Sliding Ball

Ball Slide (QT Movie).

This is an animation exercise from p. 38, of The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams (Director of Animation, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), p. 39, Faber and Faber, New York (2001). ISBN: 0-571-20228-4.

The idea is to give the object equal weight from frame to frame.

So I fired up AppleWorks 6.0 and used the drawing program (any kind will do the same thing) and drew a circle against a background, moved the circle half of its diameter, saved the file as a .jpg, and continued onfor about 34 frames.



I then loaded the individual frames or cells into GraphicsConverter that allows me to add an mp3 audio track and saved it as a movie. I've made the movie smaller than it would have been to save storage space and bandwidth.

Enjoy.

In and Out

Coin Squeel

This my attempt to experiment with what animators call, "timing" and "spacing."

This clip has 25 frames in it and lasts one second.

Instead of moving across the frame in one majestic smooth transition, it bunches up the movement of the ball in the beginning (anout ten frames), covers a lot of ground through the middle (about 5 frames), and than bunches up again at the end (about ten frames).

I took this idea from The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams (Director of Animation, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), p. 38 Faber and Faber, New York (2001). ISBN: 0-571-20228-4.

BOUNCING BALL

BOUNCING BALL, (QT Movie)

I took this idea from The Animator's Survival Kit, by Richard Williams (Director of Animation, "Who Framed Roger Rabbit"), p. 39, Faber and Faber, New York (2001). ISBN: 0-571-20228-4.

This was made with AppleWorks 6.0. Just a series of circles drawn with a drawing tool in the graphics program.

I traced out a path for the ball to follow, and moved the path back and forth from foreground to background and saved each photo as a .jpg

The picture below is a quick reconstruction. I don't know what I did with the original file. you will notice that the squash and stretch are not shown in the .gif below.



Click to enlarge.

But it does show the arc drawn in and imagine each ball is just one single circle, distorted as needed in the arc to give the animation squash and stretch. there are many tutorials around that will give you the timing on this, or feel free to down load the movie and save the individual cells.

Than I used GraphicConverter's Files->Convert & Modify feature to take the individual frames and compile them into a Qiucktime movie. GraphicConverter is a very inexpensive and powerful tool, I have not yet begun to explore all that it has to offer.

The sound effects were synced up using an old version of iMovies. I then had to to translate the .dv file into a .mov file.

Than I uploaded it with Transmit, an ftp client. I like Transmit because it allows me to see all my files and directories and I'm used to an old program from years ago called Fetch, and it is very Fetch like.

This was all done long before I had any real animation software, and just wanted to see what I could do with a minimal investment.

I must say there is a lot of animation stuff a person can do with very little investment.

Animation:Master 2002

These are my reading notes taken from the following book explaining Animation:Master, a 3D animation software package that retails for about $300.00.

The latest version of A:M is 2006, but this was the most recent referance book I could find.

ANIMATION:MASTER, 2002: THE COMPLETE GUIDE
by David Rogers

Charles River Media, Inc.

Hingham, MA (2002).
ISBN: 1-58450-236-3

INTRODUCTION

ONE PERSON, ONE COMPUTER

One person with one computer should be able to tell his own animated stories.

"Animation is hard" - Martin Hash.

There is still a lot of hard work involved in telling stories through animation

Before the story can be told, the software must be understood.

STORY TELLING IN THE DIGITAL AGE

First, write down your idea in as much detail as you can.

preserve the thought as it stands and create a footing from which to make a plan.

Start with a short, no more than 30 seconds of screen time.

Draw the sctript out in story board format.

Put the story board panels together in anamatic format.

If it times out to longer than a minute than set it aside for something shorter.

Learn the tools first and you will be well on the road.

ANIMATION:MASTER

The foundations of the program can be learned in a month or less.

This book is divided into three parts.

• The Absolute Basics.
• Bringing the tools together to make an animation.
• A:M'S F/X tools and their use.

If you learn why a feature is useful than we've done our job.

CHAPTER ONE - INTERFACE

Toons on TV

Up at 8:30 AM (Fri.) medium size headache, breakfast bath, notice Disney channel has this cartoon (Little Einsteins) where kids fly in a red jet (rocket) to the jungle, more effort put into backgrounds than characters, backgrounds look like layers in Photo Shop - characters look like they have 2D bones in them, only eye brows, eyes, and mouth communicate facial expressions, everything else in their heads - hair, face, hats - are stock still. Nice use of real time footage and 2D animation, little red plane hovers while larger blue jet circles around it in loop the loops in a sky made up of what look like real clouds.

Key Frame 0

Well, God(dess) Bless Cloud Atlas.

Cloud Atlas inspired me to start this Blog, but if I fail miserably at it, it is not Cloud Atlas's fault, but my own.

This Blog will plot out my learning curve and keep track of the flip book that is my apprenticeship as an animator, story teller, graphic designer.

Huge ambitions and yet, I am doing it all from the barrel chair, foot stool and lap top on a TV tray in my bed room. (more on materials later).

In order to make this work I'm going to keep entries to 250 word or so. (About the length of a letter to the editor).

I'm going to keep track of my efforts and frustrations and some of the neurotic behaviors that I engage in.

I hope that this little effort will keep me going and remind me what I've accomplished when those days loom black and darkling that say, "YOU AIN'T DONE SQUAT JERKWAD!"

I hope that I will be able to look back on this Blog and disagree with dipair having something more than the smoke of my own dim memories as a defence against the growlings of the "black dog."

Once again, thank you Cloud Atlas for your encouragement. The few "bread crumbs" that you've left on the Web are nourishing me in my sojourn across this desert of creativity.