Release. Pressure. Animate.

Recommendations

Info

straight ahead approach. It‟s a balance between planning and spontaneity. It‟s a balance between cold bloodedness and passion. The list on straight forward and pose-to-pose combination from Animator‟s Survival Kit. (Thomas, Johnston, 1995) Combining these is really the best of both worlds and is widely used in bigger productions. The animator generally starts by planning out the action of key elements in small thumbnail sketches, finding good convincing poses for the character. If these small sketches can portray the emotions, he works them out as bigger drawings and makes them the storytelling drawings, the keys, for use in the animation. Then he adds in all those others that really have to be there, called the extremes. Up to now it resembles the pose to pose fashion. Then the animator uses these as guides for things, poses and places he wants to aim for as he starts doing straight forward animation. But he‟ll do one thing at a time, taking the most important things first and skipping parts that need follow through like a tail or hat, but even arms or the head might be skipped. There‟ll be several runs on the different parts of the character and he may have to change and revise parts of the drawn keys and extremes as he goes along (making them even better.) But first he focuses only on the important parts. When that‟s done there‟s a „primary‟ animation that can be tested and run to check timing, storytelling and so forth. So he‟s checking whether the general concept is there. Now he‟s done a full straight ahead run on the primary thing and he should do so for every part ending with the hair, tail or other flapping bits at the end. After the first pass showing the general key elements of the shot he can already show the director, supervisor and/or team members exactly what he‟s aiming for and what he‟ll be creating. He‟ll then work intuitively – straight forward - to create what he‟s planned out while aiming for those strong key poses on the right place and right time. Since he knows beforehand what the character will constantly do next there‟s more information already laid out for him. So when he‟s straight forward animating his mind is relieved from remembering what he was aiming for or what timing he should aim for. Adding the planning (thumbnail sketches and the keys from pose to pose) at the start for general testing of the ideas he has in mind is extremely useful. This is an extremely useful blueprint for animation, comparable to the line test stop motion animators use as their blueprint for animating. Blending the methods like this really makes for the best of both sides and can also easily be – and is sometimes already – adopted by 3D animators. 2. The difference in Animation fields 3 4
It‟s hard to have a clear distinction between the traditional (analogue) animation workflow and the digital (paperless) animation workflow as many bigger studios have switched towards a digital paperless pipeline for most (but not all) parts of the production. So, because of that I‟ll now be introducing some of the digital productions and comments on the workflow as an outro for this paragraph and a small intro for the next. About every traditional animator has switched to the digital environment for one or more stages in production. Sandro Cluezo, a traditional animation veteran (26 years), scans his drawings to get them into digital software for pencil tests, inking and painting (coloring.) His overall workflow stays the same: rough drawing/thumbnails, testing, cleaning, recording (scanning), ink and paint, etc. If it were fully traditional, ink and paint would‟ve been done before the recording. Cluezo mentions that he‟s rather traditional, but as we‟ll see in the next chapter it‟s quite the same as being used nowadays on digital 2D animation as well. But planning and organization stays key in production; with first the storyboard and character sheets then the layouts and animation start kicking in, where after the coloring process comes in. When the animator starts animating much is already set as distinct goal within the storyboard and tests. Often timing is already rather precise and definitive. This helps the animator with keeping focus as I‟ve already discussed before. Through the years Disney also switched to the digital animation world with the creation of their system called CAPS (Computer Animation Production System, developed in the late-80s), because of the related benefits the digital workflow has. They started digitizing their drawings and inking them on the computer as this was easier and cheaper compared to the traditional way. Later Disney even stopped making 2D animations in favor of the 3D animation department and sold lots of their 2D equipment already. Though, with Princess and the Frog (2009) the animators were having trouble with the digital workflow (with Wacom Cintiqs and Toon Boom Animation‟s Toon Boom Harmony software) and chose to do it with paper and pencil drawings, like they did in the good ol‟ days. The way the „digital‟ pen of a Wacom cintiq slides is made to mimic the feeling of drawing on paper, though for some – especially the old and experienced – it just doesn‟t cut it compared to some good ol‟ pencil and paper they‟ve grown comfortable with. We can easily see the rustiness of an old comfortably working man who doesn‟t want to switch „trades‟ and rather goes analogue instead of digital coming in here. Again, he‟s willing to try, but if the new approach starts taking too much time to feel comfortable with it‟s hard for anyone to adjust or try believing it will be beneficial at all. Especially when achieving a certain effects is easier with a more traditional approach there‟s a clear reason to choose for one over the other. 2. The difference in Animation fields 3 5
Page 1 and 2: PRESSURE. RELEASE. ANIMATE. How to
Page 3 and 4: “Art challenges technology. Techn
Page 5 and 6: Table of Contents Table of Contents
Page 7 and 8: Introduction Not a very long time a
Page 9 and 10: This is all evolving around the mai
Page 11 and 12: There are two difficulties in discu
Page 13 and 14: 1.2 How can a flow be maintained or
Page 15 and 16: this piece of art - posing the char
Page 17 and 18: You know that feeling when you watc
Page 19 and 20: without any reference or sketching.
Page 21 and 22: 2.1 Animating like a puppeteer. (St
Page 23 and 24: ond with the character often create
Page 25 and 26: everything done smoothly at the mom
Page 27 and 28: same, hence a „tick‟ of the lig
Page 29 and 30: This paragraph is about what in gen
Page 31 and 32: “Too much action spoils the actin
Page 33 and 34: working clean and keeping your head
Page 35 and 36: think in the ways of those strong p
Page 37 and 38: the motion and action of the charac
Page 39: this can be a reliable way for „i
Page 43 and 44: the background. Any distraction at
Page 45 and 46: or the mixed approach as described
Page 47 and 48: customizing and tweaking the whole
Page 49 and 50: as the character parts don‟t actu
Page 51 and 52: As with traditional animation and m
Page 53 and 54: example you could divide the pipeli
Page 55 and 56: ecognizable style on its own, but f
Page 57 and 58: issue. “While early production mo
Page 59 and 60: There‟s a need for a strict goal
Page 61 and 62: Simplicity is what animators seem t
Page 63 and 64: Simple thinking Complex effects Ful
Page 65 and 66: creating a thorough plan that doesn
Page 67 and 68: Because using the early computer sy
Page 69 and 70: work you‟re looking at, regardles
Page 71 and 72: we‟ll see. According to a job des
Page 73 and 74: day polishing splines, arcs and spa
Page 75 and 76: It‟s important to allow supervisi
Page 77 and 78: doesn‟t. For him they were mainly
Page 79 and 80: - Discuss with supervisor. - Animat
Page 81 and 82: the animator (like reviews by the s
Page 83 and 84: By now I‟ve presented the importa
Page 85 and 86: the final movie too. They might see
Page 87 and 88: progression of the shot before star
Page 89 and 90: In management I‟ve noticed while
Page 91 and 92:
already know exactly what pose happ
Page 93 and 94:
(Autodesk Whitepaper - The New Art
Page 95 and 96:
with a limited amount of informatio
Page 97 and 98:
information to be (possibly) presen
Page 99 and 100:
for. Sometimes it is necessary to a
Page 101 and 102:
pop out is simplicity. For every ta
Page 103 and 104:
goals (based off of storyboard and
Page 105 and 106:
up and shut it down instead of a co
Page 107 and 108:
development 22 . Since the tracking
Page 109 and 110:
The same accounts for playing the a
Page 111 and 112:
animation studios, and if it were u
Page 113 and 114:
on it, as well as use it automatica
Page 115 and 116:
offer functionality for this in a r
Page 117 and 118:
guessing right away what the best t
Page 119 and 120:
to focus on only these parts and ma
Page 121 and 122:
een developed through the years for
Page 123 and 124:
data to handle through the years se
Page 125 and 126:
applying it to your objects animati
Page 127 and 128:
allows you to quickly sculpt tweaks
Page 129 and 130:
quickly and easily check your anima
Page 131 and 132:
without worrying about what and whe
Page 133 and 134:
viewing and commenting accordingly
Page 135 and 136:
stimulation might interfere with ac
Page 137 and 138:
A picture depicting an overview of
Page 139 and 140:
of the animating) could need this t
Page 141 and 142:
tools that really helped with the c
Page 143 and 144:
never really ended up using it as f
Page 145 and 146:
But looking at the character from t
Page 147 and 148:
otate around his head took me at mo
Page 149 and 150:
As stated we worked faster and were
Page 151 and 152:
Conclusion The main focus of my res
Page 153 and 154:
management, start using it and twea
Page 155 and 156:
Reference Sources Animation Mentor
Page 157 and 158:
Hoffman, Hans; T. Weeks, Sara; H. H
Page 159 and 160:
1. Workflow and Pipeline clarificat
show all

Release. Pressure. Animate.

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?