Unit 5 – Animation

*blood curdling scream*

 Phi phenomenon

The phi phenomenon is the illusion of movement from static objects, different from persistence of vision as POV is this is done with sequential images to create an effect, Phi phenomenon is when we perceive motion between objects that are stationary,

 Example

If two lights are positioned on either sides of a room, and blink one after another, instead of seeing two separate lights you see them as connected, as if the light is travelling from one to the other, the more lights there are in between the more apparent this becomes.

Animation techniques

Squash & stretch

Used to define the emotion or material of an object or character, speed can be one way to use stretch, if an object is moving fast on screen it can have the ability to stretch to give it the appearance of faster motion. What is important about this is that it must always maintain the same amount of volume on the page.

Timing

This deals with the speed of a characters actions to make them appropriate for the cause, slow actions would generally determine uncertainty, or perhaps sleepiness, where as quick actions are more easily read as happiness, excitement, or nervousness.

Anthropomorphic Animation

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/anthropomorphic

Anthropomorphise animations are animations that give human characteristics and traits to objects things or creatures that are otherwise not human to begin with, there are many famous cartoon characters that fall under this category.

Tom and Jerry are the first characters that come to mind under this type of animation. A cat and a mouse that do everything the way humans would or could do something: walking, running, jumping and standing on two legs, laughing, crying, being afraid, playing the piano and the ability to appear injured. These are things that make the two characters so memorable all fall into the area of anthropomorphic animation. My animation will also be anthropomorphic, because I will be giving my kite a human trait that it couldn’t possibly have without being in a created world.

Emotion

The Emotion for my designated inanimate object in my animated sequence was Nervous Nervousness Information on this was word was very scarce, so I looked it up in a thesarus to get more words that mean similar things, more was found with the more extreme versions of this emotion, such as: Anxiety, Agitated, concerned, distressed, solicitous, uneasy, unsettled.

 Anxiety

Discrete period of intense fear or discomfort, in which four (or more) of the following symptoms developed abruptly and reached a peak within 10 minutes Symtoms can include:

· palpitations,

· pounding heart, or accelerated heart rate

· sweating

· trembling or shaking

· sensations of shortness of breath or smothering

· feeling of choking

· chest pain or discomfort

· nausea or abdominal distress

· feeling dizzy

· unsteady

· lightheaded or faint

· feeling like it’s happening to you in a dream or at a distance from you.

· Feelings of unreality or feeling detached from oneself)

· fear of losing control or going crazy

· fear of dying

· numbness or tingling sensations

· chills or hot flushes

This list will greatly help create at least some form of nervous behavior

Object

Kite

My inanimate object for my animation is a Kite. I believed Kites were simply flat diamond shaped peices of paper or other light material with a cross frame to support it. However this not the only form of Kite, there are different shapes and sizes of kite with varying colour designs of each type.

“Power” Kites

These Kites are mainly designed in the form of small parachute or air sail, called a Foil. These kites are designed to supply maximum surface volume to catch and hold onto wind as long as possible, frameless and made of nylon keeping the flow of wind into the foil steady and to avoid sudden jerks. Power foils come in two types.

“Two line” Foils are smaller and there range from roughly 1-2m across,

“Four line” Foils are can be up to 5m across.

The “line” simply means the number of rope lines connecting the wielder to the kite, obviously the larger the kite the more lines it will need to be used correctly without damage to its surfaces.

here is a really cool video of sombody using a power kite recreationally

 makes me want to go and buy one!!

Stunt Kites

Stunt Kites are smaller than the Power variety, enabling them to do tricks and aerial acrobatics; they are also streamlined to help them in this respect. Unlike power kites, the Stunt type does have a framework inside of it, so it can keep its shape in the wind. Sizes vary from 0.5m – 1.5m.

“Single Line” Kite

This is the type of Kite I believed to be the only type of Kite, the “single line” veriety come in all kinds of fun shapes, but most commonly the diamond we are all used to.

Ranging from the standard diamond to the more artistic shapes of birds such as owls, boxes and many more.

 

Kite Festivals

wow these kite festivals look like so much fun, held on perhaps some of the only sunny days in this country there are Kite Festivals, fun days out for friends and family whether you are into kite flying or not, it still looks completely awesome.

Kite festivals look amazingly beautiful and are the time when people come from far and wide to show off their skill with kites, or their personal Kite design, these festivals are held regularly all over England, the following montage is made up of a Bristol Kite festival

such a vast arrays of colours.

Custom made Kites flown just for the occasion are found on theses events. and some of them are absolutley monstourous, equalling many thousands of times the size of our single line diamond kite.

whats more is that these events are held all over the world, not just here in england, america and china too celebrate ocasions using Kites.

here is a truly beautiful video of a kite festival that took place in washington america 2006.

(oh it seems that the ebbeding failed :S) please click the video to link to the youtube video, i do recommend it.

 ——–

 http://www.kitecalendar.co.uk/

and looking at the above link we can clearly see there is no shortage of these occasions in britain, being held many times per month all over the country, some just for fun, others for special causes like raiseing money for children in need and world peace rallys.

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Animation Plan 1 :story mode

Kite will be sitting in a tent getting worried about how it’s going to perform in the festival compared to the other kites. It paces up and down then looks in the mirror, checks its watch then continues to pace, then a hand opens the tent and a human head pops in, the Kite is then shown in the sky from the viewpoint of the persons hand (other kites will also be visible moving drifting slowly around the page) and then up close as it zooms around the screen, after which it receives a medal for best kite.
I have decided to use the most well known form of Kite which is the “single line” diamond shape.
I chose this because it is a shape that we all recognise straight away as the shape of a Kite as well as the simplest to draw using the “less is more” mind set. It will not be a industry standard Kite like the ones I have been researching, it will have a very old school look about it, 2 wooden sticks crossed in the centre with a diamond sheet of cloth over 1 side, so it is as if a child made it. (which in the story actually happened)

——–

Maya

bouncing ball

its a bouncing ball

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?egdyxhjtomm

Happy walk

I had relative success on this one, the legs are extremley confusing :@ and many many many times i did it and only got half the walk cycle, which was a bit iritating, doing the other half was like mind boggling!

after a few tries and restarts this is what I ended up with.

http://www.mediafire.com/?m24iywomez2 

Sadwalk

I completely baffled myself on this one, I ended up with 6 keyframes instead of 5, so it skips a little on a repeat, this was VERY irritating as it took me ages, thing is tho when i try to edit it some parts play back just fine, like the legs and arms, but other parts such as the spine and head skip horribly :S

i then realised that it was set to play at NTSC, and in this mode after finding and tweaking the settings i got the frame rate to play at PAL 25fps, now the model doesnt play back as nice as it did, but he walks slower which is what i wanted, but i think maybe it a little too slow.

here is what I got

http://www.mediafire.com/?ggkzejyyozm

 

Final Animation.

(after many hours I got this out of myself and my surrounding software)

http://www.mediafire.com/?t45iiinytzw

 

Essay

 Studio Ghibli

http://www.mediafire.com/?diedmzwtm2d