Lecture
topic:
Animation
Motion
is
an action which involves space and time and, strictly speaking, belongs to the
fourth dimension- something that does not at first sight seem an appropriate
category for the stationary world of two and three dimensional art. The ways
that artists "capture" the fourth dimension was, and still is, the
subject of much discussion.
Motion and emotion
both derive
from the Italian word moto. Physical motions (walking people, galloping horses,
postures, distortion, etc.) as well as mental emotions such as sadness, joy,
love and anger. If emotions were depicted effectively through motion the viewer
is "moved" by the artwork.
Étienne-Jules
Marey
Étienne-Jules
Marey a French medical doctor, (1830-1904) wanted to make the world visible,
and measurable. He had several inventions with respect to circulation,
electrocardiography, respiration, and muscle function.
"In
this method of photographic analysis the two elements of movement, time and
space, cannot both be estimated in a perfect manner. Knowledge of positions the
body occupies in space presumes that complete and distinct images are
possessed; yet to have such images, a relatively long temporal interval must be
had between two successive photographs. But it is his notion of time one
desires to bring to perfection, the only way of doing so is to greatly augment
the frequency of images, and this forces each of them to be reduced to
lines."
Étienne-Jules
Marey, 1883
He was the
inventor of the "chronophotograph" (1887) from which modern
cinematography was developed. Some in fact see Marey, rather than the Lumière
brothers, as the true father of cine photography.
Whereas
Muybridge (with whom Marey was frequently in contact) had used a number of
cameras to study movement, Marey used only one, the movements being recorded on
one photographic plate.
For those
who think slow motion photography is relatively new, Marey also invented a slow
motion camera in 1894, which took pictures at the rate of 700 per second!
Characteristic
of his pictures were his studies of the human in motion, where the subjects wore
black suits with metal strips or white lines, as they passed in front of the
black backdrops.
showing model as well as motion suit markers
Correct
exposure showing only the motion suit 'markers
MUYBRIDGE, Eadweard
b.
9 April 1830; d. 8 May 1904
Edward James
Muybridge was
born in
During the
late 18 sixties and early 18 seventies he made some two thousand pictures,
exposing negatives size 20x24 inch. Though he is not given due acclaim, many
his landscape studies rank with the best.
However,
Muybridge's main claim to fame (apart from being tried and acquitted for the
murder of his wife's lover!) was his exhaustive study of movement. Just about
this same time the French physiologist Etienne Marey was studying animal
movement, and his studies began to suggest that a horse's movements were very
different from what one had imagined. One of the people who became aware of
this research was Leland Stanford, a former governor of
By the 1870s
lengthy exposures had been reduced to a minimum, and thus it became possible
for photography to begin to extend one's vision of reality. It took a little
time, however, for Muybridge to perfect a way of photographing which would
supply the answer, for the Collodion process was rather slow.
Returning to
his movement experiments, a few years later Muybridge was able to photograph a
horse galloping, using twenty four cameras, each triggered off by the breaking of
a trip-wire on the course. He not only proved Leland right, but also showed
that, contrary to what painters had depicted, a horse's feet are not, as
hitherto believed, outstretched, as if like a rocking- horse, but bunched
together under the belly. This discovery caused considerable controversy, but
eventually became more generally accepted.
Muybridge's
studies are very comprehensive, and include some detailed studies of men and
women walking, running, jumping, and many other activities.
Modern
Motion Capture:
Time,
change and sequence -
Egyptian
art shows the passage of time by seria
In
medieval art a well known device of placing pictures next to one another - showing
the before and after: Diptych (two panels) or triptych (three panels) was
used where the story could be read in continuity: a sermon in pictures.
Garden of Earthly
Delights (opened and closed)
by Hieronymus Bosch c1510-15
More Triptychs
Seriality
or making a work in several sections is an effective way of
moving a story along. Roy Lichtenstein (b 1923) uses serials derived
from comic books.
Continuous
line is also a way to attract the viewer's eye - curved lines suggesting
movement. (motion blur).
Still
images or drawings can be made to animate using registration of imagery and
persistence of vision.
See
the work of South African artist/animator William Kentridge
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.7/3.7clips/9810kentridge.mov
http://www.awn.com/mag/issue3.7/3.7pages/3.7moinskentridge.html
The
viewer can be stationary or moving physically amongst the artwork. (Janet
Cardiff, mazes, etc.)
Janet
Cardiff
Art
in Technological Times:
http://www.stretcher.org/archives/reviews/010101/010101.html
see:
still motion site IDimaging\movement.html
Three D
Modeling and Animation
Spoof:
how to make an animated movie:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8683020727511417227
Some
practical suggestions for learning 3D graphics:
From Ian
Stead (former Rensselaer student and professional artist):
www.3dtotal.com
This site has
a bunch of free downloadable training videos for many different 3D and 2D
computer graphics software packages including Maya. They also have a forum.
It's a great place to start if you are starting to learn new 3D software.
A lot of this
is just common sense. Some of these things I've learned through experience,
others are good ideas I've read about or talked to other people about.
* Keep it
simple (being overly ambitious kills many projects).
* Plan ahead
what you are doing (draw! storyboard! collect reference!). Have fun. Don't try
to learn everything at once, there is so much to learn and it takes time to
learn it, so I recommend focusing on an area you wish to get better at instead
of trying to get better at everything at once (right now, I'm focusing on
modeling/ texturing - I have very little experience in animation and I expect I
won't be very good at it for several more years).
* You don't
have to be good at all aspects of 3D, its okay to specialize in one or two
areas (just get a basic knowledge of everything else).
*
Understanding composition is very helpful. Learning some architecture is useful
for modeling realistic spaces and buildings (I still need to do that).
*
Understanding anatomy and the human figure is essential if you are going to
make characters (model them and animate them). Taking a figuring drawing class
is highly recommended. It doesn't matter which software you use - it matters
what you do with it.
* Also,
everyone starts out as a noob, so even the best artists one day couldn't draw
anything very realistically. Natural talent helps, but you don't need it to be
able to draw or do great 3D work, all you have to do is practice.
* Get a
digital camera and take pictures everywhere so you can build a texture and
reference library - you may not be working on what you are photographing today,
but it will be helpful later. Also, this way you will have more work on hand
that you own the copyright to.
* In the same
vein, collect reference material from magazines, the internet and everywhere.
Collect 3D models and animations to look at for inspiration and to help you
understand how other people build/animate/render/draw things.
Here are some
excellent places to check out for learning 3D graphics and animation.
http://features.cgsociety.org/challenge
and www.cgtalk.com
These two
sites are part of CG Networks. They have several different CG challenges every
two months (animation, concept art, game art, architecture, visual fx and modeling)
They have an excellent and large forum on the cgtalk part of the site. There
are a ton of extremely talented artists who run and use these forums. It's a
great place to get inspired, and to learn. They have many useful forums for
getting critiques, for software specific advice and general discussion of
computer graphics and many other relevant topics.
Also, if you
are strapped for cash, and are looking for free solutions for animation and
modeling, you might check out these open-source 3D
programs:
Or, if you'd
like to buy some software at student prices, here's one place I know of (usually
you can save several hundred to several thousand dollars):
Additionally here is a link to get you going with the
jargon of 3D.
_________________________________________________________
Simple, but
“moving” animated gifs
_______________________________________
Stop Action
Animation
Stop Action
Animation is an animation technique which makes static objects appear to move.
Stop motion is used to produce the animated movements of ANY objects, such as toys,
blocks, dolls, etc. If desired, we will permit the use of drawn animation as
well for this assignment.
All animation, including all stop motion, requires a camera that can
expose single frames. It works by shooting a single frame of an object, then
moving the object slightly, then shooting another frame. When the film runs
continuously at 24 frames per second, the illusion of fluid motion is created
and the objects appear to move by themselves. This is similar to the animation
of cartoons, but using real objects instead of drawings.
Probably the
most passive form of stop motion is time lapse
animation in which a stop motion camera is simply clicked (manually or via an intermittent
control device called an intervolometer) to take a frame of film as each
period of time lapses, as natural objects of nature and mankind move of their
own accord, non-interfered with by the animator. The most common uses for time
lapse stop-motion animation movie photography are moving clouds, seen daily
during weather forecasts in moving satellite imagery, the speeding up of the
growth of plants, and stars as they appear to "rotate" around the
Earth.
Cell Phone
Claymation
From:
DaggeH
15 year old
from Sweden Claymation Video, Made with a W800i cell phone, took me bout an
hour and I used around 100 shots, clips clipped together in movie maker 2.0
(Windows
XP: Movie Maker 2.1 Download)
or for mac
users: imovie http://www.apple.com/ilife/tutorials/
More
Claymation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3lSGDgfSdc&feature=dir
Amazing Stop
Motion Animations: http://www.darkstrider.net/gallery2a.html
Claymation
info: http://www.animateclay.com/
Spiderman
stop action movie: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lTuSFILCp4&NR
Roger,
an example of stop motion
Stop Motion
Pro http://www.stopmotionpro.com/whatis_1.htm
Tutorials: http://www.stopmotionpro.com/assets/resources/tutorials/SMP_canon_compact_start.html
http://www.stopmotionpro.com/tutorials.htm
Visiting
artist:
Shawn Lawson
Screenings: William
Kentridge
______________________________________________________
Studio
skills: Photographing
motion, animation, storytelling, drama, creativity, expression with moving
objects
Project: Create a
stop action animation using any methodology. This could simply be a series of
animated gifs, as we did previously in Image Ready or a claymation project or a
series of interrelated drawings on paper or screen that are put into the
computer or… . The basic idea here is to create motion using still frames.
Some student
examples:
http://www.arts.rpi.edu/public%5Fhtml/ruiz/public%5Fhtml/IDIspring04%2D01/ss5.html
Task: Considering the
lectures in plenary and in studio and your personal explorations of the
animated image, create a minimum 30 frame animation. Use the criteria above for
guidance.
Deliverables:
a
minimum of 36 frames (3 seconds @ 12 fps) of your original animated sequence
in a .gif or .swf flash player or quicktime format
Grading
Criteria:
1.
Assignment completed on-time.
2.
Adherence to the size and file format specifications
3.
Appropriate use of animation
4.
Exploration and application of creative tools in creating animation
5.
Quality and clarity of class presentation
6. Quality of Inventiveness, expression, and imagination in your animated stop motion