ANIMATION FUNDAMENTAL

May 04, 2020

ANIMATION FUNDAMENTAL - EXERCISES

14/04/20 - _/_/20 (Week 1 - Week _)
Arletta Leviani (0337751)
Animation Fundamental
Exercises

INSTRUCTION

LECTURE NOTES

Lecture 1: Introduction
14/04/20 (Week 1)

Today we are introduce to our lecturer, which is Mr Faizal. He first introduce himself through a video and he start our first week with making 6 character with different shapes. He want to know our skills using digital art, he want us to have confident strokes when drawing. He ask us to give him 10 of our work to see our skills. He gives us a video as instructions and told us to watch the 12 animation principles.

This is all my notes:

Squash and stretch
To emphasize mass, speed, momentum, and weight
Volume of object will still be the same even when it is stretch
The more squash and stretch to an object said that those object are softer

Anticipation
When an object or character is preparing to do an action to give the audience a clue of that future action.
Ex: a character squatting before jumping, taking things from pockets, using eye direction to give clues of what is going to appear.
Use so audience won’t miss out an important action
Use to make sure audience don’t have to watch is twice to notice something

Staging
Covers camera angle, timing, acting, position, setting.
To manipulate where and what is the audience watching at that moment.

Camera angle Wide shot or far away shot is good when giving big action, make sure the character is not at the side of the screen, instead make sure it is in the center of the screen or in ⅓ of the screen.
When the character is facing somewhere, the side needs to have more empty space except if something is approaching from behind.
Close up is good for expression

When having an action on the screen, make sure nothing is competing with the main action.
An action should finish first before continuing to the next action.
When something about to happen make sure to stop for a second to make the audience process what happens.
When there’s a name or writing, make sure to stop to give time for the audience to read, at least 3 times.
To convey ideas of emotion, accelerate to make sure the audience catches the emotion. When having a character poor, accelerate the setting to give a better understanding

Straight ahead and pose to pose
Straight ahead is when animating while drawing frame by frame
Good when animating unpredictable action like flames, clouds, explosions.

Pose to pose is when animating an action and draw the start, middle and end first then go back to fill in the gaps
Good for actions, good to find errors in an action, good for consistency and prediction of the final outcome

Follow through and overlapping action
When an object is still moving after a character stops moving. When the main body moves, the tip appendage is the last to catch up.
A more overlapping use, the more delicate or soft the object is.
Ex: cape, hat.

Slow in and slow out
When an animation starts slow then going fast and ends slowly.
Make sure to use wisely based on the action.

Arch
Having a circle as an action gives a character or animation more life.
This circle doesn’t have to be a big action, it can also be a small action like a follow through after landing/jumping.
Having arch helps with volumes and helps making an action believable and doesn’t look mechanical.

Secondary action
Gesture to support the main character action
Ex: hand swinging, expressions
But don’t let the secondary action cover your primary action. The objective of secondary action is to complement and exaggerate the primary action, not to compete against it.

Timing
The fast or slow movement of an object is based on how many frames to complete those actions. A lot of frames mean a slower movement and less frames make object moves faster.
Timing can define what a character movement is, with more frames the character moves slower and with less frames the character moves slower even when they have the same movement.

A lot of animation is drawn by 2 frames each, to give livelihood, slow action looks smoother.
Animation is drawn by 1 frame each is good to make a very fast action that needs to be understood more.

Exaggeration
Exaggeration gives movement more realistic to the eye of the audience. Even when some frames don't make sense physically.
Exaggeration is needed when making fast movements so the audience can catch the expression or movement, this can be achieved in extreme exaggeration or exaggeration can be longer.

Solid drawing
To make a drawing have volume, weight, and balance. This can be achieved by sketching using blocks, ball instead of square and circle.
When making clean lines, make overlaps on their clothes or hands.
When making movement, make sure not to make symmetry.

Appeal
To make a character interesting to look at, it doesn’t mean it should have a good looking face but something that would be convincing and have dynamic design.
Use different shapes to make the character, combine different shapes to make a new design.
Use proportion of things you found interesting and make sure the design emphasize on that.
Make it simple, because it is going to be animated and drawn often, a lot of details make it harder and longer to animate.

Lecture 2: Animation History
21/04/20 (Week 2)

Today we start by given a video to watch. We had problem this week getting on live session so Mr Faizal recorded his session. He teach us how to use adobe animate/flash, he uses flash but he said that either is fine. He start with explanation of tools, he said that we can use line tool if needed, but he suggested to use the brush, since we have more control.

Lecture 3: Animation Fundamental 1
28/04/20 (Week 3)

This week we continue our lesson of Adobe flash/animate, he told us about key frames used. We given video of how to make a turnaround, after we digitize and color our work, we are told to make a gif from if after.

Lecture : Animation Fundamental 2
05/05/20 (Week 4)

EXERCISE

14/04/20 (Week 1)

This week we are told to make 6 different design from different shapes. This is my design, i used paint tool SAI to make this since it is the most familiar app.