Animation planning and application

12 principals of animation

2008-04-17T12:37:06+02:00

1. Squash and stretch

2. Anticipation

3. Staging

4. Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose

5. Follow Through and Overlapping Action

6. Slow In and Slow Out

7. Arcs

8. Secondary Action

9. Timing

10. Exaggeration

11. Solid Drawing

12. Appeal

1. SQUASH AND 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. How extreme the use of squash and stretch is, depends on what is required in animating the scene. Usually it's broader in a short style of picture and subtler in a feature. It is used in all forms of character animation from a bouncing ball to the body weight of a person walking. This is the most important element you will be required to master and will be used often.

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. A comic effect can be done by not using anticipation after a series of gags that used anticipation. Almost all real action has major or minor anticipation such as a pitcher's wind-up or a golfers' back swing. Feature animation is often less broad than short animation unless a scene requires it to develop a characters personality.

3. STAGING

A pose or action should clearly communicate to the audience the attitude, mood, reaction or idea of the character as it relates to the story and continuity of the story line. The effective use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in telling the story. There is a limited amount of time in a film, so each sequence, scene and frame of film must relate to the overall story. Do not confuse the audience with too many actions at once. Use one action clearly stated to get the idea across, unless you are animating a scene that is to depict clutter and confusion. 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. Background and animation should work together as a pictorial unit in a scene.

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. You can lose size, volume, and proportions with this method, but it does have spontaneity and freshness. 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. The lead animator will turn charting and keys over to his assistant. An assistant can be better used with this method so that the animator doesn't have to draw every drawing in a scene. An animator can do more scenes this way and concentrate on the planning of the animation. Many scenes use a bit of both methods of animation.

5. FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION

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, coat tails or a dress, floppy ears or a long tail (these follow the path of action). Nothing stops all at once. 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. "DRAG," in animation, for example, would be when Goofy starts to run, but his head, ears, upper body, and clothes do not keep up with his legs. In features, this type of action is done more subtly. Example: When Snow White starts to dance, her dress does not begin to move with her immediately but catches up a few frames later. Long hair and animal tail will also be handled in the same manner. Timing becomes critical to the effectiveness of drag and the overlapping action.

6. SLOW-OUT AND SLOW-IN

As action starts, we have more drawings near the starting pose, one or two in the middle, and more drawings near the next pose. 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. For a gag action, we may omit some slow-out or slow-ins for shock appeal or the surprise element. This will give more snap to the scene.

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. Think of natural movements in the terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm movement, head turns and even eye movements are executed on an arcs.

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. The walk is forceful, aggressive, and forward leaning. The leg action is just short of a stomping walk. The secondary action is a few strong gestures of the arms working with the walk. Also, the possibility of dialogue being delivered at the same time with tilts and turns of the head to accentuate the walk and dialogue, but not so much as to distract from the walk action. All of these actions should work together in support of one another. 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

Expertise in timing comes best with experience and personal experimentation, using the trial and error method in refining technique. The basics are: more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings make the action faster and crisper. A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement. Most animation is done on twos (one drawing photographed on two frames of film) or on ones (one drawing photographed on each frame of film). Twos are used most of the time, and ones are used during camera moves such as trucks, pans and occasionally for subtle and quick dialogue animation. Also, there is timing in the acting of a character to establish mood, emotion, and reaction to another character or to a situation. Studying movement of actors and performers on stage and in films is useful when animating human or animal characters. This frame by frame examination of film footage will aid you in understanding timing for animation. This is a great way to learn from the others.

10. EXAGGERATION

Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. It¹s like a caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Action traced from live action film can be accurate, but stiff and mechanical. In feature animation, a character must move more broadly to look natural. The same is true of facial expressions, but the action should not be as broad as in a short cartoon style. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your film more appeal. Use good taste and common sense to keep from becoming too theatrical and excessively animated

11. SOLID 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. You transform these into color and movement giving the characters the illusion of three-and four-dimensional life. Three dimensional is movement in space. The fourth dimension is movement in time.

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 audience¹s interest. Early cartoons were basically a series of gags strung together on a main theme. Over the years, the artists have learned that to produce a feature there was a need for story continuity, character development and a higher quality of artwork throughout the entire production. Like all forms of story telling, the feature has to appeal to the mind as well as to the eye.

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Dead Friendly

2008-04-17T11:16:39+02:00

The world has been torn apart by a catastrophic virus that has turned 99.99% of the population into zombies. It’s thought that the virus came from outer space, as the outbreak coincided with a meteor of 50-mile radius hitting the west coast of Russia days ago. The zombies have made their way through every city in the world and ravaged almost all possible survivors. Only a handful of human beings remain across the globe…

The first scene will be the prologue cataloguing said events, over 20-30 seconds. We’ll see Russian scientists working away in a base as they then look out of the window and witness a blazing meteor hurtling towards them, crashing down and striking their large military laborotary on the west coast of Russia. Radioactive waves will then emit from the meteor, and we’ll slowly see shots of normal human beings in different cities being struck down by the virus and turned into flesh-eating zombies.

4 months later…

Glasgow, Scotland.

We see a grassy meadow, brought to life by the sun, full of flowers at full bloom. Everything seems well…

We start with a nice warm day, the sun shining and the flowers in the fields of a town swaying with the gentle breeze. Then the camera speeds downwards and zooms into a horde of zombies staggering sluggishly towards a boarded-up house in the middle of the field. In the distance there are buildings ablaze but there are no screams, no sirens… no life.

We then change scene to being inside the house – we see three survivors – two men and one female.

The Survivors:

Lee: Lee is a 27 year-old male. He is average height and quite skinny. He is an escaped criminal from Barlinnie prison. He was inside for murder, but escaped when the zombies raided the prison. He had one friend on the inside, and they were escaping together, but he had to sacrifice his companion to allow himself to get out. This has haunted him ever since. He found his way to this house just days later, and is still unsure of just what has taken over his world. As a child, Lee lived with his mother who often beat him in drunken rages. He suffered this for 17 years before he finally hit back, but he killed her when he only wanted to make her stop. This man has a lot of ghosts and longs to be free of his torturous existence. This makes him rather self destructive

Debra: Debra is a 34 year-old woman. She’s average height and weight. Debra happened upon the house when she was driving out of the city to try to escape the zombie hordes. She’s single, a workaholic, and she hates men. On her way to the abandoned house she picked up a hitchhiker named Arthur. Together they drove all the way from West Kilbride and finally stumbled upon somewhere they thought would be safe…

Arthur: Arthur is a 30 year-old man. He’s average height and average weight. Arthur is an every-day guy. He works 9 til 5, comes home, does some paperwork, goes to bed, works, and repeat. His life is boring, and was incredibly uneventful. The highlight of his life was a tipple of tonic wine at the weekend.

Staff SGT Mike Wrench: Mike is a 32 year-old man. He’s average build, but toned, and average height. Mike was in the paras for 3 years and then he applied to join the SAS and was swiftly accepted. He eased through the selection process and rose through the ranks very quickly. He and his team are the only known survivors in Scotland, and they are on the search for others. They have a safe underground complex and they scout the skies for 3 hours every day, hoping to find other survivors in their Augusta 109 helicopter.

Ryu: Ryu is a Ninja who has been stranded in Scotland after the zombie infestation took over the world. Ryu was visiting Scotland as part of his training. His fighting style is ansatsuken. He has been infected by the virus, but with a certain level of immunity in his blood, he has not been completely zombified – the virus has only increased his level of aggression and he now feels driven to kill everything in sight. Ryu has a goal in life to be reunited with his gay partner ken.

Comments

Rules

2008-04-03T10:25:17+02:00

The rules of squash and stretch will definetely apply as in warner bros cartoons etc.For example a character will pull a hammer the size of his body from nowhere and strike down another character with 1 blow making him completely flat, the hammer will then disappear. also a character like a ninja will be able to stretch his leg across a room to kick someone reminiscent of of a rubber band being stretched

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Software Comparisons

2008-04-03T01:01:03+02:00

Some important software we will be considering are
Audacity: which is a sound editing software which will be used to edit music or sound which will be put into our animatic.

toon boom: toon boom will be the main animation software we will use for our final animatic. This program will be used to draw the keyframes and animate them.

other programs may include

Adobe premier: a video editing software which is good for editing and creating video files and for inserting sounds into those video files

Vision lab: vision lab is a handy tool which could be used to edit some special effects after the animatic has been made.

Other programs: Cool edit pro can be used in the same role as audacity but the user interface and the program in general is a bit more complicated than audacity and thus why it was not selected.

Adobe Flash: adobe flash could be used in the same role as toon boom but toon boom is better for freehand drawing and using onion skinning and is also more simple to use than flash.

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Characters

2008-03-13T16:29:48+01:00

Luiz nazario: Born september 18 1976
Rio de janeiro
Brazil
Occupation: Footballer
Personalityremiscuous party animal, likes too much alcohol for an athlete
Status: Married*

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title-3819811

2008-03-05T12:46:01+01:00

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Images

2008-03-05T12:40:15+01:00

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Potential Story

2008-03-04T19:35:25+01:00

The story is of a certain young ugly brazilian footballer who comes from a poor background and is a talented footballer. He is that talented that he attracts the attention of all the big clubs in europe, who are all offering him money to play for them. The footballer moves to europe and becomes the best player in the world after a short time. He goes to the world cup with the eyes of the world upon him, however he gets a serious injury before the world cup final and it costs his team the game. He struggles with career threatening injuries for the next 4 years but somehow regains fitness for the next world cup which he wins almost singlehandedly. After the world cup he gets a transfer to the biggest club team in the world.

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Story ideas

2008-03-04T19:21:47+01:00

For my final animatic im considering a story with a war theme. The reason behind this is i believe a story based on this will be a good vehicle for an animatic.a global political crisis turning into war will be easy to show in keyframes. The story will be told through the eyes of a reporter documenting the events and showing the political tensions before and during a global war. The influence i got for this story was from computer games like Call of Duty or Battlefield as you follow the actions of a unit of men in a politically motivated war. The story will be that of fiction based on current political stanses and a feasible war. The beginning will show political tensions between global powers, the middle will be all out war as the drama could be described well in keyframes and the end will show good triumphing over evil and the aftermath and pointlessness of war.

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Story plot, red balloon

2008-02-14T16:34:09+01:00

The red balloon

The story is of a young boy in nazi occupied France. The boy is suffering the oppression given to the french people by the Germans and is unhappy, until one day he finds a red balloon which he takes everywhere with him.

The balloon becomes like a friend to him and he even takes it to school with him. During the time Nazi propaganda and rhetoric was being forced upon school students and they didnt like the boy having a balloon as it symbolised freedom.

One day when the boy is walking home from school the Gestapo come and burst his balloon the boy is very upset at losing his ballooon and friend until he looks up at the sky and sees hundreds of balloons coming down to where he is standing and it startles the gestapo, it later turns out that it is not a sky full of balloons but a sky full of british paratroopers from which the gestapo are running

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