MCATshare-Animation

Chapter 6

precedes the invention of photography and the cinema camera by several decades. It is an art form in which a world of dynamic image and sound may be synthesized completely out of nothing but a thought
is the art by which two-dimensional drawings or inanimate objects are turned into moving visual representations of three-dimensional (3-D) life.
is the process of making the illusion of motion and change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other.

Animation Project Overview:

First, a preview or rough overview of the story, called a pencil test, is created.
Sometimes, after a story idea is conceived, a "treatment" is created instead of a pencil test; this is a brief narrative description of the proposed film or video.
Both pencil tests and treatments are often used to solicit sponsors.
The action of the story and its development are conveyed through the use of storyboards, which are used to compose, organize, and deploy the animation.

Storyboard:

A storyboard is a series of visual sketches that the story creator uses when developing the narrative and depicting the action of the animation.
The storyboard details the sequence of actions necessary to convey the story line, character development, and point of view.
This would include the background, action, and camera movement of the scene, but also each change of scene, each change in perspective, the timing and length of each scene, sound requirements, and the timing of the whole work.
With the storyboard in place, the dialogue or music for the animation is recorded, and the sound length is determined in terms of the number of frames that it can handle
"dope sheet"— a document detailing the nature of the music clips, their times, and the number of frames per clip

A layout is drawn up for each scene and the director uses the layout and dope sheet to plan the action and its timing
Next a background is created and the movement is created by a sequence of drawn images, which is then also entered on the dope sheet.
The image drawings for movement are then tested
Then a story reel is created

There are three main types of animation: traditional, stop motion, and computer generated:

Traditional animation involves drawing every frame of a film by hand. After all the drawings are completed and colored, they can be photographed or scanned into a computer and then combined with sound on film
In Stop Motion, animators manipulate and photograph objects one motion and frame at a time. The objects can be almost anything, ranging from clay figures to paper cut outs to household objects. Some stop motion films use actual people, who hold specific poses for individual frames.
Animators can also use computer software to create films and models, which is generally faster than the traditional method.

Projects:

Pixar-In-A-Box Project:

Photoshop: Simple Animations:

Animations with MIT’s SCRATCH:

Just for fun: