Sam's Blog

My animation course has started and there is little time to do anything so I had to be very quick with building the stand for the Samtiq, and I didn’t take that many photos, here are some shots:

I took it for a test ride and it is useable, it is not the brightest monitor and the fact that I am using a transparent folio to protect the LCD from straches doesnt help with the brightness. But tomorrow I am putting in the order for the glass top which will hopefully improve things.

Here is a quick animation that I did with it.

[kml_flashembed movie="/gallery2/d/4681-1/tail_pull.swf" height="250" width="420" /]

Mainly working on our assignments with a class on animation tips from David. Here are some of the points covered:

• Use thumbnail sketches to explore the possibilities of the design
• 3D animation quickly goes stray when you try to animate stright ahead
• Staging the action. Layouts are the scenic space where the action will occur. In theatre because the facial expressions are often hard to see, melodramatic and exaggerate actions are used to communicate more clearly. Animation can use exaggeration to make actions more dynamic.
• Animation can show things 3 x faster than live action
• Silhouttes have a clear shape and hence communicate more clearly to the audience.
• Even inbtweening along straight lines creates a mechanical motion
• Organic objects will move in Arcs and slow than and speed up as they change direction. This applies to camera moves as well, don’t make the camera move mechanically.
• Sometimes the animator will use abstraction and exaggeration to resolve some of the audiences expectations. The audience will do some of the animation in their heads, saving the animator the work.
• Don’t be afraid to exaggerate a drawing in the middle of an animation, it is surprising how much it can add to the action.
• Observation and analysis will help the animators understanding and animation of an action. Ask yourself, what is going on in the action? Get up and do the action.
• Key poses = what happens. Inbetweens = how it happens.
• The Starting pose setup up the action
• Heavy objects lag behind other parts

For lunch we had our first “Hunters and Gatherers” lunch with John Bird talking to us about “Thinking Small”.