ANIMATION FUNDAMENTALS - LECTURE & EXERCISE
23/09/2024 - 23/01/2025 / Week 1- Week 14
Thanaphorn Daensaad / 0350930
Thanaphorn Daensaad / 0350930
Animation Fundamentals / Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Creative Media
Weekly Lecture & Exercises
List
1. Instructions
2. Weekly Lectures
3. Exercise 1: Bouncing Ball
4. Exercise 2: Ball With Tail
5. Feedback
6. Reflection
Instruction
Weekly Lectures
Week 1
This is the first week of class. Mr. Kamal briefed us on the work that we will be working on throughout the semester. The assessment consists of exercises, project 1,2 and a final project. We were first asked on our knowledge on animation in terms of the principles and the history of it. He talked on the birth of Toys Story being the first 3d animated film and also Bugs' life. He gave us a brief introduction to frames and more. It could lead up to 24 or 12 frames per second. We were shown examples of past students' work in order to get a brief understanding of the expectation's of our outcome. The founder of Pixar, John Lasseter wrote an article on the 12 principles.
He recommended us 2 books in order to better understand animation.
1. Animator's survival kit
https://archive.org/details/TheAnimatorsSurvivalKitRichardWilliams
2. The illusion of life
https://archive.org/details/TheIllusionOfLifeDisneyAnimation
Creating movement is the main point of making an animation. In order so is by creating frames after frames of an object in order to make it move. Mr. Kamal first talked on the slow in and slow out which helps in making the object go faster or slower.
Timing, spacing and arcs plays a huge role in the movement of the animated object. Mr Kamal went on the topic on visual that plays around with the visual of the object whether if it's through the design, personality, audio and staging.
Visual elements
He briefly went on the topic on making a walk cycle and jump cycle which would be for our upcoming project.
Consistent amount of frames to avoid choppy animation especially for walking animation
Week 2
This week we learnt about animation principles: frame rate, timing & spacing, slow in & slow out, timing chart and arcs. Mr. Kamal taught us the basics of using Adobe Animate and work on a ball bounce animation.
Lesson slides
This is the aspect ratio used for different type of media depending what content you're making for whether if it is for a film, tv show (digital or analog) or online like Youtube and etc.
Aspect ratio
This is how to use Adobe Animate using a mouse.
Mouse use in Adobe Animate
This is how to use Adobe Animate to make frame keys to the timeline, deleting frames and etc.
How to use Adobe Animate
What we learn in tuto:
hd > frame rate: 24 > create
f5 key to insert frame
shift + f5 to delete frame
dot indicates there's a drawing in the frame
no dot indicates blank frame
Week 3
On this week, we learnt about the topic on The Animation Style, Elasticity : Squash and Stretch, Flexibility: Drag, Follow through and Overlapping & Animation Methods: Pose to Pose & Straight Ahead.
Lesson slides
Exercise 1: Bouncing Ball
Requirements:
- Frame rate: 24fps
- 1280 x 720 (HD 720p)
First we were told to make the floor line where the ball will make contact with then a motion line where the ball will be positioned from the start to end. We then made the ball object and positioned where on some point of the motion line as a guide on where it would make contact in after the slow in and slow out. The arcs should be smaller after the first one subsequently as the height of the ball will decrease after each bounce.
After creating the arcs, we started to insert the ball into each frame by copying (Ctrl + Alt + C) and pasting (Ctrl + Alt + V) into the next frame. We first placed the ball on the extreme and add a blank frame after each frame so that the animation is on twos.
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Starting with the main point of the ball's motion
After creating the blank frame after each frame, we copy and paste the ball and placed it in between the extreme following the arcs.
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Adding more frames
Then, we added the ball in between to create slow in and slow out. Blank frames are added so that the animation is consistent as it should be on twos. The last frame should stay longer, so we added a few more blank frames.
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Adding in slow-in and slow-out
This is the first trial of the bouncing ball during tutorial class. Mr Kamal told me to resize the ball as the ball seemed too big and add more slow in and out in the first arc.
First attempt
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All onion skins shown
Final Exercise 1
This is the revised version after the feedback on the same day that is to resize the ball.
Final Exercise 1 (Resizing to make it smaller)
Overall onion skin
Exercise 2: Ball With Tail
Requirements:
- Frame rate: 24fps
- 1280 x 720 (HD 720p)
First, I made some changes to the ball by adjusting the proportion of the ball to show the squash movement of the ball when it hits the ground and bounce back to its original shape. Then, by following the arc of the movement, I made the rough animation of the tail movement.
Rough animation
Final Exercise 2
I did some tidy up on the lines to finalize the overall animation of the tail movement.
Final Exercise 2
Feedback
Week 3
General feedback
- Drawing decreases on the last bounce
- Make sure the amount of frames are equal by 2
Specific feedback
- Good work. Can try adding more frames to the end of the animation.
Week 4
General feedback
- Do cleanup to the tail
- Make sure the size of the tail is equal even with po
Specific feedback
- Make the tail more like an S shaped when it falls
Reflection
The exercises throughout the module was quite fun and I learned a lot of the basics of animating using Adobe Animate. The lectures covered in class were very insightful in providing the necessary information of animation.
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