Class 24 - Tuesday Nov 28

Schedule:

  • Reading Discussion
  • Project Finalizing and Submission
  • Critique and Discussion: Project 3
  • Principles of Animation:
    • Timing
    • Exaggeration
  • Assignments Catch-Up Work Time

Assignments:

Announcements:

Time Wasters:

Reading Discussion & Presentation

We will start with an introduction to our Discussion Forum. Our assignment is from the text "The Language of New Media" by Lev Manovich.

Project 3 Submission, Critique and Discussion

There will be approximately 30 minutes set aside at the beginning of class to finalize your project. A very brief overview of this will be given in class as a reminder but is likely that a number of students have already prepared their final project versions. Work will be collected in the Project 3 Dropbox. You will need to submit one PDF and one PNG with approproiate file names. After submission, the work will be downloaded and prepared for critique and discussion.

Topics for consideration during critique:

  • Visual Hierarchy: Title, Interface, Background
  • Design principles and consistency with style, Unity
  • Lettering legibility
  • Title screen layout: stylistic and aesthetic relationship with game
  • Usability, Potential for Motion/Movement, etc

For critique we will work as a group to generate comments and feedback related to the issues listed above. If needed, the artist responsible for the work can clarify or answer questions. Our focus for this critique is more on response to the work than on the intent behind it.

Principles of Animation

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).

Exaggeration

Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your sequence more appeal. A caricature would be a good example, where specific features of a person (nose, smile) are exaggerated as a way to create emphasis.

 

Work Session: Assignments

Any remaining work time should be spent on Assignments. The next project will begin during the next class session. We will use this work session as an opportunity to catch up on assignments.