Petros Vrellis has created an interactive animation of Vincent Van Gogh's painting'The starry night'. Left alone, the visualization sends the paint daubs of the saint-rémy night sky into swirling patterns of motion, governed by the mathematics of particle dynamics. A touch interface allows viewers to deform the image, altering both the particle flow and the sound. When not touched, the visualization will return to its natural state.
Childhood Ghosts is an interactive animation created by Eric John Olson using Open Frameworks with a series of hand drawn frames of a child. The installation allows visitors to engage digital character via a set of predefined tracked movements, a sort of discovery to make the character react and come alive.
12 Principles
used in the animation Luxor Junior, (1986).
Timing
The ball
rolls up and bounces off the Mother lamp.
Junior lamp
enters the scene and jumps faster at first, before slowing down and then
stopping.
Squash and stretch
Junior lamp
jumps on the ball.
Slow In and Slow Out
Ball rolling slowly
and then gets faster to hit the bigger lamp.
Junior came
and rolled the ball back and forth.
Arcs of Motion
Lamps swing
heads in an arc.
They turn
their body as an arc shape.
Junior lamp
balances on its base as it moves off the burst ball.
Anticipation
Mother lamp looks
at the ball then rolls it off-screen only for it to come back again.
Junior lamp
jumps on the ball before bending down, and shakes to prepare him
for the next jump.
Exaggeration
Junior lamp jumps
on the letter.
Junior also jumps
on the ball and tries to keeps his balance.
Junior lamp’s
wire moves like its waving in an exaggerated manner.
Secondary Action
The junior
lamps jump is his first action, and then he shakes, tilts and moves his head
creating another action.
The Mother lamp and junior lamp are moving while their cables move too.
Follow Through and Overlapping Action
A good
example of Follow Through and Overlapping action is the motion of the junior lamp’s cable as he hops and the motions of the squashed ball when the junior lamp flips it over.
When the junior lamp hops he creates a follow through ‘wave’ effect in the cable
attached to him. When he flips over the squashed ball there is a similar action,
but also an overlapping action.
Straight Ahead & Pose-to-Pose
The ball
rolled forward and backwards in the frame. ( The Mother ball is rolled in and out of frame non-stop)
The ball rolls
into the frame again, stays motionless and rolled back out.
Staging
The dark simple background and spotlight keeps the audience
attention and helps to focus on the lamps.
Appeal
The characters in this animation have plenty of appeal.
Their colours, shape and form are realistic, but also simply illustrated. The
junior lamp has characteristics which are cute and appealing, for example the
way he hops and ‘wiggles’ and his energy and determination. This helps to
develop a pleasing and likeable personality to the audience. The mother lamp
has realistic characteristics of a mother. She seems patient and gentle and
more responsible than the junior lamp. Her ‘loving’ nature is her appeal.
Both lamps are drawn very clearly and look realistic. Their
characteristics and appearance are very likeable.
Mother lamp looks wiser and mature, the smaller junior lamp,
more cuddly and exciting like a kitten.
Solid Drawing
Both Characters shape and weight are illustrated very well,
and you can feel their form and motion when you watch the clip.
Storyboard visually tells the story of an
animation panel by panel, kind of like a comic book. Creating a storyboard will
help you plan your animation out shot by shot. You can make changes to your
storyboard before you start animating, instead of changing your mind later. You
will also be able to talk about your animation and show your storyboard to other
people to get feedback on your ideas.
The twelve
principles of animation were created in the early 1930s by animators at the
Walt Disney Studios. These principles were used to guide production and
creative discussions as well to train young animators better and faster. These
twelve principles became one of the foundations of hand-drawn cartoon character
animation. The twelve principles, as they are commonly referred to, also helped
to transform animation from a novelty into an art form. By applying these
principles to their work these pioneering animators produced many of the
earliest animated feature films that became classics: Snow White (1937),
Pinocchio and Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942).
1.Timing
Timing is the
precise moment and the amount of time that a character spends on an action.
Timing adds emotion and intention to the characters performance. Timing can
also be controlled and adjusted by placing each character on a separate track,
and using sub-tracks for parts of the character such as head, torso, arms and
legs.
1.Squash and
Stretch
One of the important
principles from the original twelve is used to exaggerate the amount of
non-rigid body deformations usually with the purpose of achieving a more
comedic effect. Many real world objects have little flexibility, such as
furniture, however most organic objects have some level of flexibility in their
shape.
Take for
example a bouncing ball.
BODY BEAUTIFUL
an Animated Film by Joanna Quinn
1.Slow In and
Slow Out
Slow-in and
slow-out consist of slowing down the beginning and the end of an action, while
speeding up the middle of it. A snappy effect is achieved when motion is
accelerated and retarded in this way.
1.Arcs of
Motion
Using arcs to
animate the movements of characters helps achieve a natural look because most
living creatures move in curved paths, never in perfectly straight lines.
Non-arc motion comes across as sinister, restricted or robotic.
5. Anticipation
Anticipation
is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear
more realistic. A dancer jumping off the floor has to bend his knees first; a
golfer making a swing has to swing the club.
1.Exaggeration
Exaggeration usually helps cartoon characters
to deliver the essence of an action. A lot of exaggeration can be achieved with
squash and stretch.
Secondary Action
Adding
secondary actions to the main action gives a scene more life, and can help to
support the main action. A person walking can simultaneously swing his arms or
keep them in his pockets, he can speak or whistle or he can express emotions
through facial expressions.
Follow Through
and Overlapping Action
Follow-through
and overlapping action are two techniques that help make the action richer and
fuller with detail and subtlety. Follow-through action consists of the
reactions of the character after an action, and it usually lets audiences know
how he or she feels about what has just happened or is about to happen.
Straight Ahead
& Pose-to-Pose
Straight-ahead
action and pose-to-pose are two different animation techniques that yield
fairly different results. In
straight-ahead action the character moves spontaneously through the action one
step at a time until the action is finished.
Pose-to-pose
action became the standard animation technique because it breaks down
structured motion into a series of clearly defined key poses. The extremes of the actual movement are
defined first with the in between scenes being installed afterwards.
Staging
Staging the animation
means setting the scene – attracting the viewer’s attention and focusing it on
a particular subject or area of the screen before the action takes place. You
must remember that the viewers don’t have the luxury of knowing what is about
to happen in your animation, so if something moves very quickly, they may not
have time enough to realize what is going on.
Appeal
Character
personality, or appeal as it was originally called, facilitates the emotional
connection between character and audience. Characters must be well developed,
have an interesting personality, and have a clear set of desires or needs that
drive their behaviour and actions.
Traditional
Disney went for an aesthetically pleasing look with their Princesses and
creatures such as Bambi and Thumper.
Modern day
Disney Pixar characters such as Carl and Russell
Solid Drawing
Solid drawing
as it was called in the 1930s emphasizes the clear delineation of shape
necessary to bring animated characters to life. Solid and precise drawings
helps to convey the weight, depth and balance of the character, and it also
simplifies potential production complications due to poorly drawn characters.
Here is more
solid drawing and direct animation by Bob McKimson
How all the
wrinkles wrap around the characters' forms and in perspective when they tilt
their heads.
Animation
loop essentially uses the same bit of animation over and over again; it is
easily detected and can in fact become distracting to an audience.
I choose two animations
which are used in a loop technique.
Disney
brought “believability" to animation that wasn't there to begin with. ...
Goofy, and Donald Duck, are made to cope with the overwhelming impersonality of
a ... drawings, and hence enhance cartoons with a new "believability
principle.
I choose this
amazing animation which has lots of believability principle .I like this black
and white Animation, Successful relationship between music and scene.
silly symphony -
the skeleton dance 1929 Disney short
My all-time
favourite Donald Duck
If a cartoon
is too realistic the reader will instinctively relate it into his own world and
become uncanny about the mismatches that there eventually are. Any good
cartoon, or fiction for that matter, builds up its own universe and makes it
clear to the reader what genre this is. One would never hear a critic say that
Donald Duck is an unrealistic character.
Synecdoche is
closely related to metonymy (the figure of speech in which a term denoting one
thing is used to refer to a related thing); indeed, synecdoche is sometimes
considered a subclass of metonymy. It is more distantly related to other
figures of speech, such as metaphor. (Wikipedia)
Erica Russell "Triangle"
Beautiful
Animation maybe even better than "Feet of Song" I keep looking at it
over and over and over again. I love the line, quality and rhythm is
particularly moving.
.
The
association is with the triangle shape, in a human context involving the introduction
of a second woman into the mix. This triggers a dynamic of jealousy and rage,
though it seems reconciled at the end.
The
perspective should be that of a dancer to appreciate the elastic movements of
the dancers, the give and take of their relationship, and the sexually charged
chemistry as two young lovers embrace before the arrival of another woman to
the triangle of love. A painter too would appreciate the lush use of colour.
There is passion here that unifies the arts
Can you have a look at this piece of work and comment on your blog on what you consider to be some of the metaphors being used?
TheBig Snit
This is a
great example of the use of metaphor in animation. Some types of metaphor’s
being used are:
Butterfly >Represent
of Short happiness of life before the nuclear war, holocaust and poverty has begun.
Eye> the
husband complains about his wife's habit of shaking her eyes. This is a Metaphor
of her frustration at her husband taking his time with his turn at scrabble and
his “sawing” distraction.
Sawing>Husband
has the bad habit of sawing from watching the TV show "Sawing for
Teens" They barely notice that there is panic in the streets. Sawing the table
and furniture may Metaphor of Life is depressing and stressing enough.
Wings>
There is life after death – Everyone maybe dead but finally they are at peace
and happy.
Cage> cat
swinging off the bird cage. Maybe represent of their marriage life from his
side.
Heart in the eye>
Metaphor Love. After all this frustration and distressing about their marriage
there are still love each other. Till death do us part?
The skeleton
news presenter> represent of nuclear war which they don't notice that a
nuclear war has begun.
This video helped me a lot to understand more about condensation, and I've loved this animation since the first time I saw it years ago. It’s says so mush without words of dialogue. The song in this is sung by Lucy Wainwright Roche.
