Disney remains to be the most popular name in animation, and not without reasons. Disney animators Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas (two of Disney’s Nine Old Men), in 1981, introduced animators to the 12 basic principles of animation in their book, The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. Although animation has evolved much over the years, these twelve concepts will not be outdated, and continue to be taught in popular animation institutes around the world.
Let us look at the first six principles in this first part.
Squash & Stretch
Squash and stretch remains to be the foundation of animation. It is the technique used to convey weight, emphasise movement, and enhance a character’s flexibility. From a person walking to a dog jumping, there are enough examples of squash & stretch in real life. However, in animation, these actions are exaggerated. The easiest way to understand how squash and stretch work is to look at a bouncing ball or a man walking at a regular pace.
Image courtesy: www.download.autodesk.com
Here is another excellent example of the use of this technique in 2D animation. The man in the front appears to be lighter and walking fast. With an accentuated squash and stretch, the character walking behind appears heavy and slow.
You may not have noticed it, but this technique is commonly used in your favourite 3D animation movies. Remember Murray from Hotel Transylvania? That is a lot of squash and stretch!
GIF courtesy: Sony Pictures Animation
Timing
Timing in animation refers to the number of drawings or frames that complete a given action. It determines the speed of the action. In simple terms, if there are more drawings between two poses, the action will be slow & smooth. But fewer drawings make the action fast. The below image will help you understand this better.
Image courtesy: www.evl.uic.edu
Anticipation
Anticipation is the preparation for an action. Some of the most common examples in real life include a golfer swinging his club backward before hitting the ball or a bowler waiting for a second before starting to run. In animation, humour is usually created when the movement of anticipation happens in the opposite direction of the main action. Any action that requires greater strength will have a bigger moment of anticipation. See Red smiling? Did you see this coming?
As any object or person starts to move, there will be acceleration. When they come to a halt there must be deceleration. Otherwise, the movements become robotic. Imagine that a car starts and reaches full speed in an instant or comes to a halt from 100km/hr in the blink of an eye. Such movements are unnatural. Slow in – Slow out or Ease in – ease out make such actions more life-like. In animation, the closer the drawings/frames are, the slower the animation will be. The farther apart they are, the faster the animation will be. A swinging pendulum is a classic example of this principle.
GIF Courtesy: Katie Bayman
Follow Through & Overlapping Action
These two closely related principles of animation help animators create realistic scenes. They simply follow the laws of physics. Follow-through is the idea that certain appendages and body parts continue to move even after the person/object stops moving. If a superhero character wearing a cape runs and stops abruptly, the cape will fly forward past the body, then fall back where the character stopped. If a car halts suddenly, the antenna on top of it will keep moving for another second.
Overlapping action explains the idea that different parts of a body will move at different rates. For example, when the superhero character walks, his arms will move at a different speed than his head.
GIF Courtesy: Dsource Ekalpa India via YouTube
Straight Ahead & Pose to Pose Animation
Have you ever created a stick-figure flipbook animation on the corners of your notebook? If yes, then chances are you didn’t plan it out with preparatory sketches. This is straight ahead animation, which involves creating frame-by-frame from start to finish. While most classic Disney movies were made using this technique, it is not much in use lately.
Most computerized animation uses the pose-to-pose animation. In this, you set the main poses first and insert the in-between poses later to get the timing right. In top animation studios, the key poses are often set by the lead animators while the rest of the frames are set by the newbies on the team.
Image courtesy: www.pluralsight.com
Now armed with these first six basic principles of animation, start practicing, and notice the difference in your animation, be it 2D or 3D. Bookmark this post and check back often so that you can brush up on the basics whenever required.
Watch this space for the remaining six basic principles of animation.
Interested in a career in animation? Click here and take a look at animation career courses that can help you get the right skill sets.
The 7 Best Animated Characters of All Time Who Never Speak
The most memorable animated characters on the screen are often the ones who say nothing at all. These characters have quite vivid emotions and you could easily tell what is going on with them emotionally.
Sometimes the character don’t have the ability to speak, such as animals like Snoopy and Pluto and sometimes they aren’t given vocals at all.
Here’s a list of impressive non-speaking animated characters.
Mr. Bean
The Mr. Bean series was broadcasted in about all the countries across the world. There doesn’t seem to be a person across the globe who cannot understand or enjoy his character and antics. Mr. Bean’s character was influenced by Jacques Tatia’s Monsieur Hulot, the infamous French silent comedy star.
Wall- E
Pixar’s garbage collecting robot has a modified Mac boot sound. His emotions and gestures were incredibly beautiful and made the character quite enjoyable.
Maggie Simpson
Despite her silent role, she has a distinct depth of character and is the main focus of a great number of episodes of The Simpsons. The baby often proves to be the most genius one in the family.
Shaun the Sheep
Mischievous sheep ‘Shaun’ was silent as creators didn’t want to waste time in lip syncing and voice acting. And that resulted in a global hit of a dialogue-free character.
Tom and Jerry
Silent comedy at its best. Their expressive faces and the physical quarrels are something that remains unmatched since decades.
Magic Carpet
The most unique in the list is the Magic Carpet from Aladdin. It not only stays silent but also doesn’t even have a face and still we get to know what it communicates with the Aladdin.
Abu
Remember the monkey from Aladdin?
Abu loyally accompanies the thief-turned-prince throughout his adventures and is in constant fight with his counterpart, the carpet.
Just because these characters are silent does not mean they don’t have anything to say. The silent animated characters communicates vividly through their gestures and expressions. To animate characters, especially the silent ones, you must not only be imaginative and creative, but also need the length and breadth of knowledge to make your creations come to life. With the right set of skills, you too can create such amazing characters! If you have the passion for animation, click here and check out this Animation Film Design course.
Who are your favourite characters who never speaks? Let us know in the comments below.
At first look, Adobe Photoshop & Lightroom might appear quite similar. But each program is designed with a different purpose in mind, and each offers a distinct post-production photography undertaking.
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the go to tool with unlimited creative possibilities. Over the years it has become synonymous with ‘photo editing’ itself. How many times have we heard, “it’s Photoshopped!”
Photoshop is used for heavy image editing purposes. You can even create images & designs using this. Even though quite popular among photographers for retouching, Photoshop today is widely used by numerous professionals including graphic designers, web designers, animators, VFX artists, publishers and architects.
Strengths of Photoshop:
Pixel-level editing – This means, you can edit even at the tiniest level
Comprehensive design & manipulation – Limitless manipulation is possible. Both raster and vector images can be created from scratch.
Layers – As this software allows you to keep different edits on separate layers, you can modify or enhance any layer independently.
Compositing – Using ‘Masking’ techniques you can protect specific parts of the photo while working on other areas.
Toolbox – There is a huge library of tools at your disposal. And more comes with every update.
Adobe Lightroom
Adobe Lightroom is an image editing program. But that’s not the complete picture. It’s an image management program too. Unlike Photoshop, Lightroom offers an all-in-one solution to organising, editing, and publishing your photographs.
As a database-driven image management software, it provides the user with the ability to organise and catalog their photographs according to camera type, lens type, date, location and various other criteria. This helps you make a set of basic adjustments to a group of images according to the criteria you define. Those criteria are called presets. You can either have your own preset or import presets from other photographers.
Strengths of Lightroom:
Ability to process RAW files – It accepts RAW files straight from your camera.
Image management – You can organise your images as you import them.
Easier to learn – With a simpler interface and efficient workflow, this software can be handled well even by beginners. However, you must learn Photoshop to efficiently use it.
Conclusion
In short, Photoshop is used for graphic design as well as high-end photo manipulations & edits. Meanwhile, Lightroom is used for quickly organising the entire library of images and making the basic edits to all of them at a time.
Basically, it all depends on the nature of your work, and there’s no right or wrong choice.
What software do you use for editing you pics? Do share it in the comment section below.
There are lot of careers in the animation industry . One of the most interesting among them is voiceover. It’s amazing to see how a person can have so much talent in voicing a character that it shapes the character and makes an impact on us.
Of all the voiceover performances in the animation industry, these ten seems to be the most amazing.
Robin Williams, Aladdin
The voice of the friendly blue Genie in Aladdin is that of Robin Williams. The fact that he not only did the voiceover, but improvised nearly all his dialogue boggles our minds. Probably, without Williams as Genie, this Disney movie would never have enjoyed the popularity it achieved.
Jeremy Irons, The Lion King
Do you agree if we say that the perfect Villain should sound like cigars, and old oak furniture? Well Jeremy Irons has the ultimate voice for any sophisticated villain. He was able to bring a deep grittier tone for the greedy villainous lion ‘Scar’ in the classic animated movie Lion King.
Steve Carell, Despicable Me movie franchise
Steve Carell’s Russian accent for ‘Gru’ is dead on and matches the personality of the criminal mastermind-turned hero perfectly. In Despicable Me 3, he also does double duty voicing the twin brother of Gru, Dru!
Pierre Coffin, Minions movie franchise
Co-director of the movies Despicable Me and Minions Pierre Coffin do the vast majority of voiceovers for minions. It is important to emphasize the relevance of voice work is in these movies. The minions’ appeal to a great extent comes from their adorable and absurd little voices.
Ellen Degeneres, Finding Nemo & Finding Dory
Ellen flawlessly delivered voice and comic timing for Dory, the neurotic bright blued fish having short term memory loss. There were moments in Dory’s tone and light optimism which certainly resonated emotionally well with the audience.
Tom Hanks, Toy Story movie franchise
Tom Hanks who voiced Woody, the leader of Andy’s bedroom has been highly regarded as the best voiceover artist for Pixar till date. And also it turns out he didn’t do it alone. He once revealed in a talk show that whenever he didn’t have the time to voice, Disney had often turned to Tom’s younger brother Jim to do the job instead.
Mark Hamill, Batman: The Klling Joke
Unarguably the best Joker voiceover for DC animated movies is that of Mark Hamill. Hamill’s take is characterised, appropriately, by equal parts madness and silliness, quick transitions from high pitches to low, and different insane laughs for different occasions which forged the Joker character exactly like in the comics.
Johnny Depp, Rango
Rango is a chameleon that changes its colour pretty much like Johnny Depp adapts himself to different role. It is brilliant to see how he is able to constantly shift his voice from being brave to a total coward and thus giving life to the animated character.
Jack Black, Kung Fu Panda movie franchise
Jack Black gave a comedic presence to Po, the oversized slow Panda who later realised his potential and became the Dragon Warrior. Black has done justice to this role and is irreplaceable in this franchise.
Amy Poehler, Inside Out
Amy Poehler’s stellar performance in Inside Out is worth mentioning as she was entrusted with much of the narrative in the movie. With her complex voice work, Poehler transformed her character Joy, one of the five emotions of an eleven year old girl, into the film’s heroine.
Can you think of any other exquisite voiceover performances? Let us know in the comments!
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Due To the Current Covid 19 Situation and Lockdown teaching and training has Shifted online and Arena Animation took the Initiative to provide Non Stop Learning to Student in these Challenging Times by arranging Knowledge enhancing Webinars and Workshops from industry experts as they interacted with students through online platforms and Provided them some great knowledge and information about topics like Trends In Animation & Vfx,Script to Storyboarding, Simulation and Fx, Career Opportunities, Pre Production in VFX, Animation Principles. It provided Students some very useful Knowledge in these Conditions.
JOB Placements Provided to Students
Arena Animation Sayajigunj Keep the Momentum going by providing Quality Training and Fulfilling Job requirements of Companies operating During Lockdown and Provided right Candidates by properly Evaluating Them and Training them for the New Techniques and procedures as per lockdown requirements and guidelines. Around 10 Students Got Job Placements in Top designing Firms and studios and Students were recruited as 3D Artist, Motion Graphic Artist, Graphic Designers,3D Generalist, Social Media Designers and Video Editors. Hence Making a Great Start for their Prosperous Careers.
Knowledge Enhancing Webinar on Game Production Pipeline conducted by RAH Amar Trivedi,Industry Expert.
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Special Seminar on “How to Be a Multi Millionaire Entrepreneur” by Motivational Speaker Mr.Bhavin Shah
MrBhavin Shah a Well Known Motivational Speaker conducted a Very Effective and Important Webinar on “How to Be a Multi Millionaire Entrepreneur” and How one can Convert his or Her passion into her career .He shared Some Very Useful Tips and Information to Online attending Crowd and they got a Chance to Think about their Skills and How it can be a Progressive Career.
Creative Minds Workshops was Conducted By Mentors.
Mentors at Arena Animation Sayajigunj Provided Students with Some Useful Additional Knowledge by Providing them Workshops on Advance Topics like Minimalistic Poster Design,Magazine Cover Design,Creating a Stop Motion Animation,VFX shot, Character Animation sequence Conducted by respective Mentors as per the Students participated in the Creative Minds 2020 and its respective categories using the Online Platform to give students Advance Knowledge during these Online Studies.
Special Guest Workshops was Conducted By Experts.
Special Workshops were arranged for Students at Arena Animation Sayajigunj as they can explore some New Skills and enhance there Knowledge about the latest Techniques in Gaming and Vfx Film Making.Session on Creating Game Textures was Conducted by Industry expert Mr.Viral Shah for Gaming Students and Workshop on Creating Cinemagraph by Mr.Avdhoot Virkar,Professional Artist.Both Sessions Were Knowledge Enhancing and Useful for Students
Arena offers career & professional training in areas including Animation, VFX, Gaming, Web Design, Graphics Design, UI-UX, Broadcast, Digital Advertising & Marketing and Multimedia. Our courses are designed to transform students to successful creative professionals.
