make animation look more "framey"

[slowtiger]

More about motion blur: it is a phenomenon not restricted to film, but inherent to any optical apparatus in nature. The general definition goes like this: there is a window of perception for any kind of aptical apparatus (which means the combination of eye, nerves and brain). If the movement is too slow, it will not be recognised as movement: trees growing, the hour hand of a clock. If the movement is too fast, it will fail to stimulate the nerve cells enough to cause a signal. After the signal is fired, there's a phase of recreation in every optical cell (for chemical reasons), in this phase it cannot perceive another stimulus.

Now here's the motion blur: if an object is that big that it is projected over 10 nerve cells in a row, but moves so fast that it will stimulate more than 10 cells within the time window of the recreation process, then it will be perceived as distorted (elongated) in the direction of movement.

The window of perception is different for every species. A fly lost in a movie theatre doesn't see a film with movement but only a boring slide show because its optical apparatus differs in many aspects from ours.

(Sorry if I sound like a smartass here, but animation and the underlying problems of perception are my speciality for more than 25 years now ...)

[ingie01]

I'm for more "smart asses". This thread has proven to be extremely informative... not to denigrate other threads. Please MORE of this type of discussion. (reminds me of a college level class )

[AlanPS]

Didn't know I was going to stir up such a rucus(?). Yeah, I love all kinds of animation. I'm not much of a fan of the earliest Disney with the terrible cycles and boneless/weightless objects or really bad anime (remember Tranzor Z?)
I'd say Don Bluth was my first big influence for wanting to animate. Then I got into some of the '80s animated series stuff (The Might Orbots, Thundercats, etc.) and now I'm big into the Gendy T. style stuff from Cartoon Network.
At first I really disliked that retro style animation (Ren & Stimpy) which looked like Underdog/Rocky & Bullwinkle revisited but I think Gendy T. has taken it to the next level.
So anything from super smooth to flat out framey, it all depends on what style you are going for.
Right now, because I am a beginner, I want to try the simplist stuff possible, which to me would be the very framey looking stuff.
I hate that 2d animation is not considered by some as legitimate animation. Whenever I tell someone I want to animate they automatically think 3d. When I say 2d they say there is no market for that. Well, tell that to Cartoon Network and all those doing anime and Saturday morning fair- tell it to Matt Groenig(sp?)!
I believe I heard a quote from a major company that 2d animation was going the way of the dinosaur. Whatever! I like 3d and its possibilities, but it's just another tool- it should never replace 2d animation.
Some people think that if you're going to use 2d vector animator software it should all be super tweened. Was it designed for animation, or super tweeny animation? It's just a tool, and should not be limited to doing animation the same way by every user.
If it was easier or more cost-effective to animate on paper, ink it, shoot it, and print to film I would do it, but it's not. So software wins out every time.

[slowtiger]

Well, software doesn't win every time. I'm a professionally trained 2D animator, as well as a draughtsman and a graphic designer. I have to know which part of work has be done in which technique to be as fast and cheap as possible. Sometimes software wins, sometimes drawing by hand wins. It's a matter of experience to be able to tell in advance. And only the smallest, tiniest projects are made within only one program - usually it's a combination of lots of them, each of them suited to the task (or abused and bended to my requirements ...).

If 2D and drawing were totally out, there would be photographs and holograms on each letterhead and advertising and business card, and comics wouldn't exist. But drawing is an essential part of human culture since the first cavemen scratched charcoal against rocks, and it will remain for the next 10.000 years, in cinema as well as everywhere else.

[jorgy]

I would have to disagree that software wins every time too. There have been many times that I have wanted to just do a real watercolor and then scan it in. Sure, there are "watercolor-esque" modes in drawing programs, but they do not come near the intricacies and delicacies that are available with natural media.

Now, if I wanted to animate that watercolor, sure software has a clear edge.


Along the same lines, people who think that 3D is replacing 2D aren't seeing the big picture, so to speak. Did TV replace radio? No, it added to it. We still have both today. In fact, look at the popularity of satellite radio!

Well, software doesn't win every time. I'm a professionally trained 2D animator, as well as a draughtsman and a graphic designer. I have to know which part of work has be done in which technique to be as fast and cheap as possible. Sometimes software wins, sometimes drawing by hand wins. It's a matter of experience to be able to tell in advance. And only the smallest, tiniest projects are made within only one program - usually it's a combination of lots of them, each of them suited to the task (or abused and bended to my requirements ...).

If 2D and drawing were totally out, there would be photographs and holograms on each letterhead and advertising and business card, and comics wouldn't exist. But drawing is an essential part of human culture since the first cavemen scratched charcoal against rocks, and it will remain for the next 10.000 years, in cinema as well as everywhere else.

Your comments reminded me of a story I saw yesterday, about how the fine arts professors are seeing a decline is the quality of work being produced by student artists who rely too much on computers, and not enough on fundamentals:

http://news.com.com/Design+software+wea ... 58369.html

I have come to drawing, painting, and animation after my formal education so I can't really address some of these issues so I would encourage others to do so.

jorgy

[Rasheed]

Did TV replace radio? No, it added to it. We still have both today. In fact, look at the popularity of satellite radio!

In fact, in the early days of radio, it tried to mimic stage drama. In the early days of television, it tried to mimic radio. But both radio and television are media on their own. Similarly, cel animation is another medium than 2D computer animation and 3D computer animation is another medium than claymation, although there are similarities, general principles.

It seems, that every time a new technology comes along, it first tries to mimic existing technologies, until it is matured enough to become a technology with its own applications and traditions. And the existing technologies often get a new role.

3D computer animation is very popular at this moment, but mark my words, some day, a new technology will be invented that will become the dominant animation technology and redefine the existing role of 3D computer animation.

Anyway, at this moment handdrawn animation still offers the most artistic freedom, because the only limitations are your drawing skills and your imagination. For computer animation you'll need those as well, plus some computer skills (some for 2D and more for 3D). In fact, those skills put a limit on your artistic skills, so much so, that 3D computer animation begs for specialization, much more so than 2D computer and cel animation.

However, once better input devices than keyboard, mouse and display (KMD) and better software tools become available, those computer skills might become less important and creating computer animation might become just as intuitive as handdrawn animation.

[slowtiger]

jorgy: Watercolor is, to my knowledge, best mimicked by Painter, but you are right that no program can be as subtle as real watercolor.

Animated watercolor: have you ever seen the films of (chinese master animator) Te Wei? Think of delicate chinese watercolor - but in movement. These films have been done long before (since 1950) computer technology was available - they have been made entirely unter a conventional 35 mm camera. About 10 Years ago I saw them in a tribute program in Annecy, and they are amongst the most beautiful animation I saw in my life (especially Buffalo Boy and the flute (1963) and Feeling from Mountain and Water (1988)). The audience later speculated about how these films were done because no information was available at that time.

Last year there was an interview with Te Wei on arte TV as well as some shots out of his workshop. Maybe because chinese information politics had changed, maybe because it was short before his death, he revealed the great mystery: big portions of his films have been done with cutouts! And the watercolor look of it had been achieved partly with torn bits of tissue and rice paper, partly with feathers glued to the elements. Wow. And there I was, trained in computer animation as well as in pretty any animation and drawing technique, and I hadn't been able to figure that out.

Lesson learnt: Good craftmanship doesn't depend on a certain tool (like a computer), it will show whatever tool is used.

[AlanPS]

Yeah, I guess I should clarify. When I said software wins every time, I did not mean to exclude hand-drawing on paper. The truth is I would prefer to do hand-drawn animation, but the expense and experience required for cels, camera, etc. is just too much for me. I am a well-seasoned artist, but I still want my stuff to look as least like a pencil test as possible, and that's where digital comes in- you can erase, replace, move, scale, clean-up, etc.

[MarkBorok]

Of course one important reason to produce as few drawings as possible is to cut costs. But if one looks at anime, one wonders why they save costs at one corner by doing only 4 drawings per second while they still stick to their detailed drawing style and overwhelming effects (which are, as opposite to the characters, very often animated on twos or even ones).

I think because, if you cut corners in one place, you have to compensate in another to make up for the deficit in quality. I presume the Japanese have figured out that adding details to their characters is less costly than redrawing every frame on 2's. Also, I believe Japanese culture is very detail oriented (think of shintoism and zen buddhism, haiku poems, calligraphy, etc.)

For this reason, it's a good idea for people animating with cut-outs to add as much texture and detail as taste allows, in order to give the eye something to look at.

I'm a big fan of animating on twos. Slow movements on ones end up looking weird. I did my last Moho project at 30 fps, and even though it doesn't look too bad, it's kind of rushed (and this had nothing to do with my timing, I think, as I timed the characters movements to the dialogue). I remember I once had an argument with someone on an animation mailing list. This person became nearly apoplectic when I mentioned that most classic Disney animation was done on twos. For some reason he found that idea very threatening.

My current Flash project is set to 12 fps, and now I'm regretting it because some of the faster parts would look better at 24. Of course, when outputting to .swf you save a lot in file size and download speed by using fewer drawings (it's unfortunate that video files still have to store every frame, even if it's a duplicate of a previous frame, meaning that you don't really save that much by animating on 2's, although it should still compress better).

[AlanPS]

Wow- you guys sound like you've been doing this for a while. Can I see some examples of your work? My first real animation project is in the planning stages. I've only made one character (and only have one view of him right now) but I am really exciting about the possibilities of this. Seeing how you accomplish certain things may be very helpful to me.

Thanks