Conventions of animation- Anticipation.

The objective of today was to be able to recognise the mechanic of animation known as anticipation. The best way to fully understand anticipation is by going through the two main types of anticipation which are (psychological / mechanical anticipation.

An example could be a long distance run in the olympics at the beginning of the run where the runner begin in a crouched position with their backs straight , both feet in position . The final position would be the whole body gets up again ready to thrust itself to run in order to gain more momentum in order to get ahead of the other runners . The writer if this blog has tried to demonstrate this by creating two animation where two balls are bouncing up & down.

This is a 3D animation of a Small & Large ball as they begin their ascent from the ground to the sky then back to the ground. At the beginning of the animation both balls display the correct weight being  encouraged by gravity. As the gravity allows them to go that is where the animation shows it's weak points . The aim of the exercise was to create anticipation the animator felt that the bounce felt too forced & mechanical . This is exactly the error which the animator hopes to avoid making again in the next exercise. But the next exercise might prove to be difficult as there is more characterisation to the story as well ad the main character.

                                              

The second exercise was to create an animation of a ball going up a diving board then bouncing off a diving board into a pool. If someone could replicate the movement of a human being going up the stairs then bouncing off a diving board then that would be considered to be well observed & brilliant. 

As the animator reviews his animation he began by thinking that the start of the animation was fine as he was able to create a number of movements where the ball climbs the stairs .However the aspects that could make the flow of the animation better would be the jump on the diving board , the last moment of the jump into the pool. 

The part of the animation with the jump could have done with one or two more key frames in order to make the jump seem more fluent. The second part of the animation that needed improving was the last moments of the dive which really needed dressing at the start of the jump. Maybe the animator could have made sure that he placed the ball in a reasonable position where the jump would have seemed perfect & not confusing at the end. Unless the animator wanted to make his character create a 360 flip as he dives into the pool. That could be one possibility but you would have to ease the animator of his intentions to understand what he wants to get across to the target audience.

                                     

So to summarise physiological anticipation is when the mind registers the next movement before it occurs . The reason behind this notion is due to the fact that your eye examine movement all the time & is able to register what will next as a result. Mechanical anticipation is when you are able to tell the   difference between unnatural movements from natural movements .An animator will be able to tell when his characters appear to have flaws in an stage of their animations.

Here is a famous animation known as space jam & the reason that it has been included in this blog post was due to the fact that one of the last scenes display anticipation brilliantly. The scene that proved to be most useful was the part where Michael Jordon's arm extended all the way to the basketball net . 

                                                 

Character modelling _ Toy Exercise

This blog post is all about researching pre-school toys then recreating the chosen pre school toy in Autodesk Maya. This test proved to be effective as it allowed the creator to reflect & ponder into the future to have a glimpse of how he would would cope working for a real company such as Team 17 in Leeds , Blue Monkey , Team Lemon etc.

Ali managed to create the wooden box as well as the shapes using the basic primitives in Autodesk Maya. The only difficult part of the task was to come up with an idea of a toy that would prove to be fun yet educational for pre- school children.

But if there was anything else that could be done to improve the 3D toys then the correct approach would be to add some lighting / basic  textures etc. The whole point behind these methods are to bring the objects to life , giving them a certain ambience.

Looking at industry standard the 3D renders of the wooden box , wooden primitives are at an average level . However there is significant improvements that could be incorporated in order to make the objects more appealing to the public eyes in particular the target audience who are Pre school children. 

Conventions of Animation _ Slow in Slow out

The aim of this week's objective in the convention of animation class was to understand the theory of slow in & slow out .The reason for this exercise was to gain an understanding being the theory of an object's impact as it hits another object creating a chain reaction .

 The chain reaction will create a number of actions that will continue for a certain period of time.To understand the concept of slow in & slow out better many people have recreated two dimensional / three dimensional animations  showing their interpretations . But few of them have managed to replicate the correct reactions due to lack of observations / lack of video references .

The main problem that could occur whilst trying to conduct this particular mechanic of animation will be the fact that certain parts of the animation will appear to be jumpy. For an example one or two of the newton balls might appear to be out of sequence with the rest of the newton balls.

The solution to this problem is simply trial & error which may take a while if you are a beginner in animation. The other solution would be to watch videos of newton balls to observe their movements . Once you have managed to understand & recognise the technique of the physics of Newton's balls will you be able to replicate the same in two dimensional / three dimensional animation.

                                               

The first exercise was to animate a newton's ball swinging from side to side whilst taking two main factors into consideration . The two factors that is demonstrated in these two exercises are known as slow , slow out . The student who create this animation tried his best to create an animation of Newton's ball that would be similar to a real life version of Newton's ball .  

Althought the animation may seem okay it is still rather jumpy as it took many attempts to get the correct poses in each frame , the timing of the exchange from one frame to another . This was down to the research where the student look at reference videos from you tube on Newton's balls . Some would show the two middle balls moving with the reaction of the two end balls , some would show the two middle balls staying still. It was really down to the student's judgement , persistence of vision. 

Conventions of Animation Squash & Stretch .

As an introduction for this weeks task it is best to review last week's task in order to freshen our minds. Today the entire class have to differentiate the difference between Timing & spacing as well as their importance in animation overall. 

One of the student read a book in order to gain a better understanding behind the theory of the animation  techniques .After reading page 7 from a book called  Animation The Mechanics of Motion he came across an interesting fact about the spaces between every single frame "The shorter the distance the slower the action the greater the distance the faster the action". 

A reliable source informed the class that you only need a few key frames to make an animation successful yet effective . The class were informed that the story will always be the main reason behind the success of any animation whether it is two dimensional  or three dimensional  .  

This week the main objective for the whole class was to get their heads around the idea of squash & stretch. The emphasis of the lecturer was based on the weight distribution of any movement of a character within an animation or a bird bouncing. A couple of examples could be a bird swing in it's cage continuously from days on end. Another example might be a yo yo going up & down , a basketball hitting a person in a game of dodge ball then returning back to someone else. 

To understand the concept of squash & stretch there are a number of you tube videos which displays both good/bad examples of squash & stretch mechanics in the following you tube videos .

Here are a couple of examples of 3D animations that could be considered to be successful due to the amount of time that the animator has taken time to look at some video reference of a walk cycle. Only once you have managed to achieve this you can create a successful 3D animation

  

Whereas the unsuccessful example of animation will not have any sense of resemblance to the real world. It will not take the laws of physics into consideration where a bouncing ball is concerned so it will appear to be over exaggerated . Usually the human eye is great at perceiving what is considered to be normal movement for a human being or un natural movement.

Here is a squash & stretch exercise that one of the pupils had attempted to create in Autodesk Maya. However he felt that the main success was reflected in the ball as the squash & stretch was evidently displayed. Whereas the squash & stretch appeared to be unseen in the movement of the dinosaur as it was bouncing up & down from the floor. The student who created the animation will hopefully learn from this exercise & build up on it for future exercises & projects.

                                           

Conventions of Animation - Timing & Spacing

The theme of the lecture today was to take the rest of the class into the origins of animation which eventually led to the first animated device which has been debated by many historians for many reasons.

Last week the animation class were informed that they had to create a learning contract for the rest of the academic year. After going though the lecture slides the class were given a task to make an animation using a flick book or the online version. Ali chose to make a flick book online so he could test it out as he was use to making a flick book using a notepad . But the one advantage of using the online version was that he could easily post the hyper link on his blogger for people to view. After this task the rest of the class were given a research task to find a useful video on using a graph editor .

Everyone had to demonstrate their understanding of the graph editor by using it to control the flow of all four animations which were bouncing balls . Ali found this information from reading  a power point from his lecture , two books that were referred to him by his lecturer which proved to be very useful. These two books were "Animation The Mechanics of Motion" by Chris Webster and the other book was "Timing for Animation" by  Harold Whitaker  John Halas Updated by Tom Sito .

 The research the more he began to realise that timing is definitely the most important aspect of any animation as it allows you the animator to create an element of surprise , anticipation for the viewer. This creates the comedy element which is praised by a  big part of the target audience. Ali's interpretation of spacing is the distance from each individual pose as they drop to the ground then back up . Ali had three tasks to tackle using the 3D software Autodesk Maya. 

                                          

The real challenge was capturing a bouncing ball in motion from the moment you throw it towards the ground , during the descent , on the ground making it's way back to your hands. So you take the flick book principles into consideration & use them exactly the same way for any animation.

                                                    


The second task was to create a bouncing ball  that was exaggeration as it has to look as if it belongs to a cartoon animation .The Flip Book principles still apply as it is a pose to pose animation the only difference is the weight & the durability of the ball into consideration as it hits the ground then bounces back. If you look at professional examples of cartoons such as the famous coyote & Road Runner animation You will understand what Ali is trying to get across to you.  

                                      

 The way that both animations contrast from each other is the timing of each stage of the ball's descent from the diving board to the ground then back up again.As Ali has mentioned before this was due to the gravity , weight of the ball as well as the spaces between the balls as they descent to the ground.


The heavy balls bouncing will be the first one to drop the quickest due to the amount of  weight that is possesses. But it will take it's time to get back up whereas the light ball will take it's time to drop to the ground but it will go back up at a quicker pace as it possesses less weight .

1 Maya Exercise 20 min:     Animate two dropping balls cartoon / physics (same timing different spacing)

2 Maya Exercise 60 min:     Bouncing Balls Light Heavy (demonstrate weight)

Here is an example of bad timing in an animation as it lacks weight , gravity , etc . For example when the lamp hits one of the letters it appears to be out of time therefore it lacks anticipation.