Research

Research

In the following page we will be look at what animation is and how we can manipulate the different types of animation to create the final design.

The following questions should be answered in the page.

1. What is animation?
2. What type of animation is used in the book 'The Illusion of Life'?
3. The book The Illusion of Life uses 'inbetweens'. Please explain what inbetweens are.
4. Why is the traditional form of animation (using inbetweens), so time consuming?
5. How many frames per second (fps) does a normal video have?
6. What is the most common form of animation?

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Questions

1. Animation is the illusion of movement through the persistance of vision. When it is broken down, it can be seen as many static images that when played persistently may create the illusion of movement, even though the individual pictures are not moving.

2. In the book the illusion of life, the animation that is being used is traditional methods of animation, where the main sequences of the animation is drawn, and then the in-between slides are made, to produce the illusion of life.

3. In the book the illusion of life the man stated that after the main sequences have been made, the inbetweeners are used. The inbetweeners are the slides that go between the main sequences, so that the animation isn't jumpy, and so it looks a lot better that a man walking, where his arms are moving in a jolty action. This created a more believable animation, and it also make a smoother animation.

4. The use of Traditional methods, and the use of Inbetweener slides is a lot more time consuming than using CG animation because with the traditional animation, the artist has to draw all the slides. Using CG animation, the artist has to make a lot less slides, because the compute software will generate the slides for them. This saves a lot of time, because will only having to draw a few slides, there is a lot less work to do in the long run.

5. A normal film will have 24 frames per second, making it very hard for an artist to make a long traditional animation, because if you calculate it, to make a 1 minute animation there will have to be     1, 440 slides made, making it a tedious task to make the animation. Using today's methods, you can skip this, and automatically generate the slides you need, making it easier to make the animation.

6. The most common form of animation is CG animation, which is computer generated animation. This is when you use a computer software to generate the slides, so you do not have to draw every single slide, making it a lot easier to create a long animation. Usually you can move the object to where you want, and then tell the computer how many slides it took for the object to get there, then the computer will create the slides for you.

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Rollermache

Questions

1. What is exaggeration used for?
2. What is anticipation used for?
3. What is squash and stretch used for?

1. Exaggeration is the blowing up of things, so they are out of proportion, making the character come to  life, and seem more individualised and more expressive. This is really important because it lets the audience have no way of not understanding what is happening 

2. Anticipation lets the audience know what is about to occur, because the build up is equally as important as the event. The bigger the event the more important it is to have a build up.

3. Squash and Stretch is the showing of objects and characters in formed poses, which can be effected by the environment.

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The Illusion of Movement

1. How many frames per second (fps) does a film have?
2. Try your best to explain what is meant by the 'Persistence of vision'?
3. Try your best to explain what is meant by the 'Illusion of Movement"?

Answers
1. A film has 24 frames per second

2. The theory of Persistance of Vision means that once an image is seen in the brain, it remains there until it is replaces. This enables us to use film, because we have the image before in our minds, when we see the next one, making the movie flow.

3.  The Illusion of movement is when the brain picks up the transition between two images, and sees it as a blur. It then interoperates this as movement.

Three Types of Animation
Provide an Overview of the following types of animation
1. Traditional (hand drawn, sometimes referred to as cell animation)
2. Stop motion
3. Computer generated imagery (CGI)

Answers

1. Tradition animation requires the author to hand draw every slide, and colour in every slide for the film you want. There you can either take a photograph or scann the images to a computer, where sound can be placed, and the animation can be created. This process take a lot of time because every single slide has to be made, and once a slide is made, it can not be edited cleanly.

2. Stop motion requires the author to take photographs and manipulate objects to create the slides of the film. The objects can be anything, clay people, paper men, or household items. It is required for the slides to be very similar to the before slide, so that the film is clean and not glitchy. 

3. Computer Generated can be used to crete a film or a model of something, and it can be used to create 2D or 3D animations. To create a 2D animation, the author must create many different slides of images, very similar to the creation of a traditional animation. A 3D animation requires an author to create a model of a figure, which can then be manipulated using points of figure, which enables the author to create different poses. Or an actual person can act out the scene and then the action can be put into the software. These processes are the fasted in creating an animation.