Class 25 - Thursday Nov 30

Schedule:

  • Drawing Exercise: Storyboard
  • Principles of Animation:
    • Solid Drawing
    • Appeal
  • Project Introduction and Work Session

Assignments:

Announcements:

Time Wasters:

Drawing Exercise: Storyboard

Some storyboard paper will be avialable in class. You may also create some of your own storyboards in your sketchbook. The purpose of a story board is to generate large thumbnail sketches that help to establish how something will look at specific points of a time-based project. Our storyboards will be fairly simple in nature. Some storyboards will be printed for you to use, but can be found here, or drawn in a sketchbook.

  • Draw a typographic character
    • Pick a letter - any letter
    • We will use these thumbnails/storyboard for reference later today or next class
  • Bouncing
    • Each storyboard image should show the letter moving within the frame
    • Letter should hit the edges of the frame
    • Letter bouncing around the composition
  • Animation Principles
    • Squash and Stretch
    • Dynamic Motion
    • Bezier Curve Motion VS Linear Motion

You will want to draw a few storyboard images... somewhere between 4 and 6. In addition to showing the character in the frame, storyboard images usually include information about direction, camera movement, speed, dialogue, and other notes. For our purposes directional arrows would probably be enough. This part of the exercise is mostly about using sketches as a way to plan and visualize something that you could create digitally later on.

 

Principles of Animation

Solid Drawing

The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to animation as it does to drawing from observation. The process begins by using thumbnails, sketches, and extended drawings from observation. This work is then transformed into another medium with color and movement giving the characters the illusion of three and four dimensions. The third dimension includes movement in space. The fourth dimension includes movement in time.

Appeal

A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will capture and involve the audience's interest. This begins with an understanding of the effect of basic shapes and design principles in developing assets for animation. Like all forms of story telling, moving graphics should appeal to the mind as well as to the eye.

 

Software Introduction

We will use After Effects as our 2D animation software application. Although it is a highly complex compositing environment, we will use it for some very basic introductory explorations of animation. Our focus will be on basic transformation properties because they are the foundation of building animated sequences.

  • AE Interface : Layers & Timeline
  • Project Files: Importing Assets & linked files
  • New Composition: General Sizes, Duration, Nesting
  • Transformation Properties and Keyframing

Drawing Exercise: Animated Forms

Animation and Software Crash Course!

demo

  • Create New Composition
  • 1280 x 720 - 24fps - 10-20seconds duration

demo

demo

  • Type Tool - Letter (refer to storyboards from earlier)
  • Position Property
  • Timeline and Setting Keyframes
  • Movement within video frame, hitting edges

demo

demo

  • Scale Property - to Squash and Stretch
  • Scale Property unconstrained vs constrained proportions
  • Keyframe Interpolation - bezier vs. linear
  • Speed Interpolation - Easing or "Slow In" "Slow Out"
  • RAM Preview

demo

  • Create New Composition
  • 1280 x 720 - 29.97fps - 10-20seconds duration
  • Simplified Walk Cycle

demo

  • Shape Layers
  • 'Body' & 'Legs' & 'Ground'
  • Simplified forms and basic repeated motion

demo

  • Position Property - Up/Down & Squash/Stretch
  • Keyframe each layer
  • Rotation Property

demo

  • Motion Arcs
  • Parenting and Controlling Groups
  • Precomposition - nesting action
  • Move Across Frame - Position Property
  • Centered in Frame, Other Objects Move Past w/ Position Property
  • Repeated Action, Cycles & Loops

Project 4 Intoduction

Project 4 will incorporate elements of your previous work. It will also give you an opportunity to simulate game play action through 2D animation. After the project introduction, you may begin working on the project. Demonstration for strategies related to the specific expectations of the project will be given in later class sessions.

Work Session: Animation Project

Any remaining work time should be spent on Project 4. The first step in the process will be to begin collecting and preparing your assets from earlier in the semester. Elements of each project will be used and need to be separated into illustrator files as compositions. Another good first step would be to practice and experiment with the processes introduced in class. This will help you to become more familiar with our animation environment and it's processes.