.awn.com/showthread.php%3Ft%3D12412

These two examples show both Follow-through and overlapping action

Rules of animation; Staging, straight ahead action and pose to pose

Staging

Staging in animation refers to the same principle as that found in film and theatre mediums. Its purpose is to direct the angle of the shot and camera, the lighting and position of the characters or objects of importance in order to direct the audience and make it clear to them what is the most important part of any scene or action. As in the scene below from Disney's Lion King, it is easy to see the primary focus of this shot.

http://www.lionking.org/~s-tlk/old/news/tlk06.20.03.htm

Straight ahead action and Pose to Pose

Straight ahead action and pose to pose are two animating techniques. Straight ahead action is the method of drawing out a scene frame by frame from start to finish, whilst the pose to pose technique uses a method of drawing keyframes and filling in the blanks later. Straight ahead action allows for more fluid animations but it is difficult to keep proportions. This makes pose to pose a faster work method. In todays animation a mixture of both is used with the help of computers.

Rules of animation; Slow in slow out, Arcs and secondary action

Slow in Slow out

Slow in slow out is the principle that the actions of an object or the actions of a human body, need time to accelerate and to slow down as well. This has meant that more realistic animations have more drawings at the beggining and the end of an action, this emphasizing the extremes of the action. This can be seen in the following image

http://www.animationbrain.com/stretch-squash-animation-principle.html

Arcs

arcs is the principle that most natural movements follow a more arched path, with more mechanical movements following a more straight paths (this being the exception to the principle). Arcs can be used to determine the speed of an object, if a ball is thrown then the straighter its arc to its target is the faster speed. A slow ball will need to be given more height so in turn will have a more curved arc.


Secondary Action

This is the process in which secondary actions are added to the animation in order to make an animation look more natural. This is applied alot to characters in cartoons where the character may whistle while walking or swing their arms, all in the hope of making a more fluid life like animation.

Rules of animation; Anticipation

Anticipation

This is the rule which refers to the actions one places before the main action. These actions are used to make sure the audience know whats happening as well as not to miss the important main action. There are many examples of this is cartoons, where you will see a character weild a club above the head of another hold it there then strike, as to assure the action is seen by the audience.


http://pacmanlolz.wordpress.com/2011/01/14/anticipation/

 This image also mentions some of the other principles of animation