Math Fair Animation

I loved this project and the fact that I was able to put my knowledge of animation to the test to create something I could call my own. I was very happy with the result even though I was pressed for time. One thing I did learn that I hadn't previously known is the use of different scenes. I was very glad that I was capable of using different scenes so I didn't have to work with tons of layers at once. I also am having a love/hate relationship with shape tweens because sometimes they make things easier however sometimes playing around with the shape hints were necessary in order to get a some what coherent tween.

Moving Objects

For our moving object assignment I drew a tree and copied it into multiple layers. Using motion tweens I was able to convey a sense of motion by using a combination of motion tweens and perspective. As you can see when you can see between the rows of trees it shows a vanishing point and follows the perspective lines. Using this technique not only conveyed a sense of motion but also gave the background a third dimensional quality.

Flash Tools

This drawing here displays the uses of the majority of the tools we will use in creating flash animations. The first quadrant displays some sample brush strokes which were done free handed and then modified using the sub selection tool. The second quadrant displays what you can do with shape and line tools and then modification you can make with the selection tools. The third quadrant displays how text can be included in your works and how you can separate the letters from the words and then turn the letters into shapes.  The forth quadrant shows how we can rotate objects and how objects can be grouped and transformed together.

Windows Movie Maker Video

This is my first time using Pivot and Windows Movie Maker, while this project is still incomplete, I'm happy to have used these programs and learn how to do basic animations using pivot and simple edits to videos in movie maker. I enjoyed learning how to use both of these programs and hope to make more improvements to this video. I can't wait to start doing more animations especially in adobe flash. I have some past experience using flash and I hope to keep improving my works and learn from previous mistakes in my works.

Pivot Freerunner Animation

I really enjoyed using pivot, The program is very simple to use and I enjoyed practicing human like movements of the character. I tried to make the character's movements as realistic as possible. I have based the movements and stunts off of Parkour videos I have seen in the past. I however take a really long time because I ended up working in 33 fps because 12 fps wasn't fluid enough for my liking. As you can see this is no where near done, this 5 second video is already 159 frames! I hope to make this into a seamless looping gif once it is complete. While I have experience using adobe flash I might continue to use pivot.

The History of Animation

The History of Animation is a long story, it has evolved rapidly over time. Animation had started out as a very simplistic art-form where motions would be represented by a group of frames being shown one after the other. Even ancient paintings where they had told stories in a series of pictures were considered early forms of animations. In 1868 animations were shown through flip-books, each frame was hand drawn and they would flip through the pictures rapidly to animate the drawings and show movement.

Eventually these flip-books evolved into basic stop motion videos. Artists would hand draw each frame on paper and take photographs of each frame in negative film giving it a chalkboard kind of look. They would then take these photographs and put them in order in a film reel. These reels would be projected and it would create the animation. These animations were black and white and didn't have any sound.

Fantasmagorie was the first animation to be done on negative film in 1908

Soon after animators would hand draw the cartoons on paper and create each frame like that, they would have pre-made backgrounds that would consistently loop so they wouldn't have to animate the background when ever something was moving. They would then draw the characters and objects in front of the background on a translucent piece of plastic. They would create each character on transparent acetate sheets called cels.

Each character was drawn on an individual cel and they would layer the cels on top of the background. They would take a composite picture and lay these images out frame by frame in a film kind of like a seamless stop motion animation. This form of animation was called cel animation or traditional animation. Most of these Cel Animations were in black and white for some time. They had little sound effects, mainly simple ones and contained background music.

This is one of the first hand drawn animations done in cel animation. It was also the first introduction of Mickey Mouse: Steamboat Willie

The Cartoons that were in black and white were eventually remade in color through the process of technicolor.

Today cartoons are now made on the computer. Many cartoons the characters are designed before the animation process. These characters are made as 3-Dimensional models and once created they can move the models and position them in each frame almost like claymation but on the computer.