2D Animation

General Information
Venus Samawi
Isra University
Content
• 2D animation : NO. of frames
• How to animate
• Kinematics in Two Dimensions
• Inverse Kinematics in Two Dimensions
• Character Animation
• Documentation using Xsheet

2
 No. of Frames Need For Animation
• Animation shot on film and projected is played at 24 frames per second

• Animation for television in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Australia is
played at 25 frames per second.
• In these countries PAL television system is used.
• It plays at 50 fields (frames)/second, and 25 frames/second is compatible
with this.
• If an animated film played at 24 frames per second on the television, you
would see a black bar rolling up the screen.
• NTSC, which runs at 60 fields/second. This means you should be animating
at 30 frames per second (60 is divisible by 2).
• For 1 minute (1*60 sec) film, using NTSC with frame size 256256 true
color image (3 byte)
• Total no. of frames = time in seconds * no. of frames /sec= 1*60*30=900 frame

• File size = no. of frames * frame size=900*(256*256*3)= 176,947,200 byte

 How to Animate
There are two ways to animate a sequence using traditional 2D animation:
• animating ‘key to key’ (also known as ‘pose to pose’)
• Straight ahead
• Key to key animation is when the ‘key positions’ or ‘poses’ in a sequence are
drawn before completing the sections between them (‘in-betweening’).
• The in-between drawings (‘in-betweens’) provide the characterization or detail.
• Animating key to key allows large degree of control over your animation.
• It can prevent the character or object from changing size or distorting where you
don’t want it.
• It also means you have control over the timing of your animation and can more
easily predict what action will happen when and where.

Example of key to key animation.

“A man sits at a table with a glass of liquid on it. He picks up the glass and drinks from

it“
• Key number 1 – He looks at the glass.
• Key number 2 – He grasps the glass in his hand.
• Key number 3 – He raises the glass to his lips.
• Key number 4 – He tips the contents of the glass into his mouth
 How to Animate : Straight Ahead
• Animating straight ahead
• This is when images in the sequence are drawn directly one after the other.
• It can produce a more vibrant form of animation with more energy and
exuberance.
Disadvantage:
• There is far less control with straight-ahead animation and distortion and
changes in size are more likely.
• It is also more difficult to work out the timing because you can only check the
animation with a line tester when it is all done and then it may be wrong and you
have to throw away a lot of drawings and redo
Kinematics in Two Dimensions
• Motion in two dimensions involves vector quantities:
• Displacement (x, y) : is a vector measure of the space between two positions
measured along the shortest path connecting them.
• Velocity (vx, vy) : is the rate of change of displacement with time.
• Acceleration (ax, ay): the rate of change of the velocity of an object with
respect to time.
• Also we need two scale values
• Distance . is a scalar measure of the space between two positions
measured along the actual path connecting them
• Speed is the rate of change of distance with time.
• The components of a 2-D problem could be separated by creating two
independent 1-D problems
• Kinematics problems in 2 D are essentially a synthetic geometry problems. To
solve them you should be able to…
• represent a kinematic event with a geometric diagram
• use geometry to determine unknown magnitudes (lengths) and directions
(angles)
• use these results to determine kinematic quantities
2D Inverse Kinematics (IK)
• 2D IK is applied to the bones, and Transforms of the characters’ animation
skeletons.
• 2D IK automatically calculates for the positions and rotations of a chain of bones
moving towards a target
. position.
• This makes it easier to
• pose and animate character limbs (‫)اطرافه‬for animation, or
• to manipulate (‫)معالجه‬a skeleton in real-time,
(as manually keyframing the chain of bones is not required)

• Kinematics stands for movements, and IK refers to the fact that we don’t usually
control the arm itself. The controlled are:
• the motors that rotate each individual joint.
• Inverse kinematics is the task of deciding how to drive these motors to move the
arm to a certain point of position.

• Kinematics: calculating the joint positions from the joint angles

• Inverse Kinematics : Calculate the joint angles based on the joint positions
 Inverse Kinematics: Let’s imagine a robotic arm with
2 segments and
2 joints,
At the end of the arm, there is the end effector that we want
to control.
• We do not have direct control on the position of the end
effector; we can only rotate the joints.
• The problem of inverse kinematics is to find the best way to rotate the joints to move the
end effector to the desired position.
Joint Angles :Using the law of cosines to calculate the values for  and  ,
However, the angles we really need are A (in blue) and B (in green).
Human model Animation
Characters include
• Human models
• Virtual characters
• Animal models
Human model: The body has a
• hierarchical structure

.
• Many types of joints
• Human model consists of Many types of joints. The position of
the joints lower in the hierarchy are affected by those above it.
• In Human model, each joints can have 1 to 6 degrees of
freedom (DOF)
• For rotational joints, usually it is 1, 2, or 3 (DOF)
• The “Root” of the body has 3 degrees of freedom for the 9
translation
Joints
The Degrees of Freedom (DOF) is defined for various joints.
There are several kinds of joints
• Translational joint (1,2,3 DOF):
• A sliding joint
• Hinge joints : A 1 DOF rotational joint
• Can be defined by the axis of rotation
• Ex: Knee, elbow

• Universal joint (2 DOF)

• Rotation around 2 axes perpendicular to each other
• EX: Wrist joint
• Rotational Joints: Two ways to represent the rotations, could be
• - Gimbal joint (3 DOF)
• Rotation defined by the three axes and the angle of rotation around them
• - Free joint (3DOF):
• A ball joint 10
• Ex: Shoulder, hip, neck
 x-sheets

.
• X-sheets are also referred to as dope sheets or exposure sheets.
• Used by the animator to record all the necessary information relating to how
the animation should be shot.
• A standard x-sheet consists of
• Several columns that run from top to bottom
• sound column
• action column
• the frame numbers column
• the levels columns
• the camera column
• 100 rows that run from left to right.
• Each row represents one frame of animation.
• If the animation is to be played back at 25 frames per second,
• 100 frames will equal 4 seconds of animation (100/25)
 Cont.
• Sound column:
• This contains the sounds that are relevant to the animation (the dialogue
spoken by the characters).
• Used to know that at a certain frame in a scene ,a particular sound is made.
• For animation the dialogue is recorded first
• It is then ‘broken down’ (go through tracks frame by frame) by the editor.
• Editors specify each word starts and ends and where each of the major
vowel and consonant sounds are
• These are then marked on the x-sheet in the sound column, frame by
frame.
• Action column (‘slugging out’.):
• This contains the instructions on when a given piece of animation will start
and end.
• An experienced animator (or director) will fill out this part of the x-sheet
before they start animating.
Cont.
• Frame numbers column
• This is where the number of each frame is
inserted
• Frames are numbered in 2 ways:
• By the drawing. This means that drawing
number one will be numbered 1, drawing
number two will be numbered 2,
• By the frame. This means that the drawing on
frame one will be numbered 1.
• Levels Columns
• When a sequence is animated, even if there is
only one character, the drawing for one frame
of animation may be on several levels of
paper.
• The Camera column
• Used to specify Viewport, camera position
camera information (how you want the scene
to be shot and pinpoints the area within the
artwork.
• Viewport, camera position (Top, left , etc )
Xsheet: Bouncing Ball