We will focus on 2 topics here. One is chroma key and another one camera tracking.
Chroma-Keying
The Chroma-Keying effect lets you create an alpha channel (transparency zone) for your bitmap image or image sequence. For example, if you have a series of bitmap images with a character filmed on a green screen or blue screen, you can use this module to create an alpha channel based on the screen colour and cut it out from your image sequence.
The camera is treated the same way as any other element. The same tools
and selection modes are used to offset or animate it. To animate the
camera, you need to connect it to a peg element.
Special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, or simply FX) are illusions or visual tricks used in the film, television, theatre, video game, and simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world.
Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of optical effects and mechanical effects. With the emergence of digital film making a distinction between special effects and visual effects has grown, with the latter referring to digital post-production while "special effects" referring to mechanical and optical effects.
(Image from google images)
Mechanical effects (also called practical or physical effects) are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized props, scenery, scale models, animatronics, pyrotechnics
and atmospheric effects: creating physical wind, rain, fog, snow,
clouds, etc. Making a car appear to drive by itself and blowing up a
building are examples of mechanical effects. Mechanical effects are
often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, a set may be
built with break-away doors or walls to enhance a fight scene, or prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a non-human creature.
(Image from google images)
Optical effects (also called photographic effects) are techniques in
which images or film frames are created photographically, either
"in-camera" using multiple exposure, mattes, or the Schüfftan process, or in post-production using an optical printer. An optical effect might be used to place actors or sets against a different background.
Visual effects involve the integration of live-action
footage and generated imagery to create environments which look
realistic, but would be dangerous, expensive, impractical, or impossible
to capture on film. Visual effects using computer-generated imagery have recently become accessible to the independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable and easy-to-use animation and compositing software.
Digital audio is technology that can be used to record, store, generate, manipulate, and reproduce sound using audio signals that have been encoded in digital form. Following significant advances in digital audio technology during the 1970s, it gradually replaced analog audio technology in many areas of sound production, sound recording (tape systems were replaced with digital recording systems), sound engineering and telecommunications in the 1990s and 2000s.
A Voice-Over Helps Tell Your Story The spoken word is a powerful vehicle that can pull in your audience, help them understand your story and make them feel empathy towards your character. Characters can be brought to life with a great voice-over performance. Vocal elements in animation can include:
Narrative dialogue
Character dialogue
Vocal sound effects (gasps, groans, screams)
When performing and recording your voice-over, it's important to stay in character and match your vocal pauses and inflections with the character. Matching a voice-over with the character is difficult to achieve if the animation has already been completed.Recording quality is critical. In Part Two, we will provide tips on how to record a quality voice-over while on a budget.
Digital audio is technology that can be used to record, store, generate, manipulate, and reproduce sound using audio signals that have been encoded in digital form. Following significant advances in digital audio technology during the 1970s, it gradually replaced analog audio technology in many areas of sound production, sound recording (tape systems were replaced with digital recording systems), sound engineering and telecommunications in the 1990s and 2000s.
I will first discussed on what role or roles do sounds/audio have in animation. According to Michael Geisler, “Sound effects play an important role in conveying action. Music helps express emotion.” This goes to show that adding sound effects to our animation gives life and meaning to the characters as it move, talk, cry, shout, scream and the like.
There are early animation composers who showed their skills and talent in creating such sounds for a particular animation. And one of those is Carl Stalling as the most famous unknown composer of the 20th century, almost solely based on his work composing musical scores for animated cartoons. Stalling's first work in music was as house organist in Newman Theatre in Kansas City, where he would accompany the latest silent film with his organ playing.
Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process, which involves bringing animated characters to life. The role of a Character Animator is analogous to that of a film or stage actor, and character animators are often said to be "actors with a pencil" (or a mouse). Character animators breathe life in their characters, creating the illusion of thought, emotion and personality. Character animation is often distinguished from creature animation, which involves bringing photo-realistic animals and creatures to life.
Mask Animation
The masking effect or masking is a visual style, dramatic convention, and literary technique described by cartoonist Scott McCloud in his book Understanding Comics in the chapter on realism. It is the use of simplistic, archetypal, narrative characters, even if juxtaposed with detailed, photographic, verisimilar, spectacular backgrounds. This may function, McCloud infers, as a mask, a form of projective identification. His explanation is that a familiar and minimally detailed character allows for a stronger emotional connection and for viewers to identify more easily.
It is used in animation, comics, illustration, video games (especially visual novels) and other media. It is common in Western graphic novels and Japanese comics and animation. The psychology behind the masking effect has been extended to rendering antagonists in a realistic manner in order to show their otherness from the reader.
Rotoscoping is an animation technique used by animators to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, when realistic action is required. Originally, photographed live-action movie images were projected onto a glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is referred to as a Rotoscope. Although this device was eventually replaced by computers, the process is still referred to as Rotoscoping. In the visual effects industry, the term Rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.
Week 5: Basic Animation Technique (learn from friends)
Working with text and graphics
With the Text tool, you can type text in your project, using various fonts and texts attributes. Text objects are part of a drawing, so you can manipulate them the same way. You can use the Text tools on both vector and bitmap layers.
This section includes the following topics:
• Creating Text
• Formatting Text
• Resizing the Text Box
• Converting Text into Separate Objects
When we thought of a great story, but until we write it down in script form we will never know if the story works. Transferring our thoughts into paper is one of the hardest steps in the movie making process, and people would often avoid actually writing a script as long as they can.
However, writing a script early on helps you spot issues such as:
Loopholes in your story.
Bad pacing.
No character development.
It also gives us a physical form of our story idea that we can share with people and get some feedback, which is priceless.
Building the storyboard is an integral part of putting together an animated feature. The process provides not only a visual interpretation of the script; it also allows designers in each department to get a feel for what is being presented on screen.
Animatic
What is an animatic?
Simply put, animatic is an animated storyboard. Boards are brought into an editing program and are cut together with the correct timing and pace of the film. They include basic sound effects, dialogue recordings and scratch soundtrack.
Animation production process and techniques A handy step-by-step guide to the animation production process. 1. Kick-off Time, location and speed of delivery permitting, kick
things off with a workshop. It’s a great opportunity to throw ideas
around and make the project truly collaborative. Plus it’s fun! 2. Design All animators or illustrators will craft the designs. 3. Storyboard The storyboard shows the building blocks of the animation, and gives
an idea of how the voiceover will match up with the visuals. 4. Animatic An animatic is a helpful way to pull together everything to create a fully timed-out rough film. Its purpose is to
demonstrate timing, flow and pace alongside key movements and
transitions. 5. Production During this stage the story will be bring to life frame by frame and creating those
enchanting moments that turn the piece into something truly magical and
memorable. 6. Feedback and sign-off This stage applies throughout the whole project process, culminating in the final sign-off before delivering the finished piece. 7. Render and final delivery Rendering will happen with the good resolution MP4 file. source link: https://animade.tv/notes/the-seven-steps-of-animation-production
Week 1: Introduction to Animation Basic concept of animation
Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and the illusion of change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion - as in motion pictures in general - is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon
There is important tools for animation for the animation process. That is listed below:
a. Wacom pen tablet
b. High end computer that can support animation software(heavy software)
There are a lot of software that we can use for the animation. For me ToonBoom is easy to use and can easily understand. This is the software that we are using in class to learn for animation.
