Technology & Animation

ASU Herberger School of Art

As was discuss briefly in the methods section, there are many technologies that make animation possible in this section we will discuss a few of them.

 Lights, Camera, Action

 Time Lapse

 Photoshop

 Rotoscoping

 Flash

 Bryce, Poser, Maya, and other 3d Software.

 Basically Technology in this course is any apparatus, drawing utensil, or mechanical device that you would use to animate with. Some Technologies are more user friendly than others, but all are meant to make the process just a little bit easier.

 Technology is constantly changing and as such it can seems almost impossible to keep up with, however most technologies lend themselves nicely to others and as you learn one, the others become more increasingly easy to understand and use.

Noun

1.The application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry: "computer technology"; "recycling technologies". 2.Machinery and equipment developed from such scientific knowledge.

Often with stop-action animation and really any animating that involves puppets or clay models lighting and camera work become a very integral part of the process. Understanding the proper way to light a scene and then get the correct angles of the camera for proper staging can be a skill all it’s own. Understanding this technology will not only help in stop-action animation but can offer many benefits to those to digitally animate as well.

Time Lapse photography is a wonderfully useful technology to the animator. Time Lapse has led rise to the first animation in the 19th century and even contributed to bullet-time that was made so popular by the Matrix Trilogy. Time Lapse helped animators experiment and realize the way that the human eye interacts with the world around it and how we can take a series of still images and give the illusion of motion if we play them really close together, 24 to 30 frames a second. The good news if that much of Time- Lapse has been improved upon and refined over the years so we can look to the experts on how to use this technology to the fullest.

Among imaging software technology Photoshop is King. Over the years it has been improved upon and made so simple for the average everyday artist to utilize. I categorize this software it the “Anything you put your mind to” section of technology because literally anything that you can imagine you can create in Photoshop, whether you draw it from scratch or start with a base image, the limits are your own imagination.

This Technology uses a technique of tracing over live footage frame by frame and then compiling that all together to create the finished piece. Named after an actual device called a Rotoscope. The Rotoscope and a transparent easel on which a movie projector would project and image the artist would then trace around that image creating the new re- drawn frame. Although the device was ultimately replaced by computers the technique remains a solid staple of the animation industry even today.

For Web based artistic animations Adobe’s Flash has been the goto for many years. With the ease of action scripting and the useful tools for character and object creation which so closely mirror Photoshop it has become the obvious choice for the web artist.

Flash allows the user to create imagery either imported from another source or created directly in the program and animate that imagery using key frames and tweening. Think of a key frame as a marker for a specific pose and tweening as the actions between the poses.

3D Software came into it’s own and the power house for the future of animation through Disney and Pixar. Software’s like Bryce, Poser, Maya, and other 3d Software’s have paved the way for amazing graphics and fantastic movie and cinema animations. These Programs and really starting to blur the line between what we thought we knew about animation and what we think we know about reality. Many of the amazing things we see today, we might have to actually take a step back and think, wait….is that animated or real? This is the power of 3D software.

 Read pages 32,42,54,64,108,118,134,136,138 in the course text. Complete the quiz and participate in the discussion board for this section of the course.

 For the discussion board I expect you to contribute to the conversation and respond to at least two other students on the comments they made.

 Complete these by 11:59pm on the Due Date.