Animation

I Love Animation

I love animation to the core. I love watching it. I enjoy sharing it with friends. I enjoy talking about it. I enjoy making it!

The artform is infinite in possibilities.

It is a mashup between visual mediums, storytelling, and audio.

The visuals have a huge variety options for their medium. Such as: sculptures (claymation & puppets), digital (3D or Flash), drawing (traditional), abstract, etc.

The story styles can include typical movie style options (romantic, action, etc.). Experimental animation (no story line) is also attractive.

Even the audio has an endless variety. A mix of sound effects and music.

It is amazing to think of all the possibilities that exist for any animated film.

Watching Animation

When I watch animation, I tend to keep a close eye on the subtle choices the creator/s made. I find it more fascinating when a the animated work is by an individual or small team. There isn’t a large committee changing the vision of the final product.

Creating Animation

I love making animation even more than  I like watching it. To be able to develop an idea or dream into something others can watch is an amazing process. Experimenting with timing to see how it changes a scene is fascinating. In is empowering to having complete control over what a viewer both hears and sees.

Homework for you.

I love making animation even more than  I like watching it. To be able to develop a dream into something others can watch is an amazing process. Experimenting with timing to see how it changes a scene is fascinating. It is empowering to having complete control over what a viewer both hears and sees.

Homework for you.

Next time you watch an animated video, think about what makes it work.

How did the sound enhance or detract from the visuals? Are the characters loveable and at what point do you feel connected with them? More importantly, what element/s helped make that push of loving a character?

Feel free to leave what you found in the comments below.

If you’re interested in learning how to animate, catch our e-book & video course. They focus on getting started with animation using equipment you already own. You can check it out at www.cheapanimator.com.

Making Tshirt Wars

We covered the T-shirt wars animated video recently on the blog.

Today I wanted to show you how they did it.

Another cool behind the scenes video:

From this video, you can get an idea of the work behind the video.

Things like:

  • Two cameras
  • Onion skinning
  • Adjusting while on set
  • Troubleshooting
  • etc

The video below is a look at their process when they did the McDonalds & Coke version:

 

Making

It is interesting to see the different issues that come up when shooting a “more professional” video.

T-Shirt War Animation

What I love about this video, besides that it makes me laugh, is it had to take so much time to come up with this.

If you know anything at all about stop motion, you know that it is a time costly project. Move a quarter inch, freeze, photo, repeat about 100,000,000 times.

And it took 222 t-shirts, to do this film! If you’ve ever tried your hand at T-shirt printing. Then you’d know that it’s… Well, it is just… forever taking. FOR-EVER taking. (And I would know, I owned a screen-printing shop, once upon a time.)

So right away I can tell that the crew who worked on this were committed. Or possibly should have been committed, I don’t know.