Monday, 31 January 2011
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Flash Animation 2:
A look at the early history of animation. (See previous Blog)
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Two fundamental animations: Ball bounce and the Walk Cycle
Last week, we looked at how to tween and how to use layers to change the 'depth' of the movie clips we made. (Remember my beautiful fish?)
The first exercise, is to make a bouncing ball.
Trying this out using the tweening function from last week doesn't provide us with a 'realistic' bounce. We need to make the ball fall and rise as if it is under the effect of gravity - falling slowly at first, hitting the ground, then rising quickly and finally slowing down as it reaches the start position.
To do this, we need to use the easing property. You can find this by clicking on a tween on the timeline and then looking at the Properties pane. Play around with this and see what effect it has.
When you have done this, you should then try to make the ball squash on impact, then squeeze as it rises. To do this, use the Free Transform tool (underneath the 2 selection arrows in the Tools pane).
[ You will need to add a couple of extra keyframes around the point of impact to achieve this, as shown in the demonstration
Play around with this, making the ball appear heavier or lighter, or more or less squashy.
The second exercise involves making a character that walks.
There is quite a good breakdown of the walk cycle at:
http://www.idleworm.com/how/anm/02w/walk1.shtml
Notice that the cycle is analysed and broken down into 4 phases:
Contact, Recoil, Passing and High-Point.
These phases are repeated for each leg - 8 keyframes in total. Try enacting it yourself, or look at someone walking.
There are many reproducing this in Flash. You could draw 8 (or multiples of this) separate images of a character, spread out over the same number of frames - but this can be quite time consuming - and tricky to alter should you want to change the character's behaviour (running, waving, limping etc..). Another method involves making separate body parts as movieClips, then assembling these on different layers on a frame. Making the walk cycle then involves inserting keyframes for each of the phases, and rotating and moving the movieClips to the correct positions.
To get started you'll need to make MovieClip Symbols (those things in the library). I suggest the minimum should be: Head, Lower and Upper leg, Lower and Upper arm, Body and Foot.
You then need to assemble instances of these on the first frame. With a left-to-right walk, you need to have the layers arranged from the top:
Right Lower Arm
Right Upper Arm
Right Upper Leg
Right Lower Leg
Right Foot
Body
Head
..... and then the same as the above for the Left limbs.
Once you have positioned and rotated the moviClips for the 'Contact' phase, insert keyframes a couple of frames later for each layer. Then reposition and rotate the clips for the 'Recoil' phase etc...
After you have completed the cycle, try running your movie. You may want to add tweens to smooth the motion.
[ If you are feeling keen, you may later want to look at the 'Puppet' feature to make a walk cycle. This can be quite an involved process, but produces some excellent results: Tutorial:
http://layersmagazine.com/flash-cs4-animating-puppets.html]
Sunday, 23 January 2011
MDA 1909: Early Animation
History of Animation
(useful chronology: http://joshuamosley.com/UPenn/courses/Ani/AnimationHistory.html)
Definition:
(Merriam-Webster) Etymology: Middle English, from Latin animatus, past participle of animate to give life to, from anima breath, soul; akin to Old English ōthian to breathe, Latin animus spirit, Greek anemos wind, Sanskrit aniti he breathes.
(Chambers) liveliness; vivacity. 2 a the techniques used to record still drawings on film in such a way as to make the images seem to move; b any sequence of these images.
Animated Cartoon: (Merriam-Webster): a motion picture that is made from a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of inanimate objects (as puppets) and that simulates movement by slight progressive changes in each frame
Early Static depictions
From the earliest times, people have been trying to graphically depict movement.
- 32,000 year old cave paintings:
- Iranian 5,200 year old Bowl:
- Eygypt:4,000 year old
Early dynamic depictions
Optical Toys that relied on Persistence of Vision (A Myth –debunked in early psychology)
(Depicting images at greater than about 16 fps [10fps still works but is very flickery])
- Zoetrope: 180 AD by the inventor Ting Huan (And later, William George Horner 1830's)
- Thaumatrope (Victrorian)
- phenakistoscope (Joseph Plateau and Simon von Stampfer)
- Flip book: John Barnes Linnet
(First to use a linear rather than circular sequence of images)
- Mechanised flipBook: Electrotachyscope
- ('What the butler saw' machine)
- Eadweard Muybridge
- Photographed sequences of human and animal motion using multile cameras.
- Animated example:
- Devised the zoopraxiscope (Early projection system)
Early animated movies
- First on film
The Enchanted Drawing - James Stuart Blackton, 1900- (Better, blackboard drawn: "Humorous phases of funny faces." 1908)
- Emile Cohl - Fantasmagorie 1908
- Winsor McCay
- Gertie
- Sinking of the Lusitania
- Max Fleischer (Rotoscoping)
- (Out of the Inkwell)
- Felix the Cat in Hollywood (1923)
- Quirino Cristiani - el apóstol - First Feature Length Animation (1917)
- Segundo de Chomon - El hotel electric
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZFdaqQky2o
- Ladislaw Starewicz - Cameraman's Revenge (Stop Motion 1912)
- Steam Boat Willy (early use of sound:1928)
MDA 1909: Making a Flash Movie
Making a Flash Movie…
In 12 easy steps.
- Open Flash.
- You will see the start screen. To make a new movie, either:
- choose Create New: Flash File (ActionScript 3.0)
- from the main menu, choose File:New…, then select Flash File (ActionScript 3.0)
- choose Create New: Flash File (ActionScript 3.0)
- From the main menu, choose Insert:New Symbol. In the Dialog box, make sure that the Type is set to MovieClip. Name the Symbol. (Try to start with a capital letter and use no spaces).
- Using the Drawing tools (on the left of the main screen), Draw your fish.
- Notice that towards the top left of the main window, there are two icons next to each other. One is called 'Scene 1' and the other is called the name of your Symbol. This shows that we are editing our Symbol, when you have drawn your fish, click on the 'Scene 1' icon to take us back to the main stage.
- Check that your fish is in the library by clicking on the 'Library' tag towards the top right of the main window.
- Click on the time line in the cell that represents frame 1, layer 1. Notice that in contains an empty circle – denoting a blank Keyframe. From the libray, click on the movieClip icon fro your fish and drag it onto the Main stage.
- Click on and empty cell in layer 1, e.g. Frame 30 and press F6 (This insrts a Keyframe)
- Drag your Fish to a new location.
- Right click somewhere between frame 1 and your new keyFrame and choose 'Create Classic Tween'
- From the main menu, choose Control:Test Movie.
- Done.
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MDA 1909: Animation Brief
MDA 1909: Media Practice 1
Project Brief:
Students should produce a non-interactive animation. This should be accompanied by a Research Portfolio that contains a storyboard together with a brief commentary explaining and reflecting on your production process and design decisions (1250 words).
You may, in consultation with your module tutors, not use Flash, and instead use other methods/applications to produce your animation.
You should also submit a link to your Blog for 1909.
The Animation should:
- be a novel re-working of a popular folk tale or myth.
- be no shorter than 1 minute.
- include sound.
- be an individual, not group, piece.
- be delivered on a labelled DVD/CD.
The Portfolio should include:
An essay that should:
- document your design decisions and process.
- why you chose to do things the way you did and how you carried them out
- techniques/aesthetics/narrative/process)
- Describe the background and context of your work
- What was the original fairytale/myth
- What was the twist/reworking?
- What other work has addressed this fairytale/myth.
- Include a reflection on how successful you have been.
- Include references to referenced sources.
- Include a link to your Blog
- .Describes (graphically with textual annotations) the critical points in the action and narrative.
- Be a diary of your work on the project and associated research.
- Include links to any completed exercises (uploaded to youTube/Vimeo etc.._
- Include a link to your uploaded final piece.
The labelled CD/DVD:
This should include a .FLA and .swf version of your Flash work (if used) as well as digital versions of your storyboard and accompanying notes (which should also contain a link to your Blog). If you want to produce a hand-drawn storyboard, you should digitise this for inclusion on this CD as well as handing in your non-digital version.
All work to be submitted in a labelled folder.
Your labelled CD/DVD and any paper-based material should be submitted in a labelled folder. A stapled plastic pocket is not sufficient because opening it often damages the enclosed items.
Demand on printing and computing facilities is likely to be high on deadline day. Make sure you give yourself time to prepare the work for submission.
Submission summary/check list:
(% refer to proportion of total marks for MDA 1909)
- Animation (30%)
- Portfolio (20%)
- To include an Essay (1250 words), Blog (link to it) and Storyboard.
4:00pm Tuesday May 3rd 2011
MDA 1909: Media Practice 1: Weeks 13-24
| 13 | 24th January | MM | Introduction to Animation + Tools. Presentation of Brief. Stop motion | |
| 14 | 31st January | MM | Flash 1 : Bouncing Ball & Walk cycle | |
| 15 | 7th February | MM | Flash: 2 + Lip synching + Sound Brief presentation of project ideas (+prep set for next week) | Ideas Presentations |
| 16 | 14th February | AP | Stop Motion FC Pro for Animation 1 Workshop + Tutorials | |
| 17 | 21th February | AP | FC Pro for Animation 2 Workshop + Tutorials | |
| 18 | 28th February – Reading Week | |||
| 19 | 7th March | SS | Intro to After Fx 2 Brief presentation of project ideas | |
| 20 | 14th March | MM | DVD Pro: Burning Workshop + Tutorials | Progress Presentations |
| 21 | 21st March | MM | Workshop + Tutorials | |
| 22 | 28th March | MM | Workshop + Tutorials | |
| 23 | 4th April | MM | Progress Presentations | |
| 24 | 25th April | MM | Workshop + Tutorials | |