animation techniques

As you can see from this video, made on Toon Boom V.3, that the balls squash and stretch are rather exaggerated. In real life a ball would not quite bounce like that or squash like that, its exaggerated for comic effect.
You will find this technique is proven quite popular amongst animators, its helps make an object seem 'alive'. Though for rigid objects like chairs and tables this rule does not apply, unless it is the wish of the animator to make them 'alive' in such a way that it requires a squash and stretch.

Disney, though a fan of realism, tended to make use of squash and stretch techniques to make objects, characters and cartoons have a more comic effect that the audience would like. He started this trend with the seven dwarfs, giving their movements are more comic feel.

Arcs:
But another aspect of this animation is the curve or arc that it is following. Object dont move in straight lines. For example, if you move your arms from your head to you side its an arc movement you make. So by giving your objects an arc to follow its make more realistic. For comic effect the arc may be discarded, but it has to be done very well otherwise the audiences wont like it.

One thing to remember whilst animating is that whatever you animate will keep the same volume as when you started. It doesn't change, if it does halfway through your animation your audience will notice and it will be taken as a mistake.

Exaggeration:

Exaggeration is used to express a characters range of emotions and characteristics. But as the rule for stage goes;
'exaggerate you actions and re-actions by 10'
The same rule applies for animations. The reason we do this is simple, its makes it easier and clearer for an audience to understand that a character is expressing an emotion. Like anger, if they a really angry they will tend shrink into themselves, shaking and their entire face going red, or the ever so popular steam coming out of the ears, like we do this in reality-no, but it does get across the point of anger as well as adding a comic effect to it all.
But then again this element has got to have a balance, although it is good to exaggerate certain scenes or emotions, take care not to do it too much as important scenes that require little actions and more sympathy will be drowned and wont make any impact at all.
So balance is also a required element.

Anticipation:

Anticipation, a technique used to prepare the audience for what is about to happen next. There are 3 stages:

-before
-the action
-the end

As stated before it usually used to prepare an audience for what is about to happen, usually before an important event. For example, when someone is about to throw a ball there goes back in arc, then forward again, then at the peak of the throw/arc they let go.
How do we know what action they are doing, through anticipation. By watching where his arm is going we assume the next course action, which be throwing.
But not only do we anticipate from these actions what will happen, we anticipate how it will happen. If the throw is done with sheer force (for example in a game of baseball) you see the body curl into itself then let go with amazing speed hurling the ball forward. We anticipate from the persons body action the speed and strength of the throw.

This applies for all actions, whether they be big or small in animation. Anticipation is an important technique that allows the viewer to get more involved with the animation itself.

Eva character design

Its again a rough sketching of Eva, she does need work but for now this is how she appears in my head. Well maybe not exactly but very close. The book i notice is very tiny! Maybe she's a fantastic reader XD oh well.

Finished script

Yey my script of No Way is finaly finished.
It feels a tad rushed, but its done. The ending is slightly different from what we had discussed and i had problems with what to fill the middle of our script with.

You see when we talked about it in class, we came up with the idea-
-dark comedy

Who about?
-originaly about us, soon changed to 3 students

Who are the character based on and what is the one thing that makes them, them?
-They are based on us
-My character Amy (me) is completely obssesed with the 360
-Lynnes character Eva, not sure if it was pc or an ipod she was obssesed about
-Maui character Kai, obsessed with Manga

What about?
-Living together

What was the main factor that pulled the story together?
-Haunted home

Ok so how will it end?
-each student will die

How will they die?
-Stupid and completely unrelated to a haunting

So as you can see we worked backward a little and made it difficult to fill in the middle. I hope the script it to the groups liking and reads well.

Lip Synching and walk cycle.

This is actually a link to my first year animation. It demonstrates my attempt at a walk cycle and lip synching. It's not particularly great but does what it says on the tin.
This was was done on Toon Boom V.3:


About lip synching:
Lip synching on toon boom was fairly easily done. It was a case of uploading the sound onto the software and drawing the letter recommended for each vowel/sound. Lip synching is done on the theory that each word you speak has many different shapes and sounds. So to break it down for animators they broke the shapes down into letter like; A,E,O,V and so on, these are common shapes the mouth uses when speaking and so the basics are covered.
But there is more to lip synching than just shapes. There is also expression, emotion and atmosphere and characteristics. Such as anger, when something is said in anger that sentence tend to get more tense and aggressive and is very different from a happy one. If a character has a stutter or a lisp it makes it more difficult to animate as you have to animate both the stutter/lips as well as the sentence.
So you can see that it perhaps isn't the easier job to do but toon boom helps in making the process easier.

Walking:
Walk cycles, tedious and annoying at times but still has to be done in order to create a realistic walk. There are several frames in a walk cycle and to miss even on makes the walk unrealistic and jumpy. You can tell from a few scenes in my own animation how it looks when even one is missed out. Another point is that you dont move the figure across the screen, in fact you keep it still, moving on the spot. But what you do move is in fact the back ground, this gives the impression of a moving figure.

Kai sketch

as you can guess this is my sketch of Kai.
Very rough and basic, needs a bit more work.

Flash vs Toon boom

Well what can i say, I only really used flash once or twice in first year. I was then introduced to Toon boom. I have used Toon boom ever since. My simple reason being that i found it much easier to navigate than flash.

Why?
-Firstly Toon booms interface is a lot more user friendly. Its clearly labelled where everything is.
-The interface itself is much easier to use simply because its outlined for you. You have your layers (reminds me photoshop), exposure sheet, onion skin, lip synching tool, camera tool and the painting tools, all there for you.

Whereas with flash i found it much harder to navigate. Instead of an exposure sheet you have a timline, this i couldn't get my head round. Its clearly labeled where everything is and does not have the lip synching tool. This is more time consuming.

Though flash does have its pros:
It seems to respond better to my graphics tablet
-the drawing come out better
-The colouring looks better
and is faster to use, even though it doesn't have a lip synching tool.
-and it can be used for a web design module as it allow for that as well.

So although flash seems more complex its actualy just down to preference and ease of use.
I still prefer toon boom, its easier to use i understand what i am doing and i dont get confused with which layer or slot i am in as it has the onion skin an layers, that as said before is klike using photoshop. The lip synching tool also help to speed up the process.

Some prefer flash and will swear by it, i will use toon boom.

Suprise suprise

Tonight i decided to look for some downloadable sound effects for the final animation. I went to search for thing i was sure of that would be used. Like walking and the fire.
I thought it would take me ages but it really didn't.

I came across a gem of a site to download everything you could ever possibly need for animations.

http://www.sounddogs.com/catsearch.asp?Type=1

This website is free to use, plus it provides EVERYTHING!
when i say everything i mean everything! from babies crying to atmosphere and ambience. Every effect you could ever possibly need is here and free for you to use.

I highly recomend this website to anyone who wishes to continue in animation and finds it difficult to acquire certain sounds. I have a already downloaded quite a few that i think i will be needed in our final animatic.