Strawberries Final Render

Platter Final Render

Orange Final Render

Mangosteen Final Render

Banana Final Render

Apple Final Render

Strawberries Test Render

Orange Render

Mangosteen Render

Apple Render

3D Fruit

3D Fruit on Platter

3D Still Life Fruit Render 4/4

3D Still Life Fruit Render 3/4

3D Still Life Fruit Render 2/4

3D Still Life Fruit Render 1/4

Appeal in Animation

When creating an appealing pose for a character, one thing to avoid is called "twins", where both arms and both legs are in the same position, doing the same thing. This creates a stiff pose that is unappealing. Vary the parts of the body a bit, including the facial features, makes a character more appealing. Audiences like to see a quality of charm, pleasing design, simplicity, communication, or magnetism. A weak drawing or design lacks appeal. A design that is complicated or hard to read lacks appeal. Clumsy shapes and awkward moves all have low appeal. The actual word "appeal" is usually misrepresented to suggest bunnies, kittens and cuddly bears. It doesn't.  Appeal in animation means anything someone would like to see in it: quality of charm, pleasing design, simplicity, magnetism or communication.

Secondary Actions

A secondary action is an action that results directly from another action.  Secondary actions are vital in some cases as the primary action relys on the secondary, to heighten the effectiveness of the overall action.  A secondary action is always kept subordinate to the primary action.  If it conflicts with it, becomes mroe interesting, or dominates in any way, it is either the wrong choice or it has been staged incorrectly. This is a good example of a secondary action which I found on Youtube:

Arcs in Animation

In Computer Animation, motion is usually represented in a timeline view using splines(arcs). The arcs represent the values of an objects parameters at a specific moment in time. The method used for calculating interpolated keyframe values determines the characteristic of the arc(motion).  Arcs can also be seen when a ball is bouncing along a surface, as it creates curves in the air - arcs.  Although sometimes it may be slightly exaggerated.

Slow in and slow out

This refers to the spacing of the inbetween frames at maximum positions. It is the second and third order continuity of motion of the object. Rather than having a uniform velocity for an object, it is more appealing, and sometimes more realistic, to have the velocity vary at the extremes. An example of this could be a bouncing ball, as it moves faster when it approaches or leaves the ground - and it goes slower as it approaches/leaves its maximum position. The name comes from having the object or character "slow out" of one pose and "slow in" to the next pose.

Straight Ahead Action/Pose-to-Pose Action

Straight Ahead Action in hand drawn animation is when the animator starts at the first drawing in a scene and then draws all of the subsequent frames until he reaches the end of the scene. This creates very spontaneous and zany looking animation and is used for wild, scrambling action.

Pose to Pose actions is when the animator carefully plans out the animation, draws a sequence of poses, i.e., the initial, some in-between, and the final poses and then draws all the in-between frames (or another artist or the computer draws the inbetween frames). This is used when the scene requires more thought and the poses and timing are important.

This is similar to keyframing with computer graphics but it must be modified slightly since the inbetweens may be too unpredictable. For example, objects or parts of objects may intersect one another. Computer keyframing can take advantage of the hierarchical model structure of a complex object. Different parts of the hierarchy can be transformed at different keyframes. For example, in a jump, translation keyframes can be set for the entire model in the X and Z directions. Then other rotation or translation keyframes can be set for portions of the model, e.g., the legs and arms.

Follow through and overlapping

Follow through is the termination part of an action. An example is in throwing a ball - the hand continues to move after the ball is released. In the movement of a complex object different parts of the object move at different times and different rates. For example, in walking, the hip leads, followed by the leg and then the foot. As the lead part stops, the lagging parts continue in motion. A great quote by Walt Disney gives the reader a good insight of the definition of overlapping in animation:

"It is not necessary for an animator to take a character to one point, complete that action completely, and then turn to the following action as if he had never given it a thought until after completing the first action. When a character knows what he is going to do he doesn't have to stop before each individual action and think to do it. He has it planned in advance in his mind."

Staging

Staging is the presentation of an idea so that it is clear. This idea can be an action, a personality, an expression, or a mood. The key idea is that the idea is made clear to the viewer.

An important objective of staging is to lead the viewers attention to where the action will occur so that they do not miss any of the animation or techniques. This means that only one idea at a time occur, or else the viewers may be looking at the wrong thing. So, the main object should be contrasted in some way with the rest of the scene. A good example is motion, since the eye is drawn to motion in an otherwise still scene. In a scene with everything moving, the eye is drawn to a still object.  The animator must use different techniques to ensure that the viewer is looking at the correct object at the correct time.

Anticipation

Anticipation in animation is very important.  If a character does not show his/her anticipation thorugh their movements or actions, then the short definetely would not work properly and flow to its full ability.  Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic. A dancer jumping off the floor has to bend his knees first; a golfer making a swing has to swing the club back first. The technique can also be used for less physical actions, such as a character looking off-screen to anticipate someone's arrival, or attention focusing on an object that a character is about to pick up. An example can be seen here:

Squash and Stretch/Timing

Squash and stretch is a common animation technique applied to characters or machinery in motion.  giving it a cartoonish feel as opposed to realistic jumping motion.When real objects move only totally rigid ones, e.g., a chair, remain rigid in motion. Living creatures always deform in shape in some manner. For example, if you bend your arm, your bicep muscles contract and bulge out. They then lengthen and disappear when your arm straightens out. The squashed position shows the form flattened out and the stretched position shows the form extended. An important rule is that the volume of the object should remain constant at rest, squashed, or stretched. If this rule is not obeyed, then the object appears to shrink when squashed and to grow when stretched.

A classic example is a bouncing ball, that squashes when it hits the ground and stretches just before and after. The stretching, while not realistic, makes the ball appear to be moving faster right before and after it hits the ground, which can be seen here in this video:

In week 2's task we were asked to re-create a short animation based on one of our favoutrite films. We tried to summarise the movie 'King Kong' picking out key plot points and shortening it down into less than a minute. Only having one day to fully plan, storyboard and produce this animation we found it quite challenging to get it finished within the time allocated, but with glaringly obvious cut backs in the animation we managed to get it finished.