Animation: Project Summary, Timeline, & Outline: Reading Material

Animation is the youngest medium of art that mankind has created. Spanning barely over one hundred years, its history is as rich and dramatic as any other. Starting as the simple idea of an illusion of moving art by a couple clever innovators at Edison's film company in the early 1900's, it soon boomed into a mega-corporate commercial venture that employed thousands and captivated millions only decades later. It spread outside of America and took many different forms in many different countries and cultures. Today, the face of animation is very different than it ever was.

With the advancement of technology, animation has also advanced. Animation went from 2D to 3D, using one of the most common 2D programs called Flash to using one of the popular 3D programs called Maya. The methods of making a 2D animation versus a 3D animation are drastically different. Starting in 3D was not going to benefit me, so I turned my focus to 2D. Thankfully my readings of The Animator’s survival Kit and The Illusion of Life focused strictly on 2D animation.

Understanding the basics of animation involves knowing the terminology of animation. The terms I needed to understand from the start included:

2D Animation: The creation of moving pictures in a two-dimensional environment, such as through "traditional" cel animation or in computerized animation software. This is done by sequencing consecutive images, or "frames", that simulate motion by each image showing the next in a gradual progression of steps. The eye can be "fooled" into perceiving motion when these consecutive images are shown at a rate of 24 frames per second or faster.

3D Animation: The creation of moving pictures in a three-dimensional digital environment. This is done by sequencing consecutive images, or "frames", that simulate motion by each image showing the next in a gradual progression of steps, filmed by a virtual "camera" and then output to video by a rendering engine. The eye can be "fooled" into perceiving motion when these consecutive images are shown at a rate of 24 frames per second or faster.

Frame Rate: The measure of the number of frames displayed sequentially per second of animation in order to create the illusion of motion. The higher the frame rate, the smoother the motion, because there are more frames per second to display the transition from point A to point B. Also Known As: frame frequency.

Frame: In animation, a "frame" is a single complete image out of the sequence of images comprising an animation. Taken alone, the frame is just a drawing - a piece of art. When sequenced with other drawings, it becomes an animation frame.

Key Frame: An animation key frame is a single still image in an animated sequence that occurs at an important point in that sequence; key frames are defined throughout an animated sequence, in order to define pivotal points of motion before the frames in between are drawn or otherwise created to "tween" the motion between the two key frames. One example of key frames could be an animation of a swinging baseball bat; the bat at rest would be one key frame, and the bat at the end of of its swing would be another. All other frames would be "tweened" frames.

Squash and Stretch: "Squash and stretch" refers to an animation technique used to depict exaggerated animated motion. The point of squash and stretch is to make the motions larger than life, rather than more swift, realistic, and sometimes unnoticed in passing observation.

The reason it's called "squash and stretch" is because characters and objects are shown to "squash" (become distorted or flattened) when affected by weight or gravity, and "stretch" (become elongated) when affected by momentum or other forces, in ways that are (usually) impossible in reality. A key principle of squash and stretch, however, is the fact that the object/character animated retains the same volume/apparent mass; it's simply distorted into a different shape and/or configuration to give the impression of the forces acting on it.

Tween: "Tween" is actually short for "in-between", and refers to the creation of successive frames of animation between key frames. In computer animation, the term is most commonly used for Flash's "shape tweening" and "motion tweening" processes, where the user can define two key frames and Flash will automatically create the in-between frames, either morphing one shape into another over a set period of time or else moving a shape or shapes from point A to point B over a set period of time. 3D animation programs also have their own method of "tweening".

Once one understands the terminology, one can move onto the drawing basics. These basics include understanding spacing and timing, keyframes, and “squash and stretch’ . The Animator’s Survival Kit included images that demonstrated the right way to conduct these drawings and the wrong way using every traditional animator’s friend, the bouncing ball.

The keys are the major points of the storytelling drawing. These are the drawings that show what happens in the story:

All of the movements in-between these main points are called the “tweens”. It was not until I started creating my own animation that I realized how extensive the frames really are. Apparently reading “ 24 frames equals one second” did not register how much work that is- and for only one second!!!