Animation Principles
Our first project was to animate an object to showcase 5 of the 12 animation principles utilising shading and lighting, a background, labels and texts and audio (eg, sound FX)
Timing and Spacing: Timing animation refers to how long an action takes from beginning to end. Spacing animation refers to the spaces between frames that show an object’s location. The functions of spacing are the same as the functions of timing, to create realistic and interesting movement.
Ease in and Ease out: Easing is the process of making an animation not so striking and extreme. An object that starts moving slowly and then accelerates is called Ease in, whereas an object that moves fast and then slows down is called Ease out. Ease in and ease out are the terms used in digital Animation to explain the physics of how two animation states transition.
Anticipation and Follow Through: Anticipation is the action before the main action. Without the buildup of energy, the proceeding motion wouldn’t feel natural or believable. The intro to Pixar movies showcases anticipation well with the jumping lamp. Follow-through and anticipation are sort of the same thing, but on opposite ends of the action. Inertia is introduced with follow-through. When you’re animating a moving object, and it comes to a quick stop, there’s still movement after. The object can bend, stretch, and jiggle to depict this motion.
Arcs: The visual path of an object or action is called an “arc”. This could be the projectile of a bouncing ball, the path of a moving arm etc. The arc is one of the most fundamental tools to make movements realistic and pleasing to the eye. In the words of Sir Isaac Newton, due to the moving object’s inertia, its path should be smooth unless it’s being interrupted by an external force (e.g. impact).
Squash and Stretch: Squash and Stretch is the action of an object utilising displaying a change of shape—from a squash pose to a stretch pose or vice versa—to give a feeling of flexibility, and give life to the animation.
Mood Board
At the start of every Pixar film a lamp is used and showcases many animation principles just from the intro, similarly I will be using a simple cylindrical object to demonstrate the principles of animation listed above. I have 3 different color palettes that I will draw inspiration from to help me convey a life-like animation.
Story Board
I had trouble rendering using M.Play for an unknown reason, alternatively I used the flip book method and then rendered it as a .avi file which was frustrating to figure out. Because I used the flip book method some buttons are shown and the shadows and lighting I originally layed out were not visible as a result unfortunately.
It was my first time ever using houdini so for my intros I used after effects as im more comfortable using the latter. Although i've used after effects before, it had been a couple of years since I had touched it so i was a bit rusty with some of the animations.
