Stop-motion animation principles

Stop -motion animation principles

I have chosen four principles of stop-motion animation to present. My four are: Timing, Exaggeration, Solid Drawing, and Appeal.

Timing
The idea is that the more drawings you have between poses, the slower and smoother the animation will look. The fewer drawings you have between poses, the faster and crisper the animation will look. Combining slower movements and faster movements makes the animation more visually interesting, and adds more texture to the animation as well. Generally animation is done on twos (a drawing photographed twice on frames or film) or ones (a drawing photographed on one frame or film). Twos are mainly used, but ones are used when a subject is moving (car moving, pan flipping) or for a small movement with a little bit of dialogue. Timing is also used to display emotion in a character, especially when one character is reacting to another characters movement or situation. Actors are often studied to help animators create movement when using animation. Film is an excellent way to study and understand this process of "timing".

Exaggeration
The principle 'Exaggeration"in animation is completely opposite of the word "exaggeration". The principle actually means the facial expressions and actions of a person. Actions traced from live action film can be accurate, but not life-like. For feature animation, characters only move broadly to look life-like, this also applies to facial expressions, but the action shouldn't be as broad to resemble a cartoon style. Exaggeration can help make even the smallest movements make your animation have more appeal. Use common sense and ideas to make sure that your animation doesn't become to life-like.

Solid Drawing
Solid Drawing refers to the way that you display form, weight, volume solidity, and the illusion of three dimensional styles to make your drawing look professional. This refers to the way you draw drawings, while using pencil sketches to reproduce life. You can transform these into colour and movement, thus giving your characters the illusion of three-and four-dimensional life. Three dimensional is movement in space, while fourth dimensional is movement in time.

Appeal
Appealing animation isn't cute or cuddly, it's something useful that all characters have, even when they are evil, heroic, cute, etc. Appeal is a clear drawing, easy to read design, and personality development which helps build a character. Artists have learned how to produce a feature that was needed for story continuity, character development had started to increase and evolve to create a higher quality of artwork. The feature had to be mentally appealing as well as visually appealing.

Here's a video that shows all twelve principles of animation.

Hope you enjoyed this video, and in your spare time try to search up other techniques in art and animating, you'll never know what new things you might learn! Have a happy day!

Shakespeare statue

"Shakespeare statue"

 While visiting Stratford this Summer, I went to the Stratford theatre and I saw many of their displays and statues they had outside such as: gardens, ponds, columns, pillars, bronze etched acknowledgement plaques, sundials, statues, etc. After watching one of the theatre's many great plays (Merchant Of Venice actually), I went outside to do some site seeing around the building.
 I was quite impressed with what they had to offer in terms of land structure and decor, and then I found this- the statue of Shakespeare himself, seeming to be made out of a base metal or silver, was standing atop a small platform.
 He was enclosed by a sundial that circled around him. Directly in front of him was a silver-ish looking tablet (which was quite long in length) that proclaimed the history of Shakespeare and the history of the theatre itself. It looked very interesting, so I took a picture of it to keep as a souvenir.

 I had a great time in Stratford, and try visiting some cool places this Winter, who knows what you'll discover. Don't forget to read up about Shakespeare, he had an interesting life and even more amazing plays written by himself. Hope you enjoyed this post, and have a happy day!

Stop-motion animation tips

Stop-motion animation tips and tricks

I was searching through the internet for a video about stop-motion animation tips and tricks and here's a neat one that I stumbled upon that I think is useful. Take a look at it. The video is about animating facial features with a character in stop-motion animation.

 

This tutorial is about how to animate facial features with a character in stop-motion animation. I feel that this is a useful video, because without proper facial expressions in a character, a story cannot be told properly in stop-motion animation. I feel that without a decent understandable story, animation is just pictures with words attached to them. This video also helps stop-motion animation rookies with developing their characters and properly preparing their characters to be used in the spotlight.

 I also found a few short tutorial videos on the whole process of stop-motion animation. Here's the videos in order.
                                       
The first video:
                                        Sony's guide to stop motion animation: tutorial 1

The second one:
                                          Sony's guide to stop motion animation: tutorial 2

The third one:
                                        Sony's guide to stop motion animation: tutorial 3

And the fourth one:
                                       Sony's guide to stop motion animation: tutorial 4

Optical Toys- The Magic Lantern

Optical toys- The Magic Lantern

History:
The Magic Lantern was created in the 1600's and ever since then, it has played an important role in the history of entertainment. Magic Lantern's are basically old versions of slide projectors, but with a couple of strong differences.
 Magic Lantern's used fire to illuminate the slides, whereas slide projectors used electricity. The shape of the slides are different too. Magic Lanterns had slides that were big, bulky pieces of glass that were held together with wood or metal. Today's slides are the exact opposite, since they are lightweight, thin, and came in single frames. Magic Lanterns also have mechanical features that had limited movement of one or more slides within a projector, which is something that modern slide projectors don't have. Lastly, lots of Magic Lanterns could display images that were more complex than more modern day slide projectors.
                                                        "Magic Lantern"

Here's the link to the website that I found the information on:
http://courses.ncssm.edu/gallery/collections/toys/html/exhibit02.htm

How it works:
A Magic Lantern has seven working areas: The lamp, reflector, condensing lens, lens tube, body, base, and smokestack.
 The lamp is the only source of light, which usually came from burning oil or gas, or calcium, or eventually, electricity. The job of the reflector is to reflect the light from the lamp toward the condensing lens, which concentrates light onto a slide that is being projected. The lens tube magnifies the illuminated slide so the image from six to twelve feet wide is allowed to be obtained. The body is usually made out of complete metal, and is a shell for all of the areas said earlier except for the lens tube. The base elevates the Magic Lantern when it's atop a table. This part is used to make sure that the table doesn't get burned, since the lantern heats up and gets very hot at times. Lastly, the smokestack vents out the smoke coming from the lamp, so that way the smoke doesn't get trapped inside of the lamp and causes the lamp to be caught on fire.
 Hand-painted or photographic slides are inserted horizontally between the condensing lens and lens tube, through metal runners at the top and bottom.
 Someone who is skilled in using a Magic Lantern can flip through the images quickly and make them appear to be moving, creating the illusion of movement. Some slides create detailed, fast moving displays, which says that The Magic Lantern isn't just a still image displayer.

The site:
The site that I had found the information about the optical devices on had a neat and orderly layout, and the information on the optical devices was easy to access and understand as well.

What I find interesting about The Magic Lantern:
What I find interesting about The Magic Lantern is the process of how it creates an animated display and the history of it.
 I've heard a little bit about Magic Lanterns before, but I've never heard the whole history about it in this way. It has an interesting and complex history and process on how it creates visual displays, and it has a very alluring appearance.
 In conclusion, I feel that The Magic Lantern is an important part of the history of animation since it influenced the making of the modern day slide projector, and it helped to revolutionize the evolution of animation, and I personally think that Magic Lanterns are intriguing and amazing. 

Stop-motion animation

Stop-motion animation

I was watching some interesting stop-motion animation videos in CyberARTS class today and here's one that I really enjoyed.
It's called "GULP".                            

                                  I was watching the video on how it was made also.
                                                           GULP the making of.

 I learned that "GULP" was actually made on a nikon camera, and that it was created using real-life objects and people. They used a crane to shoot most of their scenes, which I thought was pretty cool. An interesting technique that I noticed that they used was that they used garden tools (rakes, hoes, etc) to create most of the scenery (sea, birds, etc) in the video. They also used a "Pixelator" to replace using a constructed puppet. A "Pixelator" is a human puppet essentially. They also used a bluetooth keyboard to control the camera, and they also have a video feed to the monitor which gives a video feed to all 3 cameras which gives a view to what they're shooting and what's happening. I learned that stop-motion animation takes a lot of precision and skill to execute properly.

Here's another really cool stop-motion animation video that I found it's called "Fireworks" By Pez. I was interested by the unusual materials and objects that were used in the video. 

Hope you all enjoy watching these videos, and try to search up other techniques and videos on stop-motion animation and how it's made. Have a happy day, Bye!