12 Principles of Animation: Squash and Stretch

Squashing is the act of flattening an object, giving it power or showing a build up of power (anticipation).

Stretching is the elongation of an object, often to show quick and exaggerated movements, giving the object an elastic effect.

Our strongest issue with our first attempt at a squash and stretch bounce was that we were too ambitious and we did not follow the instructions of the task, as we were supposed to do a drop down. I think as a moving ball animation, the faults in this are that the movement was either too fast on 12 fps or too slow on 24fps. Our S P A C I N G and timings against the walls seemed off.

To improve we attempted this again as a straight drop.

I think this one went really well. We only used squash and stretch during the first bounce against the floor, which emphasised the ball losing its elasticity as it bounced more. The spacing was shorter at the start and end, as in easy ease, with few spaces inbetween, and very close frames in succession for the quick bounces. 

For our side ways bounce we were able to create a good rolling transition from our bounces. However we realised that we needed at least another taller bounce due to the height and force of the initial drop. As well as this, to improve next time, our bounce should be less pointy and more curved. Despite this, I think that our stretches and squashes were well placed and the timing was effective for the curves we made.

I think if I had taken out frames from the end and added them in to the squash of the face in the sky, that would have given the piece better timing and made my intentions more clear. I know this timing issue came from my struggle in flipping the book, as it often paused around the squash of the cheeks pulling back, and so it felt like a longer action to me. 

12 Principles of Animation: Arcs

Arcs involve easy ease spacing, as there are more frames as the object begins to curve, and less as it accelerates before slowing again.

The simplest curve to demonstrate this is a pendulum arc, which we created using traditional drawing.

As I was trying hard to mirror the movement in this arc, with an even amount of frames (12), I created a large gap in the centre point of the arc. The teachers told me that this frame was the most necessary and so, I inserted it. Though I think my animation runs smoothly, next time I will push my frames even closer together at the two ends, so there is a larger gap in the middle, for realism. I also think I will trace the centre character a little more precisely, as the tail's line work did not shake and it made the character look poorly drawn. Though, this would be easier in digital work.

The second curve, we could animate in any format, as long as the medium was not hand drawn. I have found plastercine modeling to be fun and easy to think about motion in terms of spacing. 

I chose to continue with the pokemon azurill. I think the pokéball fell too slow, though the curve itself was alright. When I did this, we had not done squash and stretch, but now that we have, I know that I should probably have squashed and stretched the pokéball a little as it touched the ground, despite it's solidarity. I also think that the fall should have been quicker (less frames). Despite, I think that the movement of the pokemon returning to the hand, and the quick and admittedly accidentally withdrawal of the hand worked very well.

Context of Practice: Question 3

How is inclusive storytelling shaping the norms of representation amongst well-written characters in animation?

Inclusive storytelling: Includes everyone (LGBTQIA+, race, sex, age, personality, ability)

Gender:
  Disney:

• Unnamed prince, lack of identity, all similar, yet everyone loves them purely based on appearance and voice. (Asides Navine from Princess and the Frog. Unconventional. Dependant on Tiana at times. Spoilt, no responsibility, lacking money)  
• Princesses have always been role models for different values (eg. Common sense, kindness, adventure, hard work, bravery). But only Tiana, Merida and Mulan are role models that defy gender boundaries and appear as strong and capable.
• Middle aged women are never portrayed. Even in recent movies, the mother always looks the same age as the daughter. (Fight to have Heleanor from Brave looking slightly older). When women look old, they are always the evil wrinkled witch or a wise elder.
• Argue that Heleanors young appearance contrasts her change in to the big old bear.
• Carl and Anger both have a similar square shape, one of a kind. Main protagonist middle aged, older people. Only middle aged men. 

  Marvel: 

• Natasha Romanoff's death, a strong powerful moment for women as she saves all the male main cast and allows for the main battle.
• Contrasts the very forced scene with all of the female characters of marvel fighting. Unnecessary in terms of plot because Captain Marvel could have done it on her own easily. 
• Captain Marvel "Her"o trailers. Forced. Very active actor who gains hate from being outspoken.
• Female costumes not looking like comic ones but looking more appropriate and less revealing.
• Marvel has the gender issue of sticking to the comic books. Newer fans like all the inclusive story telling and costume changes. Fans from the comics want them to stop changing their childhoods for fake fans and newer fans. Audience's and actors influence on how characters change, because the actors liked not wearing the more revealing clothes (Johansson) and long hair wigs (Hemsworth).

Race:
  Whitewashing:

• The Anicent One (Male Tibetan man)
• Reversed white wash, Nick Fury
• Reversed, Alteans Voltron?

  Disturbing:

• "Jim Crow" Dumbo, Jim Crow was a dark coloured character in theatre who was racist, and a friend of slaves in America.
• "Happy Hearted Rustabouts" song in Dumbo, shows men of colour working.
• Mickey uses smoke to make his face black when dressing up in shaggy clothing to look like a poorer person.
• Who made the indian red, song.
• Stereotypes of Siamese cat playing piano with chopsticks in Aristocats.

Ability:
Every character in Nemo has something that effects their ability but allows them to overcome it. All except Gerald who never gets his moment of self approval. People were offended by his appearance and how drifted eyes and a unibrow equal someone being less capable. The soul purpose of Gerald was to be a gag like "Mine mine".
Nemo=Small fin - leads the group in Finding Dory.
Marlin=Anixety - travels across the ocean
Dory=short term memory loss - finds her family
Hank= PTSD - helps Dory escape
Whale Shark= eye sight - helps the beluga whale navigate his way through the ocean.
Beluga= Cant ecolocate and he does
Children are made aware of these by the plot but do not process how each character allows people to relate themselves to being able to overcome different struggles, like the characters.

Similarly, older teenagers and adults have come to notice or appreciate a theory that all of the Winnie the Pooh characters associate with different disorders. This theory has helped children understand different types of mental disorders and has helped them to find help and understand themselves.

As well as Roo showing Autism, these characters, memories of many peoples childhood in any generation, were never seen this way until recently. Audiences awareness in a growing society influences representation and inclusivity.

In character design, females always tend to have a round face with a small button nose and large round eyes, with the only exception being a slightly pointy chin. Where as the male characters have a diverse range of shapes in the face, nose and eyes. This is a Disney spread sheet, showing how they have not been inclusive towards women's appearances throughout their central female protagonists.
However, in Pixar's short Bao, though the mothers eyes are large and the nose is rounded, she is a very close step towards a more realistic idea of a woman.

Within Pixar, the characters from Inside Out are not supposed to be based on humans, and yet the emotions that are decided to seem more feminine have the same facial features, and the men have completely unrealistic extremes of facial shapes. The only exception is Sadness as a female character who is slightly plumper than the other skinny female characters. 

Cancel culture: Removing people from a production after they've done something wrong, such as James Gunn who was forgiven by the persuasion of fans and cast members alike. Jeremy Renner is currently under suspicion of being cut due to things hes said in the past and current obligations made between him and his wife in court, such as attempting his own suicide and being a drug addict. Emma Thompson quit a Skydance movie when John Lasseter joined the crew, once Pixar fired him.

Context of Practice: Question 2

How is the concept of nostalgia utilised by creators of animated content?

The current buying market in the 21st century are the millennial, and therefore creators are targeting their animations with nostalgia based around the 80s to 90s.
Creators use the aesthetic of nostalgia to give off this theme, such as:

• Setting (Stranger Things 80s backdrop and synthetic sound effects/track, clothing, euphemisms, props)
• Songs (Guardians of the Galaxy soundtracks)
• Voices (Mufasa's voice in the live action lion king is the same)
• Colour choices (Pop art 60s, Neon 70s etc)

Remake = Same movie, characters, plot, new drawing style, nostalgia in playing the same songs and modernising the story only in the technology used to make it.

Reboot= Different character traits, additional characters, more modernised plot, often refers back to the predecessor for aspects of nostalgia to show how times have changed between, or to make fun of the original.

2018-2019 have become the era of rebooting movies because of the high responses from the buying market, seeing their childhood Disney characters reimagined with the newer CGI animation. These movies gave struggled between popularity and negative backlash, as most of the time, the characters are intended to look animated and bouncy to maintain their excitable characteristics - but also to maintain societies standards for a hyper realistic CGI visual experience. This was experienced mostly with the new live action Lion King, as they were expected to keep in the songs for the aspect of nostalgia, however realistic looking animals singing and dancing did not look quite realistic and ruined the visual aesthetic of the movie, causing lots of people to hate it or not watch it.

Similarly Disney faces the same conflict with Mulan, as it arguably contains some of Disney's most popular songs, but they plan to keep it out to maintain the more serious new war/ action focus of the movie. This has caused backlash to the movie prior to the cinematic trailer has even been released. But then Disney can either keep the nostalgic songs, or keep their intention of not to make the exact same movie.

In comparison to Disney's live action remakes, they have also make reboots of shows, such as Ducktales, with more in the works for Disney plus. Their show has recieved higher forms of praise than a lot of their movies and I think this is down to a lack of nostalgia. With Ducktales, it is aired on a children's tv channel, Disney XD, in comparison to the big broad realm of cinema. Children in the 21st century are not essentially the buying market for a show such as Ducktales, but I believe this works in Disney's favour, as they now have feedback from other generations saying what worked and what didn't, and rebooted their characters accordingly with a modern take. The loveable animation has never changed. Also, children have a narrow access to the original Ducktales show, as there may only be small clips surfacing on YouTube. Therefore, the programme does not have to live up to certain expectations with the main target audience - but if the expectations are met, will encourage the parents of these children to enjoy the show too - creating a vaster consumerist market.

Intro comparison
The comic book layout gives hints to the older designs of the characters, whilst also maintaining the modern transitions and parallax throughout the characters running sequence. The new music is also a more positive addition to the reboot as it is more upbeat but keeping to the same tune.

Audiences influence a lot of decision making in modern day reboots due to the high expectations of the audience, and the standard of pleasing the audience that the creators have. Social media has been a strong influencer in this as proven recently with the live action sonic, and the hate towards the design - as well as spiderman being with the MCU or Sony. Both were fixed in the audience's favour due to backlash. 

12 Principles of Animation: Timing and Spacing

Timing: Selecting the best moment for something to happen in the frame. Choosing the best moment will have the optimum effect on the audience. This is also recording an action, which is done in animation when filming reference for movement, and creating your animation with precise or exaggerated timing.

Spacing: Placing the necessary about of spaces between frames.

1. Linear spacing: Frames spaced equally apart. The animation will happen at a constant speed, which will make it look mechanical or unnatural.
2. Ease in spacing: Used for deceleration and halting an object. The spaces are further apart at the beginning of the movement.
3. Ease out spacing: Used during acceleration, so the frames are closer together at the start.
4. Easy ease spacing: Combinstion of ease in and out. The frames are closer together at the start and the end, making this a good motion for animating a pendulum or a clock.

"What happens inbetween each image is more important than what's in each image." The animation won't be believable if the movement is inconsistent.

Testing Timing and Spacing

Blinking Character

My designed character has a scarred eye and so in my animation I thought that a longer blink would be the best characteristic for him. This also shows how tired he is, as a constant neighbouring character in the shadows of the night. I thought a quick blink of his scarred eye would be best too as it might be harder for him to focus with that eye. Though there isnt much difference between my two attempts, I thought that the first was too quick and it felt like his eye was twitching, but faster than humanly possible. 

Saluting

Fudging the timing: I tried this with 12 frames per drawing at 24fps, and then at 6 frames per drawing at 24fps. This helped me to understand how mechanical my arm movement was in my drawings and how many frames I would need to turn it in to a smooth motion.

I think the final outcome had good motion to it, but my line work could have been a bit smoother in places. I like the smooth transition in each frame of the arm and I think the pause before the hand salutes is realistic to life.

Animation Autopsy 1

Traditional Animation is when an artist draws every frame by hand.

A thaumatrope is when two images are merged in to one by pulling on a string attached to a two sided drawing. (1827)

A phenakistoscope is a disk split in to sections, with the frames of animation drawn across each. When spun, the animation comes to life. (1841)

A zoetrope is a cylinder that you spin, and the animation is shown through the gaps in the outer edge. (1866)

The flipbook was created in 1868.

The praxinoscope was similar to the zoetrope but you watch the middle where there were inverted spinning mirrors. This was easier to view than the zoetrope. (1876)

Rotoscoping allows animators to trace over moving images, frame by frame. Before this, animators projected images on to glass. (1917-1919)

In 1923, Disney started up and co-produced Alice's Wild West Show, the first mixed media animation. 

In 1932, Disney created the first Oscar winning animation, "Flowers and trees",  which was the first ever technicolor animation. 

The multiplane camera, as created for Snow White in 1937, was tested in the film "The old mill". This camera gives depth and parallax, which is best demonstrated in Pinocchio as the camera moves around the towns folk. 

Disney begun to recycle animations from other movies to speed up the animation process, as they often used human studies for reference in their work. 

Disney began printing on acetate, a clear material, throughout their golden age, but this began to be too expensive to keep up and so they stopped before the start of the silver age.

The introduction of the photocopier in 1938 aided in traditional animation, as repeated frames were no longer repeatedly drawn. 

Digital animation arose in the 1980s.

12 Principles of Animation: Straight Ahead and Pose To Pose

Straight Ahead

• The animation is made one frame after another.
• Usually stop motion as it cannot be done easily in 'Pose to Pose'.
• Good for fluid motions such as: fire, water and bouncy characters.
• An entire shot is done by one artist so that there's continuity in that section of the production.

Pose to Pose

• Key animator creates the key frames A and B and the other animators create the inbetweens with reference for other actions in the middle.
• Key frames = Extreme motion
• Break down = Centre shot between A and B
• Inbetweens = Last frames to be inserted.
• More effective for team animations and for time limits and due dates.

Amalgamation

• Key frames with looser inbetweens.
• A combination of 'Straight Ahead' and 'Pose to Pose'.

Context of Practice: Question 1

How have technologies influenced our expectations of style in 21st animation?

• CG (Computer Generated): Visual effects, 3D modeling, 2D Adobe animation, photoshop, motion capture. Anything that uses software on a computer to be created. CG was actually first included in a movie in the 20th century, in Westworld (1973). Although the first fully CG animated movie was Toy Story, movies before such as Westworld and Tron, one of the inspirations for Toy Story's bold animation movement, had combined live action with animation.

• VR (Virtual Reality): Oculus, Omni, arcade games, Nintendo virtual boy. Immersive technology that separates the user from real life inside a fake reality. SEGA attempted to create their own virtual reality headset however failed to complete it, and so their rival, Nintendo created the Virtual Boy. The knowledge about the technology was not advanced enough at the time, and so the picture quality was limited to polygons and the hue of the screen was entirely red. It was also very difficult to wear for long periods of time due to the movement in the video games themselves. 

• AR (Augmented Reality): Pokemon Go, Nintendo AR cards, IG filters. Using cameras to add virtual objects in to the real world like an overlay. Not interactive but it can react to movement of the camera, such as instagram filters using a framework of a person's face which moves as the face moves. In 1993 Mike Abernathy was the leader engineer in the first AR video overlay. From this he was able to pioneer the creation of the Landform (1995) inside his company Rapid Imaging Software, which was used in a helicopter flight test in 1999. He went on to do further work for NASA in the 21st Century.

• MR (Mixed Reality): Similar to AR but this allows the user to interact with the virtual objects, such as grabbing it and moving it - for instance, Iron Man moving Jarvis' holograms or headsets that also use controllers to follow the users hand movement. Virtual Fixtures, created for the US Air Force was the first immersive example of full functional AR technology. This enveloped the user with sound, visuals,and touch using human motion. This was created by Armstrong Laboratories in 1992.

• AM (Additive Manufacturing): Often referred to as 3D printing. This is used in animation to print character faces for puppets in a stop motion - as often shown in additional scenes of Laika movies such as Kubo. The concept of 3D printing was first thought up in 1974, proven by an article in the Ariadne written by David H.E.Jones. This was made reality in 1981 by hardening photographs to create 3D models made of plastic.

12 Principles of Animation: Staging and Storyboarding

This principle is how the animation team directs the composition of the scene. It allows you to decide on the best placements within the scene so that the audience's attention is drawn to the most important element as and when needed for the story.

Different elements in staging can alter the same scene so that the audiences emotions are different each time. This can be done by using different hues of lighting: Red meaning danger and pink meaning love are similar but they emotions created are very different.

Notes:

• Screen size = 16 x 9
• Use boxes and arrows in a story board to show a pan or a zoom, keeping the story board panel the size of however many full screens needed.
• To show a fade in a storyboard, add an arrow to the side.

In this storyboard, the red arrows show movement. I wanted to display lots of different camera angles as well as a transition between the clouds and the sun. I think by starting and ending with very similar frames, the animation would act like a child's nursery rhyme where the structures of the stanzas are very similar and only altered slightly, so they can be played on repeat.

The scene setter for Incy Wincy Spider is uses a bird's eye view to show the scale of the spider in comparison to the water droplet, showing how easy he can be taken down the drain. It also shows his unnatural scale against the drain pipe and grid (although there are large spiders in the real world). My spider's scale is larger than the norm to show the child like interpretation of the character to he has appeal to young children and is easy to read against everything that is happening in the scene. He is usually the only character in the nursery rhyme and so his scale uses staging to show that he is what needs to be the main focus at all times.

12 Principles of Animation : Appeal

Appeal is the equivalent of charisma within the animation industry, as it attracts attention towards the design, movement, voices, shapes, and colour of the production in both character and set.

Protagonist tend to have round shapes in their solid form, with large and expressive facial features that give off a friendly expression. They have higher waists to make the body look more inaccurately appealing, reinforced by their bright and often primary colour palette.

Antagonists have realistic proportions which often makes them look lanky in comparison to the antagonist. Their facial features are sharp which gives a cruel expression. They often have a darker colour palette that consists of a lot of the secondary colours , or darker tones of the primary ones, like a blood red. Antagonists have strange additions to their appearance that make them stand out, such as a cape, or a staff or an odd shaped helmet and often, a scar.

My idea for this character was to create someone in the middle ground to see how their appearance would vary. Calico is a helper, very much like Alfred from Batman, but I have given him an element of mystery to hide his background and make him more of an interesting and intriguing character so he appeals to the audience and isn't simply someone in the background.

I tried to mix his facial features so they weren't too sharp or too soft, creating a sense of ambiguity.

I ended up switching around the red and blue elements in his suit so the pants didn't blend in with my previously chosen dark brown fur. I didn't change the fur colour as golden and white cats are often happy in animatics involving animals, and black is a very negative colour, so I wanted a middle ground. I also loosened his clothing so that he did not look so stiff and angular like an antagonist.

12 Principles of Animation: Solid Drawing

In class, we were given the basic object of a walnut to help demonstrate the first of the twelve principles of animation, Solid Drawing. This is the dimension of weight and perspective in dynamic proportions.

We were told to draw what we saw in still life, as well as patterns on the shell's texture and interpretative one line drawings.

The one I found the most appealing was drawing the inside of the nut without opening it to see for ourselves.

From this we were told to redraw in a more detailed way. I decided to make my drawing more unrealistic, and based it off of the idea that the walnut shell was a home for the nut inside, and anything else could be living inside my closed walnut with it.

This gave me the idea to draw a creature holding the same nut.

The next activity was turn our drawing in to a character. As I had already made a character, I tried to figure out how I could get rid of the shell and nut part of my drawing. My original sketch made the shell look a lot like a cave, and so when I thought of an animated character living inside of a cave, my first thought was Yogi Bear.
I kept the same shape I had drawn throughout for the cave and used the nut as the basic form for the belly of my bear character.

During this sketch, I decided that I hadn't incorporated any detail of the walnut's texture in my character. As my background was a part of the character design, using the cave, I decided to add the textures that I documented during the walnut experiments on to the trees and the roof of the cave. This was carried throughout my later bear drawings.

 

After this we did model studies off of our teacher with the purpose to find the line of motion and create quick ideas of posture using basic forms.

Some were done in ten seconds, some in thirty, and some in a minute. 

I then used one of my one minute studies and fully rendered it with colour. In this study I made it look like my teacher, as I could picture him doing the pose in my mind and where the lighting was in the original to fully represent the light of the study.

After this I used two other poses from our observations to draw my bear. Doing this taught me the importance of the line of motion, as my bear's proportions were very different to Ben's and any other human figure. As a person with a comic-book-art-like style, most of my off head base sketches for a pose would be drawn as very unrealistic human figures with wide chests and thinner waists. The line of motion allowed me to create the pose to my bear's proportions despite his stomach being so long in comparison to the base sketches.