Extra research

This is a manga book I have and is useful for research. This contains images of different manga drawings and anime is based on manga comics. I thought this could be good research as I am doing an anime style animation.

When I was designing my characters I looked at this page for hair style ideas but I ended up going for a style from a animation show instead.

This book has lots of mythical creature descriptions and drawings in it. This would be a really good book to use if any creatures would be in the animation. I was thinking about a dragon for the wave so this page is a good source of research.

 

 This infomation is good in the book to help with chatacteristics. It tell all the features of people and other things.

The style of my characters is sort of based on that of people in digimon. I was trying to look at a style I liked and thought wasn't too complicated to draw. The two characters below are the character from digimon and one of my characters first design. You can see that they aren't the same but there are a few characteristics I looked at when drawing mine. They both have gloves, big spiky hair and big shoes. The body shape on mine is a bit longer. Also the eyes are a different style. But in anime there are two types of the way eyes look. The other characters eyes are more detailed and are closer to the digimon character but the villains eyes are simpler.

 The original concept of digimon is believed to have come from Akiyoshi Hongo. It is produced by Toei Animation and Bandai of Japan.

Final 2D animation Evaluation

Evaluation for flash animation

For this unit we had to first do research on animation then when created a walk cycle in flash then we started planning out another animation based on a story we were given. It was called the Magic Paint Brush. We decided what our style would be and then we spent some time drawing out a storyboard with characters. First we did a rough one then a proper one. After we had planned it out and added sound we were going to have to the story board we started animating. Though out the animation process our tutor showed us some tween techniques for flash and some other things to help us achieve creating an animation.

I have learnt a lot from this unit I couldn't use Flash at all at the beginning of the unit. After the tutor showed us the basics and what to do I started to understand the program more. Then as we went along I started to understand the program. I asked questions when I didn't know how to do something and after I was showed I could get on and found the program easier than I thought I would. Because I have an animating program at home I could compare both programs and I believe that flash may ultimately be a better program to use. Although there are something's I seemed to be able to do in the other program and I didn't know how to do in Flash but since I am only just learning to use the program I expect you'd be able to do it in the program. I also was comparing the programs when I was working on it. I was disappointed when I thought Flash didn't have scenes because the program I used (Toon Boom) I had always used scenes. But as soon as I thought this our Tutor showed us how to use scenes in Flash. This relieved me and I realised I still had a lot to learn about the program. I believe and hope that I have furthered my animating skills during this unit. also although I didn't have great time management I managed to complete the animation before the deadline with soundtrack. Before I did an animation for my art project in year 10 but I had a whole year to do that so I never really felt the need to rush but this project has show me that I can do an animation in a certain amount of time.        

The point of this. To improve animation skills and program that I am able to use has expanded. This has helped my animation of people although I believe I still need more practise with that I believe this could help. If I were to go on to do animation people are commonly used in animation. Since I am used to animating animals and animal-like creatures this was quite new for me. So I think this would be useful on the movement and drawing of people. This project was useful as it has showed that I can animate a story that has been given to me instead of one I have made up myself. Which would obviously be of use in the future. This process has given me the idea of practising drawing people a lot more then I do. If I wanted to go into a job of animation or character design or something people are the most commonly used in these. So I will practise drawing them more and I have only been drawing them in anime style but I hope to expand to other styles of people. I have already tried some anime people drawing and this unit encouraged me to do this as I doubt I would of done this before.   

What worked

I liked the way some of the movement I animated turned out. The bit where he swings the paint brush to make a river the first time I thought the animation work really well. That took a long as I completely redrew each frame to get the effect of the hair moving and the body swinging. Although it took a while I think that turned out well. If I compared it to the other time he draws to river where I only drew one image and just moved the parts. I think that worked too but if you compared them the first one was more effective with more movement. Another bit that I think really worked was when the character jumped into the water. Yet again this was all individually drawn for each frame. I did use the same head in a few of the frames but then I changed it as well. I think things still look effective if you are drawing parts of the body from scratch in each frame but you keep one thing consistent though out the animation. For example in the last scene of my movie the character is walking away and the body and head are one image but the legs change drawings all though out until it gets to the loop. I have found out from this that both versions of animating work well. But when you put in more effort of drawing each individual frame it can look very good. Even though that bit of my animation is very quick you can see the hair of the character fly up as he is jumping and this defiantly would have looked better than if it was the same head from the start of the jump. Also the dragon wave. I hadn't put that in my story board but I had the idea from the start and just wasn't sure if I would be able to do it. But I believe that it worked very well. I am really pleased with the outcome of that scene. Also I turned the dragon into a wave which I wasn't planning on doing and the idea came to me and I decided to test it and I thought that it looked so good that I had to use it. But I also thought it would make sense if it turned into a wave because then you could understand it was water and the villain wasn't getting hit by a dragon he had drawn. Something I could have improved on that scene would have been to do with time management again. When I had the idea I should of tested trying to draw it out because when it came to that bit I had to look up dragons on google images that I could look at for the kind of thing I could try and draw. This didn't take lots of time as I quickly remembered a cartoon dragon that I could look at for the idea of mine. But for the improvement if I had done this before animated not during I could have saved some time.

Things to improve

Overall I am really pleased with my animation. If I had to improve there are a few things I could have done differently. I wasn't pleased with a small few of the drawings of the characters I had done in flash. I had drawn them on the story board and I really liked the way they looked but when re drawing on flash my characters either looked better or worse. although I was glad how they looked moving and colourful on flash there was one or two drawings I would like to have done better. I could have improved this in a few ways. one would have been to draw the character again until it looked good. but another thing I could have done would have been to scan the storyboard drawings in and put them on flash with the ones I was having trouble with. I could have done these things maybe if I had more time which is another thing I would have improved on. making the animation took very long time which is expected but by the end of it I was starting to feel rushed as I still had the extra research and evaluation to do. an improvement would have been to make the story a little shorter then I did. I have always tried to get a lot done when coming to animation but this isn't always a good things as throughout the animation I was finding myself not minding if I didn't like the drawing I had done. I sometimes re did it but other times I just moved on because I thought I need this done quickly as I need to finish so. maybe by increasing the story line i had reduced some of the quality of the animation. However saying this I did believe a lot of my scenes were good and had some great animation. but if I had given it more time I could have made all the scenes look really nice. another thing- backgrounds. I usually don't concentrate very much on backgrounds but i did better this time. but yet again if I had more time a may have concentrated on the backgrounds a little more. On background I did concentrate on drawing little houses in the background and i really liked the outcome. Also I know time can be a problem. When I did the walk cycle there was no background.

Copying animation and cutting corners two other things that I could have improved although with the cutting corners I think a lot of animations could have the same images or movement twice. Also the style I did mine in was anime and in a lot of series of animes the images and movement can be seen repeated a number of times. With the copying I looked at a character walking and then animated mine in a very similar way. I think it was ok to do this but I don't want to do it more times because I want the movement of my character to be what I have created and how it would interpret how they would move. I only did this at the end when my character is walking away. I like the animation I did for this but I can't help but wonder if I had made up the movement myself would it of looked any better. Another problem with the time would have been if I didn't have flash at home I would have struggled with the time. it wouldn't have been as good if I hadn't got some extra hours at home. so if I had kept it simple then maybe it would have been quicker to do. but it could also be a good thing that i put in a lot of extra hours to get it done but could have be a big flaw if I didn't have the programming. so this is probably the biggest improvement would defiantly have been time and length of the story board. A target would be better time management and planning.

Audience reviews

"This is the first animation I have seen Sophie do with people as the central characters (as opposed to animals!), and as such I think it's a fine effort"." Things that I particularly liked include:"

• The way the jail scene transforms from the previous scene
• The "dragon" wave that overcomes the man in the river.
• The sparse but colourful backgrounds and simple character animations with clear facial expressions
• The "drowning" sequence
• The end credit  

Yes I agree with most of these and I think that those scenes were some of the best ones I animated. I might disagree a bit of the jail bit. I was testing the shape tween to see what would happen if I try to morph one scene to another. I did really like the result and I especially like the jail bars going across. however I believe that the scene looked slightly better when you had to whole background in the picture but I had to zoom in. Maybe I should have tried some different scenes to see how they morphed. But I left it as it was and I believed it could of looked better but the viewer wouldn't know this so actually maybe I do agree this was a good scene and worked well.

"The things that might have been improved like in some shots the limbs and body length look a bit odd!"

Ok I agree with this. But I think the villains body was the right shape it was just the good guy. He was wearing a polo neck and I made the mistake of giving him an abnormally sized neck in some parts. But I wasn't really thinking about it when I was drawing him. Then this meant that the shoulders were going wrong because I would draw the neck then the neck of the top the same length then I would add the shoulders at the end of that as if I was thinking it was the neck. I think it only coursed trouble with that character because of the clothes I gave him but I also wasn't really thinking about the way people should look.     

"The way the man holds his paintbrush is not how you'd normally hold a paintbrush?"

Yeah I realise that as others have mentioned it but I disagree as I did this on purpose. As it was a magic paint brush I thought it should be held differently than a normal one. Also the way he painted was a quick movement and it wasn't like he was painting in detailed. I thought because it wasn't on paper he was painting in the air I think that the way he held it was more like a weapon. Also as all he did was swing at the air to paint the river I don't believe that would have looked right if he was holding it normally furthermore it was more an act of power he was showing with the brush by the way I animated then it being delicate    

"The story is not all that clear - probably because of the short amount of time in which to tell it - Also at the beginning you can't really tell who's feet are walking and that is the bad guy coming- probably needs a voice over or some text to clarify what is happening in the story?"

With the character walking I realise people watching may not realise that it was him. because I created the characters and I know that its him coming and that his trousers are a  different colour I may not have thought that others may not notice that it was him as its not on screen for ages.

This I do agree with and I only thought about after I had done it. I should of had the story maybe told somehow and made it clear what was going on. But I didn't really think about that but next time I would.

Final animation

   

The Story:
a poor man Ma liang loved painting, he had a dream about a magic paint brush, then when he woke up it was there. He used it to help people, First he drew a river which would help people get more water. He also drew a cow to help the work with the fields. Then a Rich man put him in jail and stole the paint brush. The brush didnt work for him. so he asked Ma Liang to paint a gold mountain for him...

practise of tweens

Evaluation

We had to do a walk cycle animation in flash.  First we had done some research on the history of animation. Then we had to draw out a character that we were going to make walk.  We then drew the simple version of the character walking. I started with my characters outline and concentrated on the leg movement. Then I did a stick version of my walk once I thought the legs looked right. Then I added the arm movement while I redrew him walking. Then after I had my stick man walking I went over it to make it look like my character. After we had done it on paper we scanned it and edited each movement to make it one image in Photoshop. Then we began to draw over our cycle in Flash. We added colour and using Flash made it easier to keep parts of the body the same size.  We drew the body part on different layers. My layers were head, hand1, hand2, leg1, leg2, arm1, arm2 and body. Doing this made it much easier to move the individual parts.

During this process I have learnt how to use Flash for animation. I have animated before on different programs but when I tried Flash for the first time in secondary school it really confused me but when our tutor explained it understood and can use it better now. I have never animated a person before (I have always used animals or creatures) or walking before so I feel that has helped improve my skills.

The point of this task was to develop our animation skills. We learnt how to use Flash which maybe useful for later in the course or if you want to use it for something. Also it could be useful for later in life if you want to go into animating or something that involves animation this task will help us. A person walking is properly an important thing to have animated, as it is common in most animated films. If its about people you will always see them walking.

I like my final animation I think it looks like he’s walking which is important. If I had to improve I may have made the head and the body move a bit more. If I had lots of time to do this in I may have made the belt slightly move to look like his waist was moving.  Also my character looks like he’s moving a bit much for the way it looks but that could be a good thing as our tutor said usually animated characters move more dramatically then in real life. But if I wanted it to be more realistic then cartoony I would have made the legs step a bit lower and the arms not move so much. But it’s only a simple walk cycle so the end result was good. Also I did improve some things along the way. For example I had drawn the whole cycle and when I did it in flash I slightly changed the hand movement. But when I had finished something didn’t look right. So I thought about it and realised the arms still didn’t look right. I took me quite a while to get the arm movement right. First on my drawing the joints weren’t bending right then it was too fast. They were moving quickly with each step so I decided to change it to make them swing once. When I did that then I thought it looked much better.

Walk cycle

interactive media 2D animation Unit 53

History of animation

Types of animation through the years:
Zoetrope (1834). This is when you have a strip and on the strip is a sequence of drawings of something. Each drawing is the similar but sightly moved to the one before it. Then the strip is put in the Zoetrope and it spins around and the image is moving.

People used to do cave paintings that tell stories which can relate to animation because its shows how they wanted to show a story through a series of drawings.

Thaumatrope (1824)
The magic lantern
Phenakistoscope (1831) is basicly the same as the Zoetrope but it is in a disk shape instead of a strip. it spinds around like a CD.

Flip book (1868). This is a little book with a series of drawings in it and when you flip the book you can see the drawings move like on
TV.


 Praxinoscope (1877) (lower left image)Like the zoetrope it is a strip of pictures. It is placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. This is the same as the Zoetrope. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by add tiny mirror so that when you looked in the mirrors you would see a rapid movement of the image.
 

A Rotoscope is another type of animation. It was invented by Max Fleischer. Rotoscoping is when live action figures are cut and re-drawn. It was used in the Betty Boop cartoon (1930). Then Disney began to mainly use Rotoscoping for studing the movement of animals and people. It was also used for the film Peter Pan in 1953.





Present animations

Traditional animation
Stop Motion
CGI

The first animation was by Charles-Emile Reynaud he invented the praxinoscope and he screened some short films. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of funny faces was his first short (1906).

The first full length animation was snow white in 1937. But the first animation that Disney did was Steamboat Willy. Releast in 1928. Both were traditional cel animation.

 (1928-11-18)The first movie that CGI was used for the whole thing was Toy Story (1995).


(CGI film, Bolt on left).









Traditional cel animation starts with the lead animator making rough skeches of key moments in each scene. Next another animator then completes the rough drawings and does some frames missed out. then someone does all other missed out frames. Then the colour is added with paint. This type of animation is very time consuming. Alot of animations are cel animations including the Simpsons. (A process of a cel animation on the right).

Cut outs is another 2d animation technique. Its where you have a paper cut out of the thing you want to move. Usually the characters are made out of lots of different cut outs so you can move it. So the hand and the arm will be separate. 

There are different types of animation.
Clay animation is when you make a model and move it then take stills of it. Usually the models arn't just clay they also have a wire underneathe so it is easier to move.
Wallace and Gromit is a well-known stop motion clay animation. 

 

Animation on the computer (like Flash) this is when you do the drawing on the computer and slightly change the image each time or just redraw it. Usually you would use a onion skin where you can see a faded picture of the image you previously drew so you know where to move the next frame.
In most animations 24 frames is a second.

Another type of 2d animation is anime. Its a Japanese style of animation. Some well-known examples are Pokemon and Dragonball Z. Alot of anime films/programs ideas come from Manga which is a type of Japanese comic book. A early anime was Astroboy which started in the mid 60's. It had 193 episodes. Princess Mononoke is an anime film. It took Hayao Miyazak (the director) around 16 years to completly develop the story and characters! Anime can be computer animated or hand drawn.

The image is a Japanese anime called Wolf's rain.


There is also 3D animation where you make a model of somthing then the computer scans it then you can move it on the computer. CGI animation process in picture.


Some other animation types.

Sand animation. This is where you have the drawings in sand under the camera. Its animated live so this means after each shot is done they ethier just change a small part of the drawing or its completely wiped to start drawing a new shot. This is drifferent to most animations because you can't re-use the drawings you did earlier because they have been wiped.

Limited animation is sometimes used in anime animation. This is where you reuse the same clip for a different scene or make the characters look like they are moving more than they actually are. For example there is a character walking and they may just create a loop for the walk and they may also use the same walk cycle later in an episode or in the film or in other episodes. So they don't have to draw the character walking again. It is used in a lot of animes like in digimon when they digivolve its the same series of clips each time. 

Object animation is basicly the same as model animation but just moving objects like using lego.

Time-lapse photography. This is when you have taken photos of the same area but seconds/minutes apart.
Another type is Pixilation which is where you have people making the movements for the characters to animate them. They have lots of sticky dots on them when they are moving to show the joints moving. It is put onto the computer and they are animated as a moving character with CGI. Its mainly used for the movement of people but can also be used otherwise. For example in a doctor who episode there is a werewolf and it is done using this technique of a man doing the movements then changing it to animated CGI. Another film that the type of animated is used in is Monster house.   

Names of some animators:
Ollie Johnston, he animated on things like Pinocchio ,Bambi and Fox and the Hound.
Yoshinori Kanada Japanese animator worked on Princess Mononoke
Don Bluth
Friz Freleng created and worked on lots of Looney Toons.
Joseph Barbera was an animator/director/producer and a story board artist. He worked on things like wacky racers, the smurfs and top cat.
Yuriy Norshteyn he did a animation called Hedghog in the fog which is made by using cut outs.