- How do commercial attitudes affect all types of animation as an art form?
- Are there abilities that 3D animation has that 2D does not? Vice-versa?
- How has 2D animation informed 3D animation?
- How could 3D animation better benefit from techniques learned through the development of 2D animation?
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Watch this documentary in the next few few days sometime. Join the “320 Forum” group on this site, and in the Pencils-to-Pixels topic discuss the documentary, things that interested you, and the following: -
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Article on Pixar’s La Luna
Click the image for the jump to the article.
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Profiles, Activity Stream, and Forums are Up!
- Everyone in the class, please use the “Sign-In -> Register” menu on the main menu bar to create a new account. Please use your UNCW ID and email for your account name but your real name as you normally prefer it for your profile name. Please complete the rest of the profile, too — take a few minutes and come up with some fun answers for the profile info. If you have ideas for things to add to the profile, let me know.
- Once you submit your registration, it will mention that you need to activate. (It also may ask for an avatar picture right away, but that didn’t seem to work until after activated?) Go ahead and check your UNCW email and click the link to activate your account. Return to Sign In and choose “Login.” You should have another small menu bar appear at the very top of the page. Under this menu bar, choose “My Account,” “Profile,” and then “Change Avatar.” Upload either a real picture or a drawing, painting, etc. of yourself (that looks like you). You can edit your profile answers here, too, and if we add more, later, they can be edited here.
- (As soon as you have it, too, you should add your web address for your 320 portfolio site to the profile field for it).
- Once you’re added to the site, and you’ve added your picture, the activity stream should show your new account and profile picture update. You can add any status updates, comments, links, thoughts about assignments, things that relate, etc. here for the whole class to see. Good examples might be articles on animation that you find, links to Vimeo/You-Tube/Flickr that relate, etc. You might also post links here to your own site updates or own Vimeo video posts.
- Also, you’ll be able to participate in forums. You can create different topics as questions, discussion, etc. I’ve created a general discussion forum just to start. Try it out once you’ve got your account going.
This may be a bit of a test-run, but hopefully it will be fun and useful, and we’ll be able to better coordinate the production later from here, share things of interest, etc. We might even come up with some other useful ideas for this along the way, too. Have fun!
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The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore & The Oscars
The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore from Moonbot Studios on Vimeo.
This great animation is nominated this year for the Best Animated Short Academy Award. (La Luna, another great animation, by Pixar will probably beat it, but they’re both really great shorts!)
Check-out more information here about the nominations this year in the short and feature categories.
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Project #1: Story Development
Complete the following:- Create a web portfolio space of some kind to post media developed for this course and that could be used afterwards to show your work. You may create your own site using HTML, CSS, etc. and host it on your student web space or use some third party setup that could include hosts such as Carbonmade, Tumblr, etc.
- Post the videos from your homework up to this point. (2D and 3D animation exercises).
- Complete and submit your story pack, consisting of the following:
- — A .pdf file that includes the title, premise, treatment. (All programs on MacOS may print to PDF. On Windows, use Acrobat or a free program such as CutePDF).
- — The same file (or another .pdf) should include the script with proper industry formatting.
- — The same file (or another .pdf) should include the shot list with framing descriptions and also storyboard illustrations (with 16:9 or 1.85 aspect-ratio frames, one per page).
- — The same file (or another .pdf) should also include at least one color-key per scene.
- — A movie file (1280 x 720 H.264 Quicktime .mov) that contains the animatic with possibly rough sound and/or dialogue.
- (All of the above should be in one .zip archive folder named YOURLASTNAME_320_P1_STORYTITLE.zip).
Due Thursday, Feb. 9 by class-time. Be prepared to present any aspects of your story.
Ideally, you should be able to read your logline/premise and then play your animatic and have it stand alone to tell your story! (Or at least with a little narration from you, if absolutely needed).
Then show your color key(s) to show your visual style/art direction/palette. That should be about it.
(If you have to read your treatment or script or storyboard descriptions — you might not have done your job thoroughly). -
Enthusiasm!
This TED Talk by Mike Jutan from Industrial Light & Magic on The Power of Enthusiasm is a great way to begin the semester: -
Homework #3: Animation Practice and Story Development
- Read through the second chapter in the Character Animation text if you have not, yet.
- Complete one of the animation exercises (different ball bounces or splashes) mentioned in the chapter as a hand-drawn animation.
- Complete two of the animation exercises (different ball bounces) in Maya.
- (While doing the above #2 & #3 — attempt to use all of the principles of animation that we have discussed to make the animations lively and like the different types of balls chosen).
- Take your three brainstormed setting/character/motivation setups and think how the motivation could be stirred by a catalyst that directly opposes it — thus kicking-off conflict. Take this conflict and decide a few specific obstacles that bring the story from the catalyst toward the end of “act 1″ through these obstacles in “act 2″ to a climax, and then falling-action in “act 3.” Write a short paragraph on each of your three setups to describe the setting, character, conflict, and resolution (minimum requirements for story).
- One 1280×720 H.264 Quicktime .mov file of your hand-drawn exercise.
- Two similar .mov files of your rendered animation exercises.
- One page .pdf that has three concise stories with a centered title and succinct paragraph.
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Homework #2: Some Principles of Animation
- Animate a “drawn” (no circle shape tools) ball bounce (with horizontal and vertical motion, at least 4 bounces — probably 40 frames or so) in 2D. (See your book for more practice and info).
- Animate the same in 3D using Maya.
- Brainstorm and generate a list of settings, characters, and character motivations. Choose three sets of these that would relate. Submit a text file containing a sentence or so for each setting, character, and motivation that could be used to develop a story.
- Upload two movie files and a text file. [No Maya files needed, yet]. (Due Jan. 26).
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Homework #1: “Warm-up” with a ball-bounce and logline.
- Post one story logline to Blackboard — aim to represent an idea that grabs the reader/listener and reveals a setting, characters, and conflict.
- Animate (by hand-drawing and any chosen means) a ball bouncing a few times and create a H.264 movie file.
- Upload your text file and movie file to Blackboard. Name them 320_LASTNAME_H1.zip.