The Animation

Process
{ Digital Graphics and Animation
Planning your
Animation
{ Workflow Basics
 Planning your Animation
Workflow Basics:
I. Establish concept and goals start by defining the
challenges of the project and the following criteria:
Whats the message you want to deliver?
Whos the audience?
Existing elements (in the case of branding materials)
Competition (if any)
 Planning your Animation
Workflow Basics:
I. Establish concept and goals start by defining the
challenges of the project and the following criteria:
Emotional heart and feeling of the message
Output DVD, CD, Web
Software
Hardware
 Planning your Animation
Workflow Basics:
II. Project goals determine what is expected in completing
the project
Whats your role how do you fit in?
Deliverables
Payment
 Planning your Animation
Workflow Basics:
IV. Approving final concept and budget:
Meeting with clients
Contracts
Setting Milestones for Review
 Planning your Animation
Workflow Basics:
V. Producing the result:
Create folder(s) and file structure
Adding files
Naming files properly
Animation Strategies
{
Understanding and Communicating Motion to Tell a Story
 Animation Strategies
1. Establishing Ground Rules:
Considering your Signature / Personal style
Structure developing rules to guide your designs so
that
the animation support your ideas - e.g. knowing how to
differentiate between a home movie and an engrossing
motion picture
Using music as an example all music has an underlying
structure of notes and timing
 Animation Strategies
2. Defining Variables:
Establish a tone peaceful, quiet, fast, slick, funny, scary
What kind of motion suits the style of the project or
personality of a character?
How does colour communicate your theme or idea?
How does sound support the atmosphere or character?
Be consistent, dont try to do a bit of everything
 Animation Strategies
I. The Environment:
Establishing a look and feel of your project Art Direction
or Production Design -
How light or dark is it?
Is everything distinct or blurry?
How crowded or spacious is it?
How quickly does things move?
 Animation Strategies
I. The Environment:
Establishing a look and feel of your project Art Direction
or Production Design -
How does gravity affect objects?
Is space limited or endless?
Help the audience locate themselves in the environment
you create
 Animation Strategies
I. The Environment:
Establishing a look and feel of your project Art Direction
or Production Design -
Consider historical and cultural contexts Retro?
Post-modern? Futuristic? Multicultural? Or a specific
subculture?
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
 Animation Strategies
II. The Materials:
Consider the finer details of your environment -
Do you want elements to be Smooth? Jagged? Hard?
Fuzzy? Squishy?
How much volume does the graphic elements have? Are
they transparent?
If objects are soft, hard heavy or light, the motion must
relate to them
 Animation Strategies
VI. The Motion:
Controlling the speed and pattern
Analyze the real world
Study rhythm and timing
 Animation Strategies
2. Adding Personality:
How fast or slow does an object move? Does it accelerate
or decelerate?
How does an object(s) movement loop or change over
time? Finding the right music to establish timing and pace
usually helps in this regard
Is the objects motion repetitive or random?
 Animation Strategies
2. Adding Personality:
Does the object give some visual cue as to its movement
or is it sudden?
How big or small are the movements the object can make?
Does it move all around the screen or is it restricted to a
specific area? How much of the object moves at any time?
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
 Animation Strategies
2. Manipulating Perception and Depth:
Using sylized methods to play tricks on your audience
Supension of disbelief If you believe its real then it is
Visual tricks such as a swirling cyclone of lines to show a
characters feet moving very fast
Consider cartoon effects such as a cloud with hands and
feet sticking out to show a fight or moving lines to show a
gust of wind
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
 Animation Strategies
I. Viewpoint, Framing and Depth:
Use of perspective
Planning overlapping of images avoiding tangents by
not
allowing foreground and background images to touch each
other
Using a natural frame as a reference point to exaggerate
depth e.g. creating the viewpoint of looking out the back of
a
van or a character running into the camera to convey panic
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
Animation Strategies
 Animation Strategies
II. Anticipation:
Adding bounces to exaggerate a character walking
Winding up before a run
Follow through to head turns
 Animation Strategies
II. Anticipation:
Adding bounces to exaggerate a character walking
Winding up before a run
Follow through to head turns
III. Secondary Motion:
E.g., movement of a characters belly and/or a hat during a
run
Animation Strategies
 Animation Strategies
2. Understanding the Laws of Nature:
Inertia objects should show a change in force if there is a
change in motion e.g. use of ease in and out
Acceleration gravitational forces act differently on objects
of different mass e.g., a canonball and a feather falling to
the ground
Animation Strategies
 Animation Strategies
2. Understanding the Laws of Nature:
Action / reaction force pairs for every action there is an
equal and opposite reaction e.g., a ball bouncing back in the
air lower and lower after hitting the ground or a character
pulling a rope and falling back after the rope snaps
Creating Timeline
Animation and Effects
{
Time Based vs. Frame Based
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Time Based:
This is animation that is created over time where keyframes
are set at specific points to define the action e.g., key poses
of a character and the software creates the in-between
frames or tweening.

This method is used in 3D Animation or Motion Graphics.

Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Frame Based:
This is animation that is created frame-by-frame where a
drawing is done at each stage of movement over a set time
period.

This is also called traditional animation and used in

cartoons.
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
1. Methods:
Frame by frame animation
Tweened animation shape and motion
Timeline effects e.g. dissolves, plug-ins (After Effects)
Path animation
Animated masks
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
2. Storyboarding Scenes and Shots:
Sketching key moments like a comic strip
Description of Scenes, e.g., A Bright and Sunny Day at the
Beach...
Description of Shots, e.g., Wide Shot, Medium Close Up,
Extreme Close Up
Description of Sound FX, Dialogue, Visual FX, etc.
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Animatic:
In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage
may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to
give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with
motion and timing.
At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited
together and displayed in sequence with a rough dialogue
and/or rough sound track added to the sequence of still images
(usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and
images are working effectively together.
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Shot Sizes:
An extreme close-up (ECU) makes a very small details such

as only part of a character's facefill the screen.

A close-up (CU) is a shot framed tightly on a specific area,
like a character's face.
A medium close-up (MCU) widens the scope further. A
character's head and shoulders would constitute a
medium close-up.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Shot Sizes:
A medium shot (MS) shows a broader area than a close-up.

Often a medium shot shows a character's upper body,

arms, and head.
A wide shot (WS or WIDE) shows a broad view of an
entire location, subject, or action. Often a wide shot will
show an entire character from head to toe, or a whole
group of characters.
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Wider shots can show whole environments, capture broader actions,
or show the positions of multiple characters at once. Before moving
in to show close-up detail, you can give your audience an idea of
the overall scene with an establishing shot.
An establishing shot is usually a wide shot that sets up the scene and
shows the surroundings that might not be appear in each close-up.
For example, an establishing shot might show the exterior of a
building, providing context for the location where an interior scene
is to follow.
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Z-Axis Blocking:
A shot can function as both a close-up and a wide shot at
once by using a technique called z-axis blocking:
populating a scene with subjects at varying distances from
the camera.
Z-axis blocking may sound like a computer graphics term,
but in reality cinematographers were using the phrase long
before the advent of 3D rendering.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Z-Axis Blocking:
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
POV Shots:
A point-of-view shot (POV) creates the illusion of viewing
the scene from a character's perspective.
Usually you will want to hide the character whose POV is
being shown; you don't need to show body parts, such as
arms and hands moving as the character walks, in a POV.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
The Two-Shot:
Specific types of shots can be put together to help you stage a
conversation, interview, or other scenes in which two characters
are facing each other.
While this is a convenient, straightforward way to show both
characters, it can look flat and uninteresting. To make a scene
more visually diverse, you can use a two-shot as an establishing
shot, and then cut in to close-ups and over-the-shoulder shots.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
The Two-Shot:
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
The Over-the-Shoulder Shot:
An over-the-shoulder shot (OSS) is a close-up or medium shot
that focuses on one of the characters while showing just enough
of the other characters portion of his back and shoulder,
generally to indicate his position.

A series of shots that alternate between an OSS of each

character, sometimes also including close-ups of the
characters, is called shot/countershot coverage.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
High-Angle and Low-Angle Shots:
A low-angle shot, with the camera positioned below your
character, looking up, can serve to make a character look bigger,
stronger, more honest, or more noble. Low-angle shots can also
exaggerate the size of environments and architectural spaces.
A high-angle shot, with the camera aimed downward from a
position above the character, can make a character look sly,
small, young, weak, confused, cute, or childlike.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
High-Angle and Low-Angle Shots:
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Camera Moves:
Pan: In a pan, the camera rotates from side to side so that it aims
more to the left or right. The camera does not change location in
a pan; it needs only to face a different direction. Panning is one
of the most common and subtle of all camera moves.
Tilt: The camera rotates to aim upward or downward, without
changing the position where the camera is mounted. Both a tilt
and a pan can be done while the camera is mounted on a tripod.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Camera Moves:
Zoom: The camera's lens is adjusted to increase or decrease the
camera's field of view, magnifying a portion of the scene
without moving the camera. A zoom in narrows the field of
view to create more of a close-up, while a zoom out widens the
field of view.
Rack focus: A camera's focal distance changes during a shot, so
that subjects at a different distance from the camera come into or
fall out of focus, This is also called a focus pull.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Camera Moves:
Dolly: The camera's actual position changes, such as to move
alongside a subject or to travel closer to a character during a scene.
A dolly in moves the camera physically closer to the subject, to
create more of a close-up. A dolly out backs the camera away from
the subject.

Dollying is considered more dramatic but also more noticeable than

zooming, because a dolly actually changes the camera's
perspective.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
The Rule of Thirds:
Placing a subject dead-center in a frame does not look very
natural or interesting, and generally produces a bad
composition. Your rendering will look better composed if
you place your subject off-center.
A useful guideline when composing a shot is to picture the
frame divided into thirds, both horizontally and vertically,
This is known as the rule of thirds.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
The Rule of Thirds:
Your shot will be better composed
if you position the subject along
one of the lines (shown in black),
or position a subject that you want
noticed exactly at a point where
two lines intersect (shown in red).
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Positive and Negative Space:
Most images can be said to consist of both positive space and
negative space. Positive space is the part of the frame
showing the main subject or foreground objects. Negative
space can be considered the background, or the area
around the subject.
Composition is a balance between the positive and negative
space.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Positive and Negative Space:
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Positive and Negative Space:
A balanced composition (top) leaves
look space for a character
(shown in yellow).
An unbalanced composition (bottom)
can trap your eye in the side of the
frame.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Lines:
Another way to examine and improve your composition is to picture the
dominant lines that can be seen within the shot. Look at any line,
whether it is the horizon, a fence, or the edge of a shadow, and think
about where it leads.
People's eyes naturally follow lines within the image, so placing an
interesting subject along a line, or having lines within your
composition point to a subject that you want a viewer to notice, will
help direct people where you want them to look.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Lines:
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Tangencies:
A tangency is a place where two lines meet within your
composition, such as where an edge of one object aligns
with an edge of another object, or where a shadow falls
along an edge in a surface.
When two lines become tangent, they essentially become the
same line in your composition, and that can cause your
scene to lose definition.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Tangencies:

Courtesy - http://digital-lighting.150m.com/ch07.html
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
3. Conceptual Drawings:
Characters
Backgrounds
Objects
Establishing the Look and Feel of the project
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
4. Exporting Animation:
Formats - .avi, quicktime (.mov) or sequence of still images
Output to Film, Video Tape, Internet, DVD - Must be familiar
with all and depending on your deliverables
Video is 30 Frames Per Second (FPS), Film is 24 fps, but
can be at lower rates as well for cartoon animation and higher
(60 fps) for 3D Animation
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Persistence of Vision:
Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye by which
an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one
twenty-fifth of a second on the retina.
In drawn animation, moving characters are often shot "on
twos", that is to say, one drawing is shown for every two
frames of film (which usually runs at 24 frames per second),
meaning there are only 12 drawings per second.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Persistence of Vision:
Animation for most "Saturday morning cartoons" is produced
as cheaply as possible, and is most often shot on "threes", or
even "fours", i.e. three or four frames per drawing. This
translates to only 8 or 6 drawings per second, respectively.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
This animated cartoon of a
galloping horse is displayed at
12 drawings per second, and
the fast motion is on the edge
of being objectionably jerky.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Formats and Aspect Ratios:
The actual frames in which you arrange your scene can have
different proportions, depending on the format of film or
television for which you are rendering your animation.
The proportion of the width to the height of an image is
called its aspect ratio. For example, if the width of an image
were exactly twice its height, it would have an aspect ratio
of 2:1.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Formats and Aspect Ratios:
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Cropping and Overscan:
In television, a cropping problem occurs when a process called
overscanning crops a portion of a video signal off of the screen.
Important actions should be kept in the center 90 percent of the
screen, because some viewers might miss them if they happen too
near the edge.
Most software programs have optional guides to safe image areas
that can be displayed in your viewport.
 Creating Timeline Animation and Effects
Cropping and Overscan:
 Planning your Animation
Consider these techniques as you plan your next project.
Animation can be rewarding despite its challenges. One
must be open minded, prepared to take risks and above all,
have fun doing it!

Next Activity - Animation Sequence Exercise

THANK YOU