Unit 53 2d animation

Unit 53 2d animation

Research

The whole idea of animation spans across many thousands of years, possibly even dating back to to the old caveman drawings where images were used to tell a story it was only untill the 1800's where we began to strive deeper into the world of animation.

1824- The starting date of animation or rather the birth of the idea for fully developing it.

1832- phenakistoscope was invented.

joseph plateue a belgian physicist and his sons introduced the phenakistoscope, uses the persistence of motion to create the motion illusion.




My own impressions of this were at first i thought the general choices of objects that were animated strange and somewhat creepy, this could be to the fact that the images used are out of my time and culture was different back in the time dated plus coming from other countries not native to me.

1834- First invented by william horner of england

initially named the "daedalum" which essentially meant the devils wheel (possibly seen to have magical properties, although it was just an illusion?). only truly started becoming popular around the 1860's where it was later developed by an american, william F lincoln and he named the device the "zoetrope" which means the wheel of life (animation giving the sense of that).


working differently to the phenakistscope by instead having the images placed on the inside of a vertical cyclinder and the slits themselves become the viewing window rather than being a technical modification around the images like with the phenakistoscope.

Later developments- 3d zoetrope

towards the end of the 20 th century such company's like pixar, disney created an adaptation of the zoetrope in the sense that instead of using simple flat images they attempted to use 3d models and apply the same effect as the zoetrope by having the models (of different movement stages) spun on a circular plate, with a flicker or strobe effect to apply a framerate. see below.



1895- Thomas Edison invents the kinetoscope for early motion films

Worked by taking a vast collection of tiny images which showed a gradual movement of positions of objects when in sequence. edison attached these images around a cyclinder (whilst adding the slots between images to give it a frame rate) when spun the images would appear to be in motion, giving the birth of early motion films.




Different from the phenakistoscope in the way that the images used are instead taken of real images rather than a cartoon.

1908- Emile cohl's fantasmagorie

Going from early film animation to early animation in the cartoon or caricature sense (traditionally seen more as animation). Emile cohl's fantasmoragie, you could say that this was essentially the birth into motion cartoon,serving as a bases for inspiration.




1934- Betty Boop Ha, Ha, Ha 

here is a betty boop episode and an example of a development of early animation from emile rohl's fantasmagorie.



at this moment in animation boundaries were really being pushed boundaries essentially meaning the edge of the page. where the world of cartoon was beginning to be bridged over to the real world by having animated frames lead off the main staging ground and actually (seem to) interact with the real world around.
this could possibly be also seen as the early stages for augmented reality.

1970-2000's- Flip books

Flip books work by having several images drawn onto a notepad and proceed to run your thumb across the opposite end of the binding, the transition between pages being flicked through introduced frame rate hence forth giving the illusion of motion and the graphic to animate.




This particular flickbook animation stood out to me because it wasnt based solely around one scene, there arr many different scenes that transiotion to eachother throughout, all with changing perspective and angles. something ive not typically seen from any other flip book, where its usually the simple animated stickman set up.

1990 - wallace and gromitt's grand day out was created

A possible adaptation of the 3d zoe trope, claymation was introduced and widely became more famous around the the birth of the series wallace and gromitt and was thus beginning a new/alternate course in the progression/adaptation of animation.




claymation was a very laborious process much more so than that of hand drawn cel animation, it worked by photographs taken of different clay character models all at different stages of movement and when played in sequence at a very fast rate it would give our eyes an animated illusion of the clay models.
and to get an idea on how laborious it would take 12 changes to a models movement just to achieve a second of animation. and 64,800 changes for a full feature film.


1995 - Dawn of the cgi animation

Following on from claymation, animation began to take more of a prominent turn to into 3d animation and around this time computers were seen more and more as a useful an animation tool, untill the widely famous animated film "toy story" was released by pixar and was seen as the first and most detailed cg animation to date and began a new era for animation. from then on the computer became the only tool animators used to create and drawings only used for concepts.



a classic and a prominent stamp on the timeline of history of animation, and for quite some time put pixar as the animation powerhouse since other companies were lacking in the technology to achieve such a level as toy story.

Development of cgi
however once tech caught up all around, cg animation was everywhere and continually was developed in terms of detail, smoothness, so much so to the point of cg animation reaching a level/quality of realism, a clip from the film "final fantasy 7 advent children" is an example of that.



As you can see cg animation has come along way from the true essential birth of it with toy story, in terms of overall smoothness and detail specifically within the hair an texture in the backgrounds.

Yallery brown animation production

Character development

front dev

Side dev and walk cycle template

storyboard

yallery brown walk cycle

Evaluation

i was set the task of looking through history and researching all the various techniques that have developed over the years and by the end to have created my very own animation of the folk story, yallery brown.

what have i learned?

• the development of animation techniques through the ages to help me understand the basic idea of motion of illusion.
• working with adobe flash ive learned how to integrate sounds into my animation and to sync up correctly with animated actions using audacity.
• understand more of human anatomy when creating a walk cycle for example, in terms of how the legs and arms move and proportion.
• how to develop my base character design into an animation program and to actually animate it using stop frames.
• a more efficient way of layout in terms of storyboarding by having a clear set up of the scenes and boxes for dialogue and actions on set, making it far easier to read than my previous storyboards.

The point of this task?

To improve my general skill at animating and increasing my knowledge with a known animation software.

The advantages and how beneficial beforehand character design, storyboarding and walk cycle templates can effect an overall finished product and the ease of producing because of the benefits of proper planning and layout.

Looking to the future its safe to say any gaming/interactive media company will almost require at least a basic to intermediate skill at animation, and with this experience in hand a more liable person to employ.

The overall success of the task?

Feedback

• "i like how the sound of footsteps is properly synched up to the steps"
• "you can tell alot of detail was put into the character design"
• "maybe of added a background to add to the illusion of the person walking by"
• "your storyboard is really clear to understand and read"

Judging from feedback of other peoples opinions i believe i have done well at:

Audio with animation
recording the actual footstep noise i found it was a relatively short sound meaning no real need to trim the sound in audacity, if i did have a need to trim i think i would risk losing the "realistic" sound to it by some parts being cut off too short.
And plus not having to trim meant overall swiftness and flow to the animation production.

Character design
looking back now, i did put alot of effort into my character design of yallery brown, i looked at the description in depth of the character within the story and broke it down to its fundamentals and worked from there.
Included front profile and even a side profile as i thought a side profile would be a good idea at helping me with the walking cycle template, since i would not have to design on the spot as i created the template, i had something to work with.

Storyboard
having been given the original storyboard structure and template i found it to be too cluttered not making sense on which descriptions of actions went with which scene since there were no clear dividers. so i went online and began researching professional storyboard layouts and worked with a design that i saw fit.

Going from feedback with other peoples opinions my personal own, these are the issues that didnt go so well:

Illusion of motion
when creating my walk cycle i think i focused too much on the animation and sound sync up with yallery brown taking too much of my time on that subject rather than looking at the product overall and having added a background to help give a clear illusion of yallery brown walking past instead of the white empty space which i left it at.

Time management
i believe i did not balance out my timing effectively on each task, instead having more focused time on say character design and development leaving rushed time on the walk cycle itself and even more little time on the whole story animation itself.


How can improve on such weakness/downsides?

• For animating in general in the future i will perform more tests of the animation playthrough during production instead of having one big test at the end of it all making it harder to make changes and risking damage of the overall flow of the animation. by having frequent checks of what the animation is looking at i can easily make changes not risking damage to flow and improving the look of the animation itself in this case the adding of a background with the walk cycle.

• For general better time management of my work i could look to colleagues of mine on how they manage theirs and seek tips by doing so, also perhaps look online. Then possibly look at animating shortcuts to improve the speed of my animation production since i went into it with very basic knowledge and should of asked out more on how i can do various things to speed up time but to possibly improve the aesthetics of the animation aswell too.