Motion for Promotion

READING & WRITING

After all planning is done and you’re just about to start on your animation, there is one more thing to consider: technique. Now, you may have had the same thought I did, “let me open After Effects and get started.” But will After Effects get you the right style for your animation’s story? Maybe the story is better told through a 2D, hand-drawn animation. Or perhaps 3D CGI will enhance the details in the characters’ faces to further project emotions and provide context for the story. Before jumping in, it’s important to consider technique even if it is out of your comfort zone.

Some common animation techniques include:

Hand Drawn- The most encapsulating and original animation form, this frame-by-frame technique can be completed with pencil, paint, ink, etc.

Stop Motion– Another frame-by-frame technique, this can be done in 2D or 3D. The 2D version is typically done with the camera pointed downwards toward a flat surface, with paper cutouts. The 3D version has the camera pointing as if it were filming a set, with characters and props made from any 3D materials (most notably clay). For both, each minor movement is photographed and then imported into video editing software.

2D CGI (Computer Generated Imagery)– This animation is created via computer software that can handle bitmap and vector images for 2D design. Many broadcast graphics use 2D because it’s scalable and reads very well.

3D CGI (Computer Generated Imagery)– Becoming increasingly popular, 3D CGI is an empowering yet difficult software animation. Animated films like Moana, Coco, Toy Story, and many others are made with this technique. The reason why it’s so powerful and difficult to learn is that there are no limitations and the possibilities are endless.

However, you don’t necessarily have to stick to one of these completely. You may be able to adapt or find a workaround. For example, if you’re a whiz at 3D but think your story would be better told through a 2D perspective, you could design your 3D elements to look 2D. If a combination of techniques doesn’t work, you could try using still photos, live-action shots, or hiring some extra help.

RESEARCH TO INFORM

To make animation seem as realistic as possible (to the environment that it’s created in) there is the animator’s holy grail titled The Illusion of Life: Disney’s Animation. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston outlined the 12 basic principles of animation:

1. Squash and stretch

2. Anticipation

3. Staging

4. Straight-ahead action and pose to pose

5. Follow-through and overlapping action

6. Slow in and slow out

7. Arc

8. Secondary action

9. Timing

10. Exaggeration

11. Solid drawing

12. Appeal

Here are some real-life examples of a few of them:

Just watch the first few seconds

Anticipation- You know that as soon as Bruce smiles with all of his teeth that he is going to try to eat them. That smile creates nervous excitement because sharks don’t smile just for the fun of it.

Edna Mode is iconic and I’ve cosplayed this exact outfit.

Staging- Everything about this scene focuses on Edna. From the panning in the first few seconds to the camera angles to make her appear bigger, you can tell this scene was made to highlight Edna.

Just the part with the girls playing the game.

Squash and Stretch- The guns that the trio is shooting with, in essence, squash and stretch. The barrel compresses to the middle part and springs back out again into its original form.

Follow Through and Overlapping Action- The laws of physics apply to animated worlds as well, so when an object that is moving comes to a stop, there are going to be physical consequences for that. In the first 10 seconds, the table gets lowered rapidly, and when it stops, the items on the table clank, adding realism to the scene.

Secondary Action- Right after the table is lowered, Farquad grabs the gingerbread man’s legs and “walks” them across the tray. While he’s doing that, a second action is taking place, with the scattering of the cookie crumbs.

CREATE

This is my first time ever trying to animate a logo in After Effects, and it was a love-hate relationship. Still is, if I’m honest.

I went back and forth about what I wanted to do for a logo and decided to try to create something for the film festival that the film/media faculty would like to run next year. Naturally, I went for something complicated and scaled it back some, which didn’t take away from the complexity of it.

Finding the vectors was easy enough, but it took me a few tries to find out how to get the camera reels to move. I had to break down the camera vector into separate pieces so I could then animate it. Trying to figure out how to get the light to “flicker on” was a hassle too, but with more practice, I think I can manage something like that in the future.

Towards the end, After Effects started to freeze on me and refused to play my project, so it made it incredibly difficult to fix the audio the way I wanted to. I did try restarting the program but the same thing kept happening. Oh well.

Overall though, I’m really excited that I got to learn how to do this because it felt so rewarding each time I successfully animated a piece of the logo. Definitely going to be searching for an After Effects class in the near future.