{"id":1644,"date":"2023-07-07T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beaniebopdesigns.com\/caroline517443OCA-illustration2-responding-to-a-brief\/?p=1644"},"modified":"2023-08-19T07:56:28","modified_gmt":"2023-08-19T07:56:28","slug":"exercise-flick-books-and-animated-gifs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.beaniebopdesigns.com\/caroline517443OCA-illustration2-responding-to-a-brief\/part-3-narrative-illustration\/exercise-flick-books-and-animated-gifs\/","title":{"rendered":"Exercise: Flick-books and Animated Gifs"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Loosely playing within the genre of action movies, create some basic flick-books, QuickTime or animated gif animations that involve chases, shoot-outs, or any other staple of the action film. Think 007 films that only take 10 seconds or less!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Initial Thoughts<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I would love to be able to work in animation. I am so keen on learning about animation that I want to understand and have a grasp on the fundamentals, rather than trying to create anything too complicated. It is such a broad-ranging subject and there is so much information to take on board and process that I felt somewhat overwhelmed and unsure of where to begin. I also was feeling more under pressure to finish this part of the unit as I seem to be spending a long time on it (due to narrative illustration being a particular area of interest for me). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have the book The Animator’s Survival Kit<\/em> (2001) by Richard Williams, which I want to work though, but that would require a great deal of time and complete focus as I do not want to learn animation half-heartedly. I also have a selection of tutorial videos by Aaron Blaise<\/a>, including several on the topic of animation. Again, these would require a lot of time to work through properly. It would have been good if this entire section of the unit was focused on animation so I could have dedicated all my attention to it, learning the basics and building on this to create a final piece in the Assignment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bouncing Ball and Walk Cycle<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

I decided to watch some of the Aaron Blaise tutorials by Tim Hodge on DIY Animation. In one of them he outlined how to animate a bouncing ball – the starting point for all aspiring animators. I thought it was interesting that Hodge stated even potential Disney animators have to prove they can animate a bouncing ball as part of the recruitment process. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After watching the tutorial a few times I opened Photoshop and drew out a circle and then copied and pasted this is in suggested positions. The first point I noted was that the closer the spacing between each drawing, the slower the movement, whilst conversely the greater the spacing, the faster the movement. Therefore, in the bouncing ball example exercise, the ball is at its fastest speeds as it travels up and down, and at its slowest at the peak and bottom of the bounce, so I spaced the ball accordingly.<\/p>\n\n\n

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First bouncing ball test in Photoshop
(click on image for larger version, opens in new tab).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

In the example above, the obvious omission is the squash and stretch of the ball as it hits the ground and takes off again. I added this in the example below. I felt this was an improvement, but the squash looks wrong (due to resizing the circle too large – I should have redrawn it instead) and the ball moves too fast and suddenly after the first peak.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Bouncing ball test with squat and stretch added
(click on image for larger version, opens in new tab).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Just to practice creating an animated GIF in Photoshop, I also made a silly smiling ‘face’.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Practicing created animated GIFs in Photoshop.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Another section of Tim Hodge’s tutorial focuses on the walk cycle. This completely bamboozled my brain. I decided to try using paper and a pencil to draw the stages of the walk movement. When I placed these in Photoshop to create an animated GIF, I copied and pasted the series of drawings to make a complete cycle (the only issue being the same leg stays in front – it would have been better to redraw these instead). I could not work out why ‘bean man’ was appeared to be going backwards, as shown below.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The [backward] walk cycle (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Then I realised that I needed to reverse the frame order and ‘bean man’ was now heading in the right direction.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Going the right way (click on image for larger version, opens in new tab).<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

I was quite pleased with how my first attempt at the walk cycle turned out. It would take a great deal of practice to feel confident doing this, but at least he looks like he is walking and not floating or jumping, and it quite a smooth movement. I also liked working in analogue, which is what Aaron Blaise suggests is the best way to initially learn animation. I hope to buy some blank flipbooks in the near future and experiment with these.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Animator Island Tutorials<\/strong> and OpenToonz<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

At this point I was still feeling slightly lost with how to proceed. I came across a free tutorial series by Animator Island<\/a>. I liked the presentation style by Ferdinand Engl\u00e4nder and the explanations are clear. I spent hours working through these and trying to understand and process all of the information. A couple of the more in depth tutorials have to be paid for, so I am hoping to return to these at some point, as well as revising the other videos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After going through the series, I feel I have a much clearer understanding of various terms in animation including: ease-in\/ease-out<\/strong>, spacing<\/strong>, pose-to-pose animation<\/strong>, straight-ahead animation<\/strong>, key frames<\/strong>, animating on ones and twos<\/strong>, anticipation<\/strong>, overshoot<\/strong> and breakdown<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The software suggested for these tutorials is OpenToonz<\/a>, which is an Open Source, professional animation software. It took some time to get used to this, but I soon got to grips with the basics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tutorial exercises I completed from this series can be seen below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The first exercise was about spacing<\/strong>, which refers to the distance an object, in this case a ball, moves between two frames. As mentioned previously, the shorter the distance the slower the movement, whilst the further the distance, the faster the movement. This also relates to ease-in<\/strong> and ease-out<\/strong>, which refers to how quickly an element accelerates and decelerates from or into a key frame<\/strong>, respectively. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I initially drew out the path of the ball and then added a timing chart <\/strong>alongside this, which I used as a guide for placing each iteration of the ball as I progressed around the circuit. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Planning the path and timing of the ball in OpenToonz.<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

As the focus on this tutorial was spacing, I really concentrated on trying to place the ball in each frame so that is accelerated and decelerated in the right places. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Single ball travelling around the loop <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Apart from the section where the ball travels a round the spiral, which is animated on ones (to indicate speed), it is animated on twos (i.e. the same drawing is shown on two frames). I also included some linear spacing<\/strong> when the ball travels across the top of the circuit to the left side, which means the balls were equally spaced in each frame to suggest constant motion. I was fairly happy with some parts of the animation, but I should have altered the shape of the ball at certain stages to make it appear more realistic, for example when it travels around the spiral, and the timing is not very good on the right side of the circuit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final part of the tutorial required adding two additional balls that follow the same path, but with delayed starting times. My version of this is not quite right as the balls seem to overlap and overtake each other, which they do not in the tutorial, but I quite like the playful style having the three balls creates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three balls looping<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The spacing exercise was fairly time-consuming, but I learnt a great deal from this initial lesson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The exercise I completed next was about parenting elements<\/strong>, so that they can be moved together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n