Here is a short clip i finished today. It took me about a half hour of work total. It is based off my Flash Demo 1 sketch. Although there are no moving parts, i taught it was necessary to play around with the rolling ball physics and squash and stretch. I made the piece as i went, i didn't know how it was going to look at the end. This goes against the advise of my mentors, who suggest breaking down my animation into smaller peices but i was anxious play around with my idea. The cup that the ball landed in was actually supposed to be a cup with a joint which allows it to tip over. Considering how much time this would take i made it stationary for this example. I realize how unrealistically my ball seems to hover and float in the air after launching off the ramp. The balls trajectory seems off. When the ball lands in the cup it bounces around a couple of times and stops abruptly. I deffinely lost motivation towards the end of the clip, explaining the messy finish. With some more practice and patience, i will get this right.

march 19

After taking the advice of planning before doing, i have drawn out two sketches of animations i hope to complete. I used lined paper, pens and pencils to create these simple sketches. The first sketch, titled "Flash Demo 1" is an obstacle course involving two balls, blue and green. Initially the blue ball rolls down a ramp, lands in a cup which tips over, spilling the ball on a see-saw which launches the green ball.
My second piece is a little more complicated. The green ball is riding on a sled on wheels which catapults it across the field until it finally crashes into the three blocks. My two sketches will utilize several of the 12 principals of animation including squash and stretch, slow in slow out and others. These are very early concepts and I am going to revise and edit them as i go along. Once i get advice from my outside experts i will make these changes.

March 17

Over the past weeks i have gathered a lot of information on how i should be tackling this project. I am actively communicating with my outside experts. Kris Dunham explained that the higher the frames per second (fps) in an animation the more detail you can create. Flash Pro's default FPS is 12, meaning for every second in an animation there are 12 frames. 3d animation requires higher fps because 3D has a realism aspect that would be canceled out under 12 frames. Creating an animation in 12 fps has its benefits. Animations will be less time consuming. Also the finished product would be smaller file size and have faster rendering time. He reminded me that animation is half planning and half doing. I have to put my ideas on paper before I can start animating. He also told me about the stages of animation. Instead of putting it into my own words I’ve copied and pasted his exact words:

Reference. Look around and use the world as your reference for your animation. Go get a ping pong ball and bounce it around and film it.

Thumbnails. Draw little tiny sketches of what you want to accomplish in your animation and the timing you want. You want to understand what Key frames there are and where they fit in your time line.

Blocking. My favorite part. Blocking is when you put your key frames into the software that you are using. Only the key frames go in at this time. It will help you feel out the timing. At first your blocking will look like a bunch of snap shots but trust me it helps. In the bouncing ball exercise it is only the times the ball hits its peaks and when it hits the ground/objects.

Blocking Plus. This is when you throw in your breakdowns. Remember those are the keys between the key frames. They are so important. A bad breakdown will kill an animation. This part also helps solidify the timing and spacing of an animation. A beginner animator might find his/her toughest battles at this point. But don't lose hope, just work through it. The good news is that we often only make the same mistake a dozen times before we really truly learn from it. When you playback at this point you will see what kind of timing changes need to be done. From personally experience it is better to be a tad too quick on the timing then too slow.

Refining. This is where you do your inbetweens and fill up all the gaps of the animation. Sometimes you wont have to touch all the inbetweens but make sure that they are what you want.

Polish. This is where you separate the amateurs and pros. This starts when everything is in there, Key frames, Breakdowns, and Inbetweens. The animation has all the information in it and reads well but now is the time to show how beautiful the actions really are. You go back all through the animation and decided what needs to be tweaked and played with. This is called "finesse". You will hear sometimes animators say ," His blocking stinks but he finesses it so well it looks great." I know a couple animators who have that skill.

Finalizing. Generally you show your work all through the following processes to some people who understand animation. But finalizing you show it to people who don’t know anything about animation. Mostly because blocking and blocking plus will never impress and just confuse a non-animator. This is just a tidying up process. Any loose ends you have might need to be addressed. I usually take a sweep through the eye area. People watch eyes of characters more than the watch anything else. Now in the bouncing ball experiment you would just take a look at your S&S. You might decide to squash 18% rather than 15%. It really is a nit picky stage.

These stages make sense to me. I have been trying to do everything at once and it hasn’t worked to well for me. Instead of putting my ideas down I would rush to animation and it would come out sloppy. I am going to use these tips so that I can create a polished product. I am a little mixed up about key frames and blocking. Blocking is very useful because it lays out the most important parts of the animation, thus guiding you along. However I’m not sure how I am going to incorporate blocking into Flash. I am used to doing 1 frame at a time one after the other. Now I have to figure out how to space out and time out my animation before I even start animating. I am going to continue a dialogue with my outside experts to address these concerns.

February 28

The Illusion of Life has offered me many insights in the world of hand drawn animation. Thus far i have learned how Walt Disney methods helped shape the animation industry as it stands today. Early animation was crude and unrefined until Walt introduced his ideas to the scene. After his animation team completed a couple of successful animations, Walt suggested they begin creating more life like animations instead of the more primitive "rubber hose" style of drawing. Thus realism in animation was discovered, For example Instead of Micky Mouse being able to extend his hands infinetly until he grabs an object, he'l now be drawn out walking up the object to pick up. Disney's animations surpassed others at the time because its characters had feelings and emotions unlike any other at the time.This more lifelike approach took more time but Walt learned how to save time using a few simple techniques. The drawing boards used by animators of the early 1930's had pegs which held the artist paper firmly in place. When the paper is held by pegs at the top of the board it is impossible to flip more than one drawing at a time. Walt discovered that by placing the pegs on the bottom five papers could be "rolled" at a time enabling the animator to correct the relationships and strengthen the action as he makes the drawings.

February 1

Today I talked to Jane and Kathy about the stress I'm having regarding this project. I ask myself daily "Was this the right decision, is this too ambitious?" We concluded that by organizing my thoughts i can help alleviate my stress. I have broken down my project into these priorities.

-Creating a storyboard

-Learning basic flash techniques like layers and sound.

-Contact outside experts.

January 26

I have been practicing the "Motion Tween" feature in flash. This is a very helpful tool because it can transform objects or move them across the field without having to painstakingly do it frame by frame. For example, here i have a rainbow ball which transforms into ALEX. I did this by creating the rainbow on the first frame, then i selected frame 35 and drew ALEX. So on frame 1 i have a rainbow ball and frame 35 ALEX with blank frames in between. To transform the rainbow ball into ALEX i simply selected the motion tween option. Motion tweening has a lot of possibilities and i am going to continue experimenting with this.

So far i have conducted research through experimentation. Much of which is trial and error. For instance i have had a lot of trouble with motion and shape tweening. The frame by frame animation I'm used to takes a lot of time so tweening saves a lot of time. However I'm wasting time trying to figure things out.

As you can see tweening creates a more fluid motion than frame by frame drawing. However I'm confused why I have to select shape tween instead of motion tween to make the ball move. The squash and stretch principal isn't utilized because the program gets confused and thinks I want the ball to gradually stretch as it falling to the ground. This isn't what I want of course, I want it to squash and stretch as it hits the ground. You can see the difficulty I'm having first hand. When the ball collides with the ground it bounces back and just looks generally unappealing.

January 12

I discovered a valuable peice of information today. The 12 basic principals of animation. It is found in "the bible of the animation industry" The Illusion of Life by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston. The 12 principals are:

Squash and stretch

Anticipation

Staging

Straight Ahead Action and Pose to Pose

Follow through and overlapping action

Slow in and Slow Out

Arcs

Secondary Action

Timing

Exaggeration

Solid Drawing

Appeal

Below i created a simple demonstration of the squash and stretch principal. As the ball collides with the ground, the impact causes the ball to squash. As it becomes airborn it stretched back to its orrigional shape.