Animation

Compiled By: Ms. Priti Rumao

● Animation: Introduction to Animation
● Traditional Animation Techniques
● Principles of Animation
● Key framing: Character and Facial Animation, Deformation
● Motion capture

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ANIMATION

● Computer animation is a branch of computer-generated imagery

(CGI). Whereas CGI includes static scenes and dynamic images,
computer animation refers only to moving images.
● Animation is a method of photographing successive drawings,
models, to create an illusion of movement in a sequence.
● Because our eyes can only retain an image for approximately 1/10 of
a second, when multiple images appear in fast succession, the brain
blends them into a single moving image.

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ANIMATION

● Generally, Computer animation is a visual digital display technology

that processes the moving images on screen. In simple words, it can
be put or defined as the art or power of giving life, energy and
emotions etc. to any non-living or inanimate object via computers.
● It can be presented in form of any video or movie. Computer
animation has the ability to make any dead image alive.
● The key/main concept behind computer animation is to play the
defined images at a faster rate to fool the viewer so that the viewer
should interpret those images as a continuous motion of images.
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Traditional Animation Techniques

● Traditional animation usually refers to animation hand-drawn on paper. It was

the process used for most of the productions throughout the 20th century.
● An animator draws the characters, layout and backgrounds on paper. Each
drawing in the animation would be slightly different than the one before it and
the one following it, creating the illusion of movement when everything is put
onto film.
● Once all the animation has been drawn on paper, it is then photocopied or
re-traced onto transparent acetate sheets, called cels.

Link: https://youtu.be/qdNjraEF_Ts?feature=shared 5
Traditional Animation Techniques

Storyboards(Cel Animation): The storyboarding process was originally developed at Walt

Disney Productions in the early 1930s, and it’s usually the first step in making traditional
animation. A storyboard is a collection of hand drawings and words that tell a story, similar
to large comic strips. The drawings are displayed in a certain sequence, so the viewer can
pre-visualize the animation.

Cel overlay: Cel overlay is part of the cel animation process that transformed how animated
films were made in the mid-20th century. Characters were hand-drawn on plastic sheets and
placed over existing backgrounds. These sheets of animated cels are called ‘the overlay’
because it’s being laid over the background, enabling characters to move and change their
positions and expressions. 6
Traditional Animation Techniques

Limited animation: Frame by frame cel drawing created animated cels that looked
incredible — rich in detail, colour and depth. But the process itself was time consuming
and drained resource. Limited animation was developed as a compromise. Where
possible, teams using limited animation techniques would re-use existing frames, only
creating new animated cels where necessary.
Animation loops: An animation loop is an animation that repeats. Generally, it will be a
relatively short and simple sequence of animation set to continually replay.
Rotoscoping: Rotoscoping is a technique animators use to bring realistic movement to
characters. It involves tracing over footage of characters as they move frame by frame.
It was developed in the early 1900s but was brought to the big screen by Disney in
Snow White in 1937. Disney filmed actors in movement and then traced over that
footage. 7
Principles of
Animation

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Principles of Animation

Squash and stretch: When an object moves, its movement indicates the rigidity of the
object. Many real world objects have little Flexibility, such as furniture, however most
organic objects have some level of flexibility in their shape. Also Squash and stretch is
useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions. It is used in all forms of
Character animation from a bouncing ball to the body weight of a person walking.
Anticipation: Anticipation works on action.Animation has broadly divided into 3 phases:
1. Preparation phase 2. Movement phase 3. Finish. In Anticipation, we make our
audience prepare for action. It helps to make our animation look more realistic.

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Principles of Animation
Arcs: In Reality, humans and animals move in arcs. Introducing the concept of arcs will
increase the realism. This principle of animation helps us to implement the realism through
projectile motion also.

Slow in-Slow out: While performing animation, one should always keep in mind that in reality
object takes time to accelerate and slow down. To make our animation look realistic, we
should always focus on its slow in and slow out proportion.

Appeal: Animation should be appealing to the audience and must be easy to understand. The
syntax or font style used should be easily understood and appealing to the audience. Lack of
symmetry and complicated design of character should be avoided.

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Principles of
Animation
Timing: Velocity with which object is moving effects animation a lot. The speed should
be handled with care in case of animation.

3D Effect: By giving 3D effects we can make our animation more convincing and
effective. In 3D Effect, we convert our object in a 3-dimensional plane i.e., X-Y-Z plane
which improves the realism of the object.

Exaggeration: Exaggeration deals with the physical features and emotions. In

Animation, we represent emotions and feeling in exaggerated form to make it more
realistic.

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Principles of
Animation

Stagging: Stagging is defined as the presentation of the primary idea, mood or action. It
should always be in presentable and easy to manner. The purpose of defining principle
is to avoid unnecessary details and focus on important features only. The primary idea
should always be clear and unambiguous.

Secondary Action: Secondary actions are more important than primary action as they
represent the animation as a whole. Secondary actions support the primary or main
idea. For Example, A person drinking a hot tea, then his facial expressions, movement
of hands, etc comes under the secondary actions.

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Principles of
Animation
Follow Through: It refers to the action which continues to move even after the
completion of action. This type of action helps in the generation of more idealistic
animations. For Example: Even after throwing a ball, the movement of hands continues.

Overlap: It deals with the nature in which before ending the first action, the second
action starts. Overlapping action is when the character Changes direction while his
clothes or hair continues forward. The character is going in a new direction, to be
followed, a number of frames later, by his clothes in the new direction. Overlapping
maintains a continual Flow between whole phrases of actions.

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 Key framing: Character and Facial
Animation
Keyframing: To create an action in a digital animation sequence, first
is need to define the start and end points for that action. These
markers are called keyframes, and they’re used as anchor points for
actions in all different types of animation programs.

Keyframing is the simplest form of animating an object. Based on the

notion that an object has a beginning state or condition and will be
changing over time, in position, form, color, luminosity, or any other
property, to some different final form. Keyframing takes the stance that
we only need to show the "key" frames, or conditions, that describe the
transformation of this object, and that all other intermediate positions
can be figured out from these.

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 Key framing: Character and Facial Animation

Character Animation:

Character animation is about an artist bringing a character

to life. It isn't rotoscoping or blindly copying motion. It isn't
using raw motion capture or other automated techniques
to make something simply move. In much the same way
tracing isn't really drawing, animation requires the artist to
interpret and create something that is more than the
original. The above principles are the foundation upon
which good character animation lies. With practice,
patience and perseverance ones animation skills will
improve
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 Key framing: Character and Facial Animation

Facial Animation: Computer facial animation is an area of computer graphics that encapsulates
various techniques and methods for generating and animating images of a character face. The
character can be a human, an animal, a humanoid, a fantasy character or creature, etc.

A facial expression indicating displeasure, disapproval or concentration with the corners of the
mouth turned down. The importance of person faces expression in verbal and non-verbal
communication and advances in computer graphics software and hardware have caused
considerable scientific, technological, and creative interests in computer facial animation.
The body of work around computer facial animation can be separated into two main areas: 1.
Techniques to Generate Animation Data 2. Methods to Apply such Data to a Character.
Techniques such as key framing and motion capture belong to the first term, while skeletal animation
and morph targets animation belongs to the second. Facial animation has become well-known and
famous through animated feature movies and graphics games, but its applications include many
more areas such as communication, scientific simulation and education. 16
 Deformation

Deformation: When a solid object deforms, the material it is made of moves through
space, and what makes this deformation instead of just separate motions of
different pieces is that it undergoes a continuous deformation: nearby points at one
time remain nearby under deformation. A model deformation is any change in the
model’s shape: twists, expansions, contractions, and character rigging.

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 Motion capture

Motion Capture: This method of animation uses the live action/motion footage of a
living human character which is recorded to the computer via video cameras and
markers and later, that action or motion is used/applied to animate the character
which gives the real feel to the viewers as if the real human character has been
animated. Motion Capture is quite famous among the animators because of the fact
that the human action or motion can be captured with relative ease.

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