Students are reminded to turn off mobile telephones during university lectures.

Happy Animator

Lecture:

Moving Pictures

*NB This lecture relies heavily on material presented on video tape.

Most of the video material cannot be published on the WWW for copyright and practical reasons. It makes little sense to publish the comments about the videos without the source material itself so you'll have to attend the lecture and take notes!




Animate - breathe life into, enliven through...
Movement is a powerful medium through which to convey a message. (Go ask Charlie Chaplain!)



Gertie the Dinosaur was the first real animated character. Gertie was created by cartoonist Winsor McCay in 1914. Unfortunately, due to copyright restrictions, Gertie cannot appear in person on this site. But you can read about her and check out some pictures elsewhere on the web.

Gertie Dinosaur



Animation is the process of creating images one at a time to be displayed rapidly in sequence giving the illusion of movement...

Persistence of vision is the blending together by the eye / brain of rapidly displayed sequential images, giving the illusion of movement.

Animation or film frames must be stored for rapid, sequential retrieval and display if persistance of vision is to be relied upon for creating the illusion of movement.

Some storage media include:
  • Cine frames / film

  • Video frames / tape

  • Flip-book pages

  • Zoetrope cylinders

  • Quicktime / MPEG movies

  • GIF89a files
zoetrope Zoetrope



How can you create the images to be photographed, digitized or flipped through?

Live action:
Animation:
If you can see it and change its appearance, you can animate or film it!

*NB The examples of animated films given above are not necessarily favourites of the lecturer. They have been included as examples only!


Animation and / or film may be used for
  • Artistic purposes

  • Storytelling

  • Displaying data (scientific visualization)

  • Conveying false / misleading information (advertising, evidence in court!)

  • Instructional purposes

  • Many other purposes too!
As with all your work, don't lose sight of your message!


Apoidea storyboard Storyboarding


Major areas to master in film or animation production.
  1. Object Space & Motion

  2. Lighting

  3. Sound (not dealt with in this lecture!)

  4. Time



Object Space & Motion
Some places to look for complex animated characters:
Some places to look for simple animated characters:
Some other films for you to decide how time consuming the characters would be to animate:


Space


Camera (& Lens) Motion


Object Motion


Lighting


Time


Some general Tips


Getting your movie 'in there' (into the computer for digital playback)


Animated GIF89a files




MPEG, Quicktime and Other Movie Formats




Animations useful for you to view include:

Other sites of interesting animations & characters include:




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