Nina Denning

6. Animation

Posted on 22 June, 2016  in MDU115

This is my favourite part, the animation, where all the beautiful characters come to life in spectacular, well thought out movement. Animators are able to pose the character thanks to the rigging, in various positions, these poses are often exaggerated to better display the intent of the motion. Many many frames go into each movement, but an animator can often start with a key frame, go to the centre frame then finish with the end frame if it’s a short movement, this helps save time, though often the animator will play it back and if there is any mix up in the movement, they will add more frames (“Pose to Pose Animation”, 2016). The software is designed to add all the inbetween frames through ‘tweening’, meaning all the tiny frames inbetween the key frames. The more frames are inbetween, the more consistent and lifelike the movement will be. This key by key sequence is used to give the audience an illusion of movement (“Pose to Pose Animation”, 2016).

“Given three keyframe shapes (shown in tan), our method smoothly interpolates the intermediate shapes (shown in blue), providing a useful tool for animators to rapidly create keyframe animation sequences.” – (IEEE. 2011)

Sourced retrieved from: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org

 Even though computers are a huge help to animators in creating a sequence, and speeds up the process, theres still a lot of work and thought put into each movement, the animator must consider timing, gravity and the previous, following actions to give a believable movement.  (J. “Timing and Spacing in Animation”, 2014)

Animated gif from the movie Tangled.

References:

1. Pose to Pose Animation. (2016). Minyos.its.rmit.edu.au. Retrieved 28 June 2016, from http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_pose.html
2. Multiresolution Mean Shift Clustering Algorithm for Shape Interpolation. (2016). Ieeexplore.ieee.org. Retrieved 28 June 2016, from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ieee_pilot/articles/05/ttg2009050853/figures.html
3. Timing and Spacing in Animation. (2014). Computer Graphics & Digital Art Community for Artist: Job, Tutorial, Art, Concept Art, Portfolio. Retrieved 28 June 2016, from http://www.cgmeetup.net/home/timing-and-spacing-in-animation/