Ashif Alucin
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UAL Level 3 Creative Media
The whole class will be learning about the basic aspects of an animation today.
Our teacher has introduced us to the Twelve Basic Principles of Animation that were introduced by the Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas.
I will find some gifs that showcase these principles and write what i have learnt.
To the right you should see the first example i used to show several principles. The primary one that came to mind was the "Squish and Stretch" principle once pop eye squeezed the spinach can. You can see that the can keeps the same consistency when the top and bottom bits of the can stretches out while the middle bit gets squashed by pop eye. This makes the animation of the can being squashed seamless.
You can see the principle of Anticipation with the first gif, but the second gif does showcase a clearly example of this principle. You can see the bigger man loading up his punch before unleashing it on pop eye, which does give the audience enough time to understand what i happening in the animation.
A clear example of staging is shown in the next gif. You should see a bigger man eating a burger. You can clearly see that the stage has been exaggerated to make this scene more "animated", as in more clear in a comical sense. There a lot of burgers stacked in on top of each other and the background shows spider webs. This clearly shows the greed of this character and the lack of care he has towards eating that burger.
The next picture should saw you a big man punching a horse. You should now see all the principles i listed as well the pose to pose action. You should see the puff of smoke coming out when the the big man punches the horse, this is because of the overlapped frames the animator used to give off a more dramatic look. You can see more clear examples of this with an animation of a fire. The straight ahead principle can also be shown here if you look at the big mans movements, they are very fluid, which does show the animator literally took it one frame at a time here.
Follow-Through and Overlapping Action is shown here when a moving object such as a person comes to a stop, parts might continue to move in the same direction because of the force of forward momentum. These parts might be hair, clothing, jowls, or jiggling flesh of an overweight person. This is where you can see follow-through and overlapping action. The secondary elements (hair, clothing, fat) are following-through on the primary element, and overlapping its action.
Follow-through can also describe the movement of the primary element though. If you land in a crouch after a jump, before standing up straight, that’s follow-through.
Slow-in and slow-out is another principle designed to make characters look more realistic. When characters are performing actions, animators will draw more frames at the start of the action, less frames in the middle, and more frames again at the end of the action to create this slow-in/slow-out effect. You should see the effect also in the gif above. The rectangle speeds up then suddenly slows down like pushed down a break pedal.
The arc principle is that almost all actions in life have a slightly circular motion. When a head turns or an arm moves, rarely will it thrust straight in and straight out. Often it will have a little curve to it.
Secondary actions are gestures that support the main action to add more dimension to character animation. They can give more personality and insight to what the character is doing or thinking. You can see this in the fat man eats the burger gif that i showed an example of for staging. The man makes subtle expressions to show his interest in the burger.
Expertise in timing comes best with experience and personal experimentation, using the trial and error method in refining technique. The basics are: more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings make the action faster and crisper. A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement. Most animation is done on twos (one drawing photographed on two frames of film) or on ones (one drawing photographed on each frame of film). Twos are used most of the time, and ones are used during camera moves such as trucks, pans and occasionally for subtle and quick dialogue animation. Also, there is timing in the acting of a character to establish mood, emotion, and reaction to another character or to a situation. Studying movement of actors and performers on stage and in films is useful when animating human or animal characters. This frame by frame examination of film footage will aid you in understanding timing for animation. This is a great way to learn from the others. Example can be seen at gallery above.
Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. Its like a caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Action traced from live action film can be accurate, but stiff and mechanical. In feature animation, a character must move more broadly to look natural. The same is true of facial expressions, but the action should not be as broad as in a short cartoon style. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your film more appeal. Use good taste and common sense to keep from becoming too theatrical and excessively animated. Example can be seen at gallery above.
The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to animation as it does to academic drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life. You transform these into color and movement giving the characters the illusion of three-and four-dimensional life. Three dimensional is movement in space. The fourth dimension is movement in time. Example can be seen at gallery above.
A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will capture and involve the audience's interest. Early cartoons were basically a series of gags strung together on a main theme. Over the years, the artists have learned that to produce a feature there was a need for story continuity, character development and a higher quality of artwork throughout the entire production. Like all forms of story telling, the feature has to appeal to the mind as well as to the eye. Example can be seen at gallery above.
References:
We are going to write a brief synopsis for PERSEPOLIS, then write an essay on how the film uses the 12 principles of animation.
Synopsis:
A young Iranian girl grows up in and witnesses the Iranian Revolution of 1979. This young girl is quite different to the rest due to her more open-minded families influences, predominantly from her mother. During this oppressive time in Iran, this young girl, Marjane, got to first hand witness the censorship in Iran of the west and the old fashion ideals being forced upon the country. This naturally made Marjane a curious young girl that questioned these ideals, and in return she gets to experience a new culture in Vienna. However, Vienna was not what she expected.
References for synopsis:
Persepolis Essay:
Task:
Write a 750-800 word essay analysing how the film uses the 12 principles of animation.
Give specific examples of where you see examples if the principles.
Where, How, Effect it has
Example:
One scene that struck out to me during watching Persepolis, regarding the task, was when Marjane got interrogated when she was seen indulging herself in western culture(1:24 mark in youtube). A barrage of the principles hit during this scene, if i am to start with the first principle of animation, the squash and stretch principle was very effectively used, while being synergistic with other principles, to show the two characters interrogating Marjane in a beastly light, like they had already morphed into a machine like creature.
From the example provided, you should straight away see how the two figures move with their slender bodies when they, with authority, starts looming over Marjane while touching her; the bodies moves in such an exaggerated way as seen in the thumbnail: the lady in the left is hunched back when examining Marjane.
This is clearly the first principle shown in action due to to body keeping the same consistency when the body is moving inwards. This shows the animation was clearly done by a professional, and it also had a very effective purpose, of painting the two slender women in a mechanical, beastly light.
Other principles are also involved in this exact scene that supports this purpose. Another clear one, is the third principle of animation: Staging. Before i write about staging, it must be said that the animation originated from a graphic novel that has the same style. This means the staging was decided before the film was even made.x
The main information that the black and white colouring tells us, is that we are viewing past events. The other is more so a feeling, it both directly and indirectly show the general perceived atmosphere of Marjanes homeland, which is Iran. The whole scene is staged in a way to show as much critique that could be inputted of growing up in the Islamic revolution.
The scene starts straight away showing a shadowed figure clearing out some rubble, this is to remind us we are watching a film that is showing a corrupt land. Later on we see casual propaganda painted on a wall, that was criticising the west. This was to show the general view the public had towards the west during the revolution. The divide in culture is further emphasised by staging when we move on to the scene where Marjane buys western products. The whole scene was orchestrated in a way to make the scene look, a what may be a casual transaction in the west, is a equivalent to a drug deal in Iran.
Follow-through action is shown in the next scene, when Marjane starts to headbanging to the western song she had just bought. You should see the the Follow-through action in process when looking at Marjane's hair movement. The purpose for follow-through action in this scene is to keep the scene fluid and realistic, but the purpose of the actual headbanging is, to directly show, the rebel that is growing in Marjane.
All the principles, shown in this scene, works extremely well with each other. They all communicate to the audience how the world currently is to the eyes of a child - to the unfiltered brain that is still developing. Each conscious decision made by the animator directly helps the goal, through the decision to give the two ladies slender bodies, that moves like a creature, hinting they look alien to the perspective of a child.
The animators wants to use the principles to show the age dynamic between these two characters. It is evident that they wanted to show once an adult has developed their beliefs, it's near to impossible to change their belief system, and since children still have a developing mind, it is easy to sway their belief systems. Marjane is shown to directly been influenced by her mother, but also always had a natural curiosity within her that is slowly manifesting into rebel like actions. From this selected scene, the age and power dynamic is what i believe this scene wants to highlight. We should remember the original graphic novel is an autobiography of Marjane Satrapii. This is something that should be appreciated because it creates a lack of bias in the perspective of a child, i personally do find stories, especially in animation, to either underestimate or overestimate children. Marjane and the animators made it clear on how they wanted this story to be made and this is what they accomplished.