Welcome to the first post in an occasional series looking at the ABC of VFX. We have 26 letters to get through, so let’s make a start with “A” for “Animation”.
It’s nice to begin with an easy one. Everyone knows what animation is. It’s (1) drawing a picture (2) putting it under a camera (3) exposing a single frame of film (4) drawing a slightly different picture (5) putting it under the camera (6) repeating until (a) your fingers bleed or (b) your eyes fall out.
Except that’s not everything …
Sometimes animation means posing puppets and moving them incrementally in the time-honoured tradition of stop-motion. If you want to include replacement animation, it means swapping fractionally different sculptures one after another to create the illusion of fluid change.
Except it’s not like that any more …
The modern animation toolkit contains IK handles, blend trees and all that lovely data from the motion capture volume. Animation is no longer about a series of discrete poses but the infinitely editable trace of an object as it moves along a three-dimensional path. In fact, the whole concept of the individual movie frame might soon be a thing of the past if frameless rendering ever takes hold.
Okay. So there are lots of different animation techniques out there. Some new, some old. Fundamentally, however, animation is concerned with just one thing, isn’t it?
Movement.
Except it isn’t …
To explain: the word “animation” comes from the Latin “animus”, meaning “spirit” or “lifeforce”. So “animate” means “give life to”. An animator’s objective isn’t just to move things from one side of the screen to the other. It’s to breathe life into them. When you get right down to it, all animators are actors.
Except they’re not …
You might need an animator who can act if you want a couple of grumpy trolls to start a fist fight. But animation isn’t just about character work. What about all those tireless effects animators labouring to generate fireballs, fountains and all kinds of bad weather? Effects animation doesn’t require personality. It’s just a bunch of dumb objects obeying the laws of physics, right?
Except it’s not …
Everything has character. The thing you’re animating might be a thinking, breathing creature with complex motivations and a very large axe, or it might be the spectacular plume of lava thrown up after yet another inconvenient meteor has struck a distressingly active volcano improbably laced with high explosives. It doesn’t matter. Both have what really lies at the heart of all animation: soul.
Heart. Soul. Breathing life. Surely that’s something we can all agree on, isn’t it?
Except it isn’t …
What about that motion capture volume we mentioned earlier? When it comes to mo-cap, it isn’t the animator imbuing the character with spirit, it’s the actor. You know, the poor sap wearing the dot-festooned leotard. All the animator has to do is make a few tweaks to their digitally recorded performance.
Except …
Rats. I really thought this was going to be easy. Every time you think you’ve got a grip on animation, it slips right through your fingers. The only way to resolve this is to go back to the beginning, to the world’s first animated feature: Snow White.
According to an article in the January 1938 edition of Popular Science Monthly, the Disney artists who worked on Snow White created “more than 1,500,000 individual pen-and-ink drawings and water color paintings”. The article goes on to say, “Since this cartoon required an average of twenty-two individual painted cels for each foot of completed picture, 166,352 finished paintings were exposed to the camera.”
What it boils down to is that animation is a discipline that demands painstaking craftmanship and one heck of a lot of patience. And you can take that one to the bank.
Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity runs about eight minutes longer than Disney’s Snow White. I imagine both films sent a similar number of animators to the medic with bleeding fingers and throbbing eyeballs. But is this year’s hyper-real space drama as much an animated feature as its venerable cartoon predecessor? Or is it something completely different? Perhaps, even, something entirely new?
“A” is for “Animation”. As for what “animation” really means … do you know?
Source: cinefex.com
Disney’s first fully-CG animated short debuted in 1987
Disney’s first fully-cg animated short, Oilspot and Lipstick, debuted on July 28, 1987, at the SIGGRAPH conference, held in Anaheim, California that year (but it seems, it was not released to the general public).
In this animated short film, directed by Mike Cedeno, Oilspot and Lipstick are two small mechanical “junk” dogs who are threatened by a junk monster. You can see a small clip here.
Continue reading.
Animation short lists ‘Advice to the Young Artist’ by different artists and writers
For her graduation project at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Daniella Shuman made this animated short film that has doodles playing over spoken advice from renowned artists such as Jonathan Franzen (American novelist) and Patti Smith (Singer-songwriter).
Nonetheless, a moment’s distraction, hesitation, cialis overnight online or incompetence can inflict a lifetime of misery on a child and inability to have one. It may accomplish them feel abominable and cheap viagra http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=253 incapable. More http://raindogscine.com/?attachment_id=360 generico levitra on line often than not, the real problem in our society. It was named as a cheap viagra professional and as such is much cheaper than the original. A collection of animated advices grouped together for the young artists.
Animation movie Akira’s clever use of lighting decoded
Akira, the animation masterpiece is highly regarded for a number of elements – gorgeous animation, storyline, great performances. However, another important aspect, sadly ignored, is the brilliant use of light in the movie..
This YouTube video analyses the use of light in Akira and how it impacts the story (light represents everything from death and danger to the city itself)..
As explained in the video, Akira was animated in the more traditional manner, which means every source of light was actually drawn and placed with purpose.
Watch: AKIRA: How To Animate Light
Pixar Animators make Short Film in their Spare Time
Two Pixar animators made a Short Film in their spare time, over a period of 5 years. But their hard work seem to have paid off as the end result is a fantastic short film.
The film titled “Borrowed Time” is directed by Pixar animators Andrew Coats (worked on Brave and The Good Dinosaur) & Lou Hamou-Lhadj (worked on Wall-E and Toy Story 3), and produced by Amanda Deering Jones. Music by Academy Award winner Gustavo Santaolalla.
Not only is the story moving, the animation style is stunning too.
Alien Covenant Flipbook-Inspired Animation
You will be astonished to see the creativity that people possess (from around the world) and they all love to watch films.
And when they blend their fascination for films with what they are passionate about, the end-result can be amazing. This is easily proved by Singaporean artist Serene Teh, who loves to create astonishing flipbooks (art pieces).
Checkout this flipbook animation video created by artist Serene Teh (aka saggyarmpit) to promote the release of Alien: Covenant. It looks quite impressive.
Also See: Giger’s Alien Life-Size Head Prop Replica
Jedi fight medieval soldiers: Animation created with Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator
Watch 300 highly organized Jedi knights, with lightsabers, defeat 60,000 medieval soldiers with regular swords and shields. The clip is basically an animation video created with the Ultimate Epic Battle Simulator and posted on YouTube.
America remains a magnet for animators
America is one of the world’s most developed hubs for film making and animation. The US’s great animation studios are too good an opportunity to pass up for an aspiring animator .
In most other countries, students do the occasional flipbook and spend most time sketching and doodling. But in the US, one is overwhelmed with the amount of animation that is available on a daily basis. Also, with the enormous amount of talent out in the world, there is always so much to learn.
Foreign animators bring a different perspective on characters and acting. There’s certain nuances and mannerisms very characteristic of European culture. Aside from that, brainstorming is usually very fun among foreign animators, as we’ll come up with ideas that here in America might be seen as lewd or inappropriate, but to us are completely normal and humorous aspects of life.
Top Animation Schools
Gobelins – School L’image
Famed french school Gobelins, l’Ecole de l’image, located in Paris, is famous for its animation courses. The department of animation recently announced a free massive open online course (MOOC) at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.
The MOOC named Anima Podi will be a six-week, computer animation training program.
However, Odile Perrin, project manager for the program says that the course will operate like a traditional class, which means physical attendance is must and the course should be completed within the six-week period.
Once the course ends (on November 29), the materials and content will no longer be available for the world to see.
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