Animation II Art 311 Lecture 12 Dr. J.R. Parker Fall 2010

Animation II

Art 311 Lecture 12

Dr. J.R. Parker

Fall 2010

How do we make an animation

1. Get an idea.

2. Build a storyboard.

3. Scrum and edit

4. Build key frames

5. Drawings

6. Build film

7. Add sound


1. Get an idea.

This is not always the hard part.

Short animations are easier; long ones are like films.

We can find 3-4 good ideas in a few minutes.Get a small group – get one to say a word, next

person to expand, next person to suggest something interesting/funning about dogs, …


2. Build a storyboard.

Hard work

A storyboard is a set of drawings, in temporal sequence, showing the progression of the animation (story).


From Ridley Scott’s production company RSA films - a set of different kinds of boards for a TV commercial for the British mobile company Orange.

http://www.blackdogfilms.co.uk/

http://www.orange.co.uk/








3. Scrum and edit

Meet with the team and walk through the storyboard, explaining / acting each frame and the possible script beneath it.

Egoless reception of critique is essential to the project.


Build key frames

These are the drawings from which all other action is derived.


5. DrawingsBetween key frames are ‘tweens’. These

drawings move the action from one key frame to the next, and must be perfectly consistent with all other drawings.

They are often done by a set of artists, and so consistency is hard. We use computers and software these days.


6. Build film

Collect the frames in a sequence and place them next to each other in a video or film.

We can use Microsoft Movie maker (primitive) or Videomach (better)


7. Add sound

This is fun (for me anyway).

Creating and editing the sound track requires skill and timing. Mix music, voice over acting, and effects again using software.

OK, let’s do one.

Idea?

Something very simple for a very short animation. A ball hitting a wall, perhaps?

OK, let’s do one.

So we use a drawing program (or a pencil and a scanner, I suppose) to create an initial storyboard (which in this case is very very simple)

We will show a basketball thrown towards the basket, and splatting against the backboard like a pumpkin.

Images were borrowed from the web (Google image)

OK, let’s do one.

OK, let’s do one.

If this takes 1.5 seconds then it will be 36 frames! 4 keys -> 12 frames per,

The ball will spin …

So we need a series of ball drawings/images that show this rotation.

We can then place them into consecutive frames

The GIF version of this is set to a slow frame rate. We can see some flaws.

AVI is set faster.

How did we make the gif?

By using the Videomach tool.

How did we make the gif?

Video can be saved as a GIF, AVI, and other formats..

What else did I do?

There are 20 rotated ball images. I use a different one each time.I use a marked template of the basic image showing consecutive ball

positions.Using paint, I copied ball images into the template for consecutive

frames.Some ball images needed to have a transparent background, so the

backboard could be seen. I used LView …For transparent backgrounds I used Photoshop to place the ball in the

template, since it understands transparency.I placed a bunch of empty templates at the end of the animation.

Transparent background in GIF

1. Load image into LView.


2. Select RETOUCH and tyhen Background Color.


3. A window will pop up. Click on ‘DROPPER’.

Transparent background in GIF4. The pop will vanish, the cursor will be a dropper. Click in the area of the image that is background.

Transparent background in GIF4. Now select FILE .. SAVE. Do not select SAVE-AS

Transparent background in GIFThe white area around the ball is now transparent. Any

program that recognizes transparency will show the background through this color ANYWHERE IN THE IMAGE. Background color can be any color selected.

This will be useful again later when we talk about Second Life.

We can now, for instance, place our animation over top of a fixed background.



Demos and examples

We can now do some stuff with

LViewPaintVideomach.

Documents

Animation II Art 311 Lecture 12 Dr. J.R. Parker Fall 2010