This Week’s Reading:
Technique:
This week the author of Animated Storytelling, Liz Blazer, talked about different techniques and styles that animation can be done in. Blazer lists and describes 5 different techniques and 6 different styles to utilize when animating.
For techniques, you can hand draw the animation using different still frames and they can drawn with any kind of medium, like pencil, charcoal or even paint. Then of course there is both 2D and 3D stop motion. I examined both types of stop motion in the previous 2 weeks of this course. 2D is when the camera is above a flat surface and objects are moved around on the flat surface like ink or sand or even cut outs like the flower I made. Then 3D is when the camera is on a tripod in a 3D place and puppets or models are moved around. The final 2 techniques Blazer talks about are 2D and 3D CGI. Both of these are when an animation is created in either a flat 2D animated environment using scanning or coloring on a computer and vice versa the 3D one is when an animation is created in a 3D software environment using rigging and modeling.
Then Blazer moves onto the styles that can be utilized for each technique. The first one is fluid transitions. This is where the animation flows from one scene to the next seamlessly. Then Blazer talks about 2D/Vector/Kinetic type. This is highly scalable colors and art work. This style is what I ended up using for my animated logo. Typically uses web design in illustrator. Then Handmade and Collage styles are created by using real materials found in the world and when using the collage style you combine handmade styles with photos and video footage. Both styles give the overall animation a vintage and innocent feeling. The final 2 styles Blazer describes are Film & Type and 3D styling. The first one is your typical video montage with large kinetic typography over top. Lyric music videos often use this type of style. Then 3D styles are typically created with 3D stop motion and 3D CGI. This style includes animating with real shadows, lights and actual laws of gravity.
Of course afterBlazer talks about all the different techniques and styles she goes on to say that conforming and adapting your animation to combine styles and techniques to make it your own is the most important thing.
Logo Animation Inspiration:
This animation showcases both the arch technique and the squash and stretch technique. A bouncing ball is the perfect example of both because when a ball bounces it moves in an arched position and when it lands it has to smoosh and stretch in order to look realistic. In my logo animation I used the squash and stretch technique when the letter T comes in.
This next video showcases the Slow In and Slow Out principle. This youtube series overall goes over the 12 principles. In this specific video it easily explains how it clearly makes sense to add extra frames at the beginning and end of an animation in order to make it look more life like and actually have it obey the laws of physics.
This is another video from that same series I talked about above. It goes over step by step in a very simple way on how over lapping action and making sure to follow through on your action. This video shows the importance of continuing the moment of say a cape after someone jumps through the air because of obviously a cap is lighter than a human body.
Not only this video but almost all of the Looney Toons cartoons depict exaggeration. Their movements are always over the top, when it comes to falling, running, hitting someone over the head. Just looking at this video, it made me realize that most cartoons are exaggerated because normal human movements are underwhelming.
This video takes a deep dive into the brilliant animation principle of anticipation. Spider man as a character over all is a great example of anticipation because every time he swings his body anticipates the landing on his feet. Also Spiderman: Into the Spider verse is just a gorgeously animated video overall and utilized all 12 Principles of Animation.
My Animated Logo:
For my logo, I wanted to keep it simple but also have a lot of fun with it. So first I started simple with one of my favorite colors… blue. Then I knew I wanted my logo to only feature the first letter of my name and not my whole name. So I made a “T” that I thought was cool. After that I made a much of outlines circles and then used trim paths to make them come in at different times and then animated the T so that it used the squash and stretch principle and finally found 2 fun sound effects that brought the whole logo to life.
taylorsniffen.com 