Principles of 2D Animation (SEE PAGE 4)

[Bassken Lake Monster]

XD alright page two!!


WELCOME TO PRINCIPLES OF 2D!!!

Lesson 1  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

We're gonna learn the basics of simulating movement with a series of pictures. biggrin yay! Alright for those participating in the actual drawing part, let me know what program you're using so we can figure out how to get your images uploaded or saved so we can all view them.

Alright first off what is animation?

A simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames.

Here's what we'll be looking at first. The classic bouncing ball!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zFoSwrdnGv0

As you can see from the video a great way to start an animation in 2D is to plan out where your object or character is going to move. :3 In this case the bouncing ball will bounce and make smaller and smaller archs as it slowly looses momentum.

There's two ways one can animate. That is

POSE TO POSE

or

STRAIGHT AHEAD  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

What is pose to pose and straight ahead animation?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zFoSwrdnGv0

Pose to pose is what is in that youtube video
You draw what are known as Keyframes. Key frames are where the poses or frames are in the most extreme poses. From there you draw inbetweens. Inbetweens are the frames IN BETWEEN the key frames. XDD go figure eh??

:3 So pose to pose is...

Keyframes drawn out at the extreme points. Then you draw in the middle drawings from keyfame to keyframe. biggrin I shall illustrate below!


^ Draw key frames

^ Drawn inbetweens

^animate!

Streight ahead is something like you'd do in a flipbook. You just draw one picture after another and see where it takes you!

biggrin I shall illustrate below!


^I drew each picture one after the other without worrying about keyframes or inbetweens.

Which method is better?

Ready? NEITHER! XD

:3 it all depends on how you like to do things. You could even mix it up and so some pose to pose then some straight ahead! There are some pros and cons with both. biggrin P2P (pose to pose) Allows one to keep the character looking the same every frame. Sometimes when we draw Straight ahead like a flipbook, the character will accidentally shrink or grow in height or maybe loot a little different from each frame to frame. Then when we look at the first and last frame, we see that the characters are too different. o.o

So P2P helps keep the character accurate.

Streight ahead is much more lively! It's easier to get stronger emotion and action and life out of an animation that is done straight ahead like a flipbook.

Both methods are good methods. :3 you guys can use either one or a combination of both!

(BTW you guys can post at anytime! If you've got questions or concerns or critiques on my posts feel free to just post 3nodding )  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

:3 okay back to the bouncing ball.

I'd like to see if some of you would like to animate a bouncing ball using your own combination of pose to post and straight ahead animation or one or the other.

biggrin things to keep in mind about a bouncing ball!


^The ball boucnes are effected by gravity. If you're going for general gravity with a regular bouncing ball it'll look something like this. The arcs will get smaller the farther the ball bounces and looses momentum. Also the ball will be a curve at the top of each arc and not peaks or any other shape o.o


^Squash and stretch!


^ :3 Here's the stretch part. biggrin When the ball picked up speed as it falls to the ground it'll stretch a little. In the beginning of the bounces it'll stretch a lot from the hight of the drop. As it goes and looses momentum and the arcs get smaller, the stretch will be less and less.


^Same for squash! biggrin When the ball hits the floor it'll squash. Keep in mind the mass of the ball when it squashes. If the ball is big try to estimate how it should look if that big ball was squashed on the floor. Here's an example below


^ The mass of the ball needs to be the same. Here's a good estimation in the middle while the balls on the left and right are too small or too large.


^Also at the top of each arc the ball will slowly go back to it's original shape as the stretch wears off from the gravity pulling on it. So top of arc round, stretch as it's falling and squash as it hits the ground. Then a little stretches the ball shoots up again and it returns back to normal at the top of the arc.


One final thing

^ When doing the stretch, make sure the ball goes with the arch. If the center line of the ball doesn't tilt in the direction of the arch it'll look very strange when you animate it. Also keep the center of the ball on the line you set up for the bounce, or the ball will look like it jerks back and forth when animated. XD;;;  

[Xeno_Mezphy]

Hopefully this uploaded properly ^_^


Wheeeee!  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

o__o woah! that's awesome!

XD I haevn't even finished the section yet lol.

:3 nice nice lets see.


I can see you've got a little bit of squash and stretch in there, but it's rather slight. :3 I think you can exaggerate the squash and stretch some more! biggrin at the bottom of each arc you've got some squash

Remember the mass of the ball. When you squash a ball it's still the same mass. At the bottom of your first arc the ball squashes but it gets smaller in mass. 3nodding

I'm going to update the post above with some pics so illustrate that if anyone else reading this is unclear on what I'm talking about.

Your arcs are nice! Curved at the top and not pointy good good. For more fluidity another ball or two at the top of each bounce will slow it down a little at the hight of each arc as gravity starts to take hold of the ball to bring it back down.

Love the bounce off the wall at the end it's a nice touch!

3nodding good job

if gaia had gold star stickers I'd give you one XD;;;

EDIT: Oh yeah! what kind of animation did you use for this? Pose to pose or straight ahead? Also biggrin even if you're using photoshop try actually drawing each ball out. X3 it'll bring a lot of life to your animations if it isn't all cut paste.  

[Xeno_Mezphy]

I used pose to pose (I'm so used to calling it in-betweening >.<;; ) To be honest, I totally thought about cheating and tweening it, but what would I learn there? Nothing, you're right.

I completely forgot about stretching it and stuff, my arcs are based entirely on my indecent love affair with physics. I know I should've drawn the ball more than once, but I'm like OCD when it comes to drawing circles, so I never feel like it's right. It took around 6 or 7 tries to even get it that circular. It drives me insane that it looks like it's sliding and not rolling at the end though. Oh, and for the squish, I cheated and just transformed it, which is why it changes in mass on the first one. I'll probably rework it when I've more time to do so (ie, probably Thursday night).  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

Sounds cool Xeno

if you want to transform the ball just pull it horizontally a bit

You can call it in-betweening

tomato tomato, potatoe spud it's all the same XD  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

:3 anyone else doing the bouncing ball? Just let me know so I know when to move on  

[Brokkoli]

I'm going to try. smile  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

sweet

I guess I'll give it another day

anyone who said they were interested not going to do the bouncing ball? ANyone having technical difficulties?  

[Origamidude]

I'll get working on the ball as soon as homework's taken care of X3;  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

biggrin sweet!!!  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

XD;; okay well I'm gonna go onto lesson two

feel free to post the bouncing ball guys anyway

:3 okay  

[Bassken Lake Monster]

I've been rather busy with other things D: and it doens't look like anyone's even doing these x__x