Generating Ideas

I am going to be making a short animation but before I begin to start that animation I want to think of three different kind of ideas and then I will choose one and explain that one more than I will have explained the other two, my animation has to be at least 15 seconds long

Idea one:
I want to have one idea which will be action themed in a way and I want to have a guy which will be jumping over some kind of  gap with spikes in the middle of the gap and the character has to jump over that, but when he is jumping over it I want him to do some kind of flip at the same time.

It has to last 15 seconds so before he jumps over the gap I want to make him do some random action before he jumps over it, he will take some kind of run up before he jumps over it, this will be my first idea which I might choose.

the character will be a stick man but I will put a lot of work into it, I will most likely make the background blue and I will have blood on the spikes which are at the bottom of the pit in the middle of the gap. The part he is jumping off and landing on will be kind of like a grassy part, I want it to look very colorful

I am debating on choosing it because I think it will look good but it seems very simple to make, the only problem I may have is stretching it to 15 seconds long worth of animation

Idea two:
For my second idea I want to have something who is having a problem trying to get inside of a house, he keeps on trying to open the door and keeps on knocking on the door and in the end he will get inside the house, but after trying to get inside of it.

I will be doing the character a stick man because I think if I did a lot of work with the character, I will have to make a lot of parts move at once because the character will be more advanced. Because my character is not advanced, it is just a stick man I  will only have to move certain parts such as the arms, legs and the head.

I will also want to make this one colorful, if I can I will make the house look very realistic in the way, I want it to be from the side, so you will only see one side of the house and also one side of the character.

Idea Three

For my last idea I might have someone who is riding a bike down some kind of path and on the way he comes to some obstacles which I have not thought of what kind of obstacles I want to do yet, but once again I want to make it a stick man, I do not want it to be too complicated, too many moving parts for me to do.

I will colour it all so it looks good throughout it, the kind of obstacles which I wanna do is  things such as little walls and things on the floor which may get in his way like something random such as a person just stood there.

If I did choose this I would just make it completely crazy.

Idea one

I have chosen to go with my first idea because I have the most confidence in doing this one and overall I think it is the best idea for me to do out of all three of them

The reason I have chosen to do it because it will be the most enjoyable for me to do and
because I have confidence in myself doing it I think it will look good because I know I can do it at a really good standard

William Horner and the zoetrope

William George Horner (1786 – 22 September 1837) was a British mathematician; he was a schoolmaster, headmaster and schoolkeeper, proficient in classics as well as mathematics, who wrote extensively on functional equations, number theory and approximation theory, but also on optics.
(Reference) 

what is he known for in animation?

he is known for making the Zoetrope, it is a device which has still images inside of it, inside a cylinder shaped piece of wood or something, and it has images going around inside of it, each of them has a movement that joins to the one before it, like it is actually moving.

how it works is, you spin it around but you make slits around it and you look inside of them,and when it spins it looks like it is moving. For example the video which is under this writing, shows a Zoetrope and how it works, in this one a bird is used for it, but you can use other things such as a bouncing ball or someone running, you can be very creative if you ever make one of these

where did it originate and when?

the idea originally originated from a chinese guy named Ding Huan, around 100 BC, not sure how his look version of it looks, because of the time it was created, but it was kind of like the zoetrope, In 1833 or 1834, british inventor William George Horner, came up with the idea of how it was going to be shaped, he improved it.

But then again someone came along and improved it, it was not called the zoetrope back then, it was called daedaleum, but then another varient of it came about, this was had slits above the images so you can change the images inside it, this was patented by english and american inventors, including Milton Bradley. The American Inventor, William F Lincoln invented his version and he named it Zoetrope, meaning "the meaning of life"

Joseph Plateau and the phenakitoscope

(14 October 1801 – 15 September 1883)

Joseph Plateau was the guy who invented the phenakitoscope, this is a form of animation and a illusion, they are quite easy to make if you wanted to make one but I wont talk about how to make them. talk about the history of J

oseph and the Phenakitoscope.

he first thought of the idea to make such a device in 1829, he started planning it, how he was going to make it, 10 years later which was 1839, a long time he waited to start planning it, but two years after 1839 he invented it.

What does the device do exactly?


it gave an illusion effect that the still images or drawings where moving, you draw a couple of still movements and then you put them together around each other facing outwards in a circle kind of shape,

you get some kind of piece of paper and you make a whole in it, you do this because you spin the phenakitoscope and it looks like it is moving throughout when you are spinning it, such as the dancing couple above in the gif, this is the kind of effect it gives.

but in 1832, seven years before he invented the phenakitoscope he invented the strovoscope, which was pretty much the thing but an earlier version of it, kind of like a prototype of what was to come, something he could improve on 

CEL ANIMATION

Cel animation is when you have something such as a background for a certain scene, each single different movement/frame has to be drawn onto a transparent piece of paper which is ontop of the background so it gives you a much better feel of where you want each movement to be on the background.

this technique is still used, some people who make cartoons use it, if they were making a film or something such as that, it would take ages, over 100,000 drawings maybe, depending on how long the movie is going to be, this is where programmes come into use, such as adobe Flash, it may not look the same but it is much more efficient if you want to animate.

Adobe Flash is a programme which you can use to animate, short animations or big ones, your choice, it is perfect for beginners who want to animate in this certain technique.

the video which is to your right is a little quick tutorial of making a basic animation in flash, it just shows you how easy it is to use this software.

in the video which has a thumbnail of a cat is a tutorial on how to do cel animation, the reason. The reason she has the sheets together is so she can place where the next movement will be based, it is more precise and much more efficient than if she did not do it in this certain way and she numbers them so she does not mix the movements up, this would result in them being in the wrong order and completely mess everything up,

also she uses the others to trace to the next one, when she adds the next movement onto it, makes it much easier.

also here is a short animation which I got from youtube, you can see for this, the person has only had to draw 2 different movements, but if its slowed down which is in the video, you can see how many he has actually drawn probably atleast 20+

Traditional Animation techniques

I am going to talk about two different kind of traditional 2D animation techniques, they will be the flick book and drawn on film.

Flickbook.

flick books are incredibly time consuming to do because, you have to draw every single second, not even seconds below that, you have to draw every single frame, so it matches together perfectly and also you have to make sure every single page matches the other so it goes together, you also have to color it in, its time consuming and most likely really hard to do

the first flick book to ever be made was in September 1868, so they have been around for a very long time, but over time there has been techniques to improve how you can do it more efficient, the person who made one was called max skladanowsky, he was German and he first introduced his moving image sequence in 1884 in flip book form, but the person who patented the flip book is called John barnes Linnet under the name of the kinegraph, this meant moving image.

the way they have been improved in ways such as, some of them are made by computers in a way, they get shots from movies, or any video pretty much really and they separate the frames, print them out and then they just put them together, but some people still like to just draw them their self, so they can be creative and open minded with it

Text and sound

I made an animation before and I used it to add text onto it, this text fades out, I will show you how I did this, the Program which I used for this for Adobe Flash

Step one: Firstly I opened up my old animation, I then added another layer, this is the layer which I will be adding the text onto, make sure you have a keyframe where you want your writing to come off the screen.

Step Two: Next you add text, but when you add the text make sure you add it when you are on the layer which you plan to have the text on.

Step Three: Next make sure you are on the layer which the text is on and turn it into a symbol, there is print screens below showing you how to do this, turn it into a graphic

Step Four: Make sure the text is in dynamic, you do this by clicking on the writing it self and then you get this menu which is shown on the prinscreen to your right, and then make it so it says dynamic text.

Step Five: then you click onto the writing when you are on the layer and you should get this kind of menu which is shown below where it says "alpha" it should say something else but change it to alpha.

Step Six:  then you click on the end or start keyframe and you should then change it to a classic tween, but before doing that change the opacity to zero.
this is just below where it says alpha,

Step Seven: Then you have to highlight all of the layer which you will be animating, make sure it is all highlighted of that layer

Step Eight: On the printscreen which I have showed how to make it into a symbol, it says classic tween under it, click that with all the layer still highlighted, then your animation  should fade in and out or out and in.

Step Nine: Then you should click file>Export then



if you want to also add sound onto your animation, you download the sound as a wav or MP3 and then you make another layer on your Flash, this layer is for where the sound will be at, make sure the sound you have put on matches the length of your animation, I could not do this because of problems with my flash or audition, audition is for editing sound.

Once you have your audio file drag it onto the layer where the sound will be based on, its best to keep it separate from other layers so you can separate them all in case  you wanna seperate them all in the future.

when you export it, export it as an avi, this is just so you can upload it to sites such as blogger, like this.

Animations in our lifetime

American Dad. 

Creator: Seth Macfarlane

The first episode of American Dad aired on February 6th of 2005 and it is still getting aired, also making new episodes. so this Animated TV series is nearly 10 years old.

I was looking on what software they used to make series such as family guy and of course american dad, it doesnt specify which one but I assume it is one of the softwares below which is made by Toon Boom Animation (Reference)

• Toon Boom Opus (formerly USAnimation) ^[1] - This Toon Boom software is commonly used in the traditional film/TV animation industry. This software contains all the tools required to handle traditional animation workflows from scanning to compositing and 2D/3D integration. Its centralized database system allows the sharing of assets between scenes and enables the workload to be shared efficiently across a studio or even between studios. As of April 2008, Toon Boom Opus has been discontinued.
• Toon Boom Harmony (formerly Toon Boom Symphony) - Like Opus, this software is based on a centralized database system and is used in the Film and TV animation industry. It contains all the Opus features and has additional tools that can be used for cut-out animation style. These tools include pencil lines with textures, the deformation tool, morphing, inverse kinematics, particles and 2D-3D integration. Harmony can also be used as a paperless animation solution, drawing animation directly into the software, using a Wacom tablet. Harmony is available as a network or stand-alone license.

The target audience for american dad, which I think is Teenagers who are aged between 19-14 but a lot of ages most likely watch it who are older than that, I just think the most people who watch it are aged around that area.