The finished animation!

Well, here it is. The finished animation. 

There are still a few things I'd like to sort out if I had more time, like his feet dancing around a bit too much and the fact that his arm doesn't look quite attached, but for the deadline which is today, this is finished.

Disney's Frozen

Disney's latest release- Frozen- really shows how far 3D animation has come in recent years. The technology now allows the characters to move so realistically and it makes it possible to create detailed and realistic textures that almost make you feel like it's real instead of animated, although it clearly is..

I really loved this movie when I saw it over Christmas, the attention to detail and the realism were beautiful and the ability of technology in animation today amazes me. The "let it go" song sequence was stunning with the ice magic, this sort of animation would not have been possible many years ago and it really shows how far technology has come. Overall I think it was an amazing feature film.

Disney Pixar's Toy Story 1995

Toy Story was the first ever full length feature film made entirely with CG. It was made by a team of 27 animators at Pixar on a very small budget. Considering the small team, small budget and the fact that half the animators on this project hadn't even used computers to animate before, the leap from traditional hand drawn animation to CG made by Pixar with this movie is amazing. The expressions and movements achieved were incredible and the movie is still as good now as it was then, even with the improvements in CG and the new skills the Pixar team has now. Toy Story is nearly as old as I am and I grew up with it, so it's interesting to see how  much or little has changed between the original Toy Story, and Toy Story 3. Interestingly, not too much has changed in styles between these two movies, however the textures available in Toy Story 3 are much improved on the first.

Early examples of 3D animation

This is one of the first examples of 3D animation. It's just a hand and a face in 3D but it shows pioneering technology that now is seen frequently. This hand was made in 1972 by Pixar founder Ed Catmull. At this point in his life he was a computer scientist at the University of Utah.

This video shows how he created the 3D computer model and how he animated it.

PROJECT UPDATE #2

Today I had to present my "finished" animation. It's almost there, enough for the presentation and I got some feedback. I need to add shadows to place the character more in the scene. It was also suggested that I make the lobster king more angry and show the rock that he throws maybe on the castle somewhere- destroying part of it. I also need to sort out my characters feet in the first scene as they dance around a bit, but I knew that already. The sound also needs to be adjusted and toned down a little in parts. 

Everyone in my class agreed that the emotions and expressions were well done as was the weighting of the second rock.

If I had the time I would go back and reference more movements to get a more realistic movement in the characters.

Mickey Mouse "Get a Horse" Short 2013

The newest Disney Short to appear before the movies in the cinema is Mickey Mouse in "Get a Horse" which appears before Frozen. The short starts off seeming like it's going to be a classic black and white Mickey Mouse story, which is beautiful in its own way. However it has a twist, as it uses very modern techniques and ideas compared to the original black and white image that it appeared to be at the beginning and it allows the 2D black and white characters to appear to climb out of the screen and into the 3D world. This short shows within itself how far technology and animation has come in a relatively short space of time. 

Below is a (admittedly really bad recording) clip that I found on youtube that shows some of the 3D part of the short that isn't seen in the official trailers.

Gertie the Dinosaur 1914

"Gertie the Dinosaur" by Winsor McCay is often regarded as the first character based cartoon, and an early example of character animation. It successfully establishes an attachment to the character Gertie in the animation, and it combines animated footage with live action. It was the first animation to do this. It was the first animation to use key frames to create the animation, enabling Winsor McCay to incorporate the live action.

Ladislaw Starewicz- The Cameraman's Revenge. 1912

Ladislaw Starewicz was a pioneer in puppet animation. In "The Cameraman's Revenge", the characters were real dead bugs with  wire limbs. This made them easier to move around in stop motion animation. I really like this animation because, even though it's horrible with the bugs, it's really well done, the bugs have human mannerisms and I think it's just hilarious watching bugs driving cars or riding bikes. I think that, even though it was done in 1912, it is done in a way that would still be interesting and unique today and I think that's a really good quality in animation and art.

Matches an Appeal 1899

"Matches an Appeal" is believed to be the oldest existing animated film. It was done during the war to convince people to donate matches to soldiers. The video was done using stop motion and was revolutionary for its time.

The Enchanted Drawing 1900

The Enchanted Drawing in 1900 was the first short film to try to incorporate live action with animation. Although the idea was there, it isn't what we would nowadays refer to as animation as such. However it uses a very pioneering idea of pulling drawings out of the paper and into real life. It also shows the live action person interacting with the drawing. This was a very new idea in 1900.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937

Walt Disney's "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" is widely regarded as the first animated feature film. In fact it wasn't, however it was Disney's first animated feature length film and the first feature animation to use technicolour, making it a pioneering film. It was also the first animated feature to become successful across the english speaking world. It is a really well done 2D animation and the Disney style for princesses was established from this film. The Disney Style is easily recognised in all of their work because of the success of this film.

PROJECT UPDATE

I have now done the backgrounds, and a skeleton/stick man armature for the character and added the face for each frame. all that is left to do is the Lobster King at the end and the body of the boy in each scene. Not long to go now!

Silly Symphonies- The Skeleton Dance 1929

The Skeleton Dance was one of Disney's first animated shorts with synchronised sound. The first was Steamboat Willie, however I prefer the Skeleton Dance as I like how the music fits so well with the characters. The movements are really fluid and the disney style is evident in this short. 
Although this is in black and white because colour wasn't really available for animation at the time, I think the black and white thing works really well with this animation because of it's graveyard scene. 

Research into ripples in the water

I did some research into the ripples you get when you throw a stone into water. The ripples look broken up and not one round circle like I'd first thought, because of the light reflecting different bits. The lighting also means some parts look darker and some are highlighted. I will be sure to use this in my animation.

Research into how a person throws a ball

I found this video on youtube which shows some boys throwing a ball around, this will help me work out the movements involved in throwing a ball and the arm placements, Although it's not at the right angle for my animation but it was the best video I could find.

I also studied my flatmate throwing a ball around.

Kid by the Water Animatic

Here is my animatic for my Classical Elements Animation. I am using it to work out timing and to give a basic idea of the story in moving image. My animatic lasts 20 seconds, which is the time needed for the final animation. Now all I need to do is flesh it out into the final animation! 

Storyboard for Classical Elements project.

Earth, Air, Fire, Water. The Classical elements.

My story is about a boy who is playing by the water, throwing stones in and for some reason the water spits back so the boy goes to investigate and finds a surprise hidden under the surface.

More Photoshop experiments.

Today we were taught a different way of animating in photoshop, by using the timeline tool at the bottom of the screen. It is a lot easier than the first method of animating in photoshop we were taught, however it makes it difficult to use different layers in one frame as each frame comes from a new layer. This can get quite confusing but overall I like this way of working. 

Once again we experimented with this new way of animating by making a ball bounce using squash and stretch, and by making a pendulum swing using timing and spacing. The pendulum in this method of working was a lot harder than in previous methods, I'm not really sure why...

Classical Elements: Project Development

When I got this brief, the first thing I did was research into the classical elements and what other people had written about them and believed about them. This ranged between everything from Greek and Roman mythology, to star signs and colours.

Once I'd done this research, I created a mind map of some ideas I had gotten from it and narrowed it down to my top 3.

I then storyboarded my top 2 ideas in rough stickman drawings, and then I created a schedule in a diary planner of mine to work out when I would be doing each part of my animation process.

Flash! (ah-ah)

 Today, we were introduced to animating in Adobe Flash. As usual, we learnt the basics of using the program to animate while using some of the 12 principles of animation: Squash and stretch in the bouncing ball, and timing (and spacing) with the pendulum.

Animating the bouncing ball in Flash I actually found a lot harder than in any other program or animation method we've learnt to use so far. It just took a while to get my head around as I couldn't work out how to effectively squash and stretch the ball using just a few key frames, but I think it worked out alright.

Animating the pendulum in Flash was a lot easier, in my opinion. It was easy to make the ball and the line work together as one object and easy to create the pivot point. I even added an owl clock to the top of the pendulum and made the eyes move, just for fun as I had some time! I think it worked well.