Unit 01 Visual Recording i n Art and Design

These are some examples where I have used visual recording in my research. My 3d animation research is displayed below. I describe a zoetrope in the first paragraph and the I have put a picture that fits with the text. Later in my research I have added pictures from the video link I have added next to my text about the video. This research is very individual to myself as I have talked about animations I have watched on YouTube and I have been influenced by. They inspired me for doing my own stories and styles I also have really enjoyed watching them. This makes the research very personal to me.

3D Animation research

Animation began with the Zoetrope. It was the first form of animation. It had a strip of drawings inside it which when you spin the Zoetrope you could see the drawings moving like an animation. The most common one of these was a horse running. Technology has moved on from this now and people are able to create the most amazing animations. The most commonly used in industry at the moment is 3d animation. 2d has become less used as time has gone on but it is still used for a lot of things... for example anime is mostly 2d.

 2D animation can be done in a different number of ways but the most common one is done by drawing the character in one position then on the next frame you redraw the character moving slightly from the first then you keep drawing until you get the animation of the character. This process also takes a very long time to do.

3D is very popular and it is being seen more often in different types of media. You see it in adverts, Most/ all console games contain 3d, films have CGI and animated films. 3D can also be used for many more things.

Animating in 3d is usually done by creating a model in the computer, of the thing you want to animate, then you add bones or muscles to the model so you can move certain points of it. Then you have to move the points in the model and get the character to move how you want it. Its all done very slowly and the character only moves a bit each frame then when you play it through the character will be moving fluently. A very commonly used program for 3d animation is mia. Its one that a lot of big animation companies use and universities often teach 3d animation using this program.

Another way 3d animation can be done is by motion capture. Some 3d film use this technique for making their movie. One I know of is monster house. The whole film is animated. The three main characters are kids and they were animated by using motion capture. The actors would have to put on strange costumes and they get all these dots stuck onto there face. The computer captures their movement and expressions when acting out the scene. Then on the computer they change how they look and turn them into the cartoon character. Bellow is a picture from monster house. As you can see on the right is how the character looks in the film and on the left is the actor with all the motion gear on while acting the same scene.    

Avatar is another example of a film that used motion capture. Lots of the film was done with CGI (3d animation). The backgrounds and robots, the animals and action scenes would most likely have all been done using CGI where as the characters talking and some of the action scenes with them ruining ect would have been done with motion capture. Motion capture is probably the best way to capture realist movement by a human. Its very different to other animation as you have most of the key frames from the actors movement you just have to detail it with the cartoon versions features. But then some animation is still involved in motion capture. For example in Avatar they have the basic movement for the person but they also have to add on and animate a tail. The hair is also needed to animate. Bellow is a picture from Avatar.     

Other then using 3d animation in films and games it is also used for:

Interior designing, Architecture, Medicine and Business.  

How 3d animation can be used in the medical field. It can provide people like educators, surgeons and other medical professionals with an interactive model of the human body and parts of it. It makes it possible to view models of the human anatomy on a microscopic level. With this researchers can run simulations to find out which procedure would be best to take and would end up being the most effective for the patients. 

3d animation can be architecture by having a 3d model example of the buildings they are trying to design. It will give them an idea about how their building would look if they decided to build it. If you link that into Interior design you can also see what the building could look like on the inside by having a 3d animation simulation of it. This helps the designers figure out how their ideas would work before putting them into practise. 

Next I looked at animations that are good examples of all the different types of animation and I looked at ones that could help me be inspired for my final 3d animation.

Examples of 2D animations that I have seen on YouTube and really liked.

Eighty-six
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL6C5k4iIhk
This first one is an animation done by somebody on Youtube. I subscribed to her when I saw their first video animation. It was a story about a pack of wolves. She draws them so detailedly it was amazing. She is still animating the story as a series but recently she uploaded this. This was a very interesting and strange animated story she had created. I am very impressed with her work.

The Rebel Howl Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ6Ca7z6NWM
This is another 2d animation with wolves in it. My main interest is in animating animals so I am using lots of the old animations I have watched on Youtube in my research. I spend a lot of time looking up animated stories on Youtube and trying to get inspiration from looking at other peoples work so I can get motivated to animate my own ideas. I also enjoy looking at different styles people draw in. These wolves are very different to the ones in the first video I put up.

 Warrior cats ep1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1XYgtSCHvp4
This is a fan animation. A group of people on Youtube have worked together to create this animation. The story is based on a book called warrior cats. I loved the animation for this it is so well done. I have chosen the first 3 videos from some of my favourite animations on Youtube. Then I went on to do further research into other animations. 

The butterfly dragon 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAQ56_dfOfY
I found this animation. Is a beautiful peace of work. There is no talking and there is only music in the background. It is a short animation with a fantasy type story to it. This could be good for inspiration.

stop motion

Gulp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieN2vhslTTU
I couldn't find many examples of stop-motion but I did find this one which is cleverly done. They animate using the sand at the beach.

3d animations

A fox tale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IgDUEp238tQ
Now some examples of 3d animation. I found this one and thought it was quite interesting.

In sickness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xgpMutZKsY4
This one is a good example for a 3d animation project and I thought it was done very well. It is quite surreal at the start and then by the end you start to understand a bit more of whats happening. 

3d animation used in games
http://youtu.be/C4cfo0f88Ug
3d animation is used in many if not all consol games and in many computer games. They use 3d animation for the game play as well as cut scenes. This video is a animation for an online game. One of my favourite games actually combines 3d and 2d animation. The game play and some cut scenes are all in 3d but when you have completed a whole level the cut scene is set out like a 2d comic with small bits of animation included.

3d animation in advertising
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ay-1WWRXbQw
3d animation isn't used for movies and shorts alone there are many other uses for it. This is an example of it being used in advertising.

3D animation in films

3d animation is used in most animated films now. These are some of my favourite ones. Bolt is the first one. I really enjoyed the story and the comedy moments in it but I also loved the way it was animated.

Ice age is one I've always loved. When I watched it the first time on video I watched the special features which explained how they made it. This was when I first had an interest in animation. It was very interesting to see how they made it. They first sketched out character concepts and storyboarded it. They clay models of all the characters were made. After that they scanned them into to the computer and then they started to move them around. It was a very long process as most animation is but one thing I found incredible was how they had to move Manny's fur about every time he moved to make it look realistic.

 

Finally kung fu panda. I really loved the animation in this film especially in all the fight scenes. They were really amazingly done. I love the animation in those scenes and it is really inspiring.

After looking at all of these I know I would like to do a character animation as I can see from my research it is clearly the thing I am interested in the most. I have decided that I create a cartoony animal character. I want to do this because I can try and design one that will be not to complicated to model. That would mean I can spend more time on the animation. I really like the butterfly dragon animation. I might take some inspiration from that. I like how their animation just has some simple piano music in the background so I might do something similar in mine. You have to read their expressions in their faces and not their words. Also I will sketch out the character and make designs for him first because I want him to be the first thing I model. I have done a lot of animation before in programs like Flash and Toon Boom but never in 3d before. I found the modelling quite hard and I don't know how difficult the animation for a character will be. I'd like to figure out that first so I can then see how hard to animate a certain story will be. I already have a few ideas. So I will continue to develop these for now.