Jesse Shaver ENGL 1102 Camargo 3 March, 2014 Animation: What is it?

When the topic of animation is brought up most people think of movies and TV shows they have watched in the past. This is the most general response that one could give you but there is more depth to animation than just simply looking at a movie. What most people don't think about or apply to a conversation is the actual process behind animating something. Even though it seems like it would be a simple task, it is far from it. Even beyond movies and TV shows there are places in the world that use animation that your average person wouldn't think of: cell phones, computer screens, games, applications, and gifs to name a few. Although most people know what animation is and how it is used in todays society, what most dont think about is the actual process and time it takes to animate something. The time it takes for an animator or team of animators to complete something varies on the amount of frames that are involved with the animation amongst other factors. A general rule that can be followed with animation is that one second of a complete animation takes around an hour to complete or more. Some of the other factors that go into animation is the quality of the final animation. For instance, in Disneys most recent animated feature film Frozen had textures on the clothes of the characters as seen in Elsas dress. Elsas dress was made of a material known as sequin and in some of the scenes that were closer up the viewer could see each and

every piece which was quite surreal. Not only did the animators have to apply the sequin to every frame but according to Disney animators, the hair for Elsa was vastly more complicated: While Rapunzel carried 27,000 extralong strands on her head, the Frozen team found themselves dealing with upward of 400,000 CG threads a feat that required the invention of a new program, called Tonic, to execute. This just goes to show that within just two years animation has advanced to a whole new level. There are multiple different stages or sections of the animation process. On top of the multiple steps there are also many different roles on a team of animators. The stages and roles on a team of animators go hand in hand in saying that each role is responsible for a certain piece of the process. For example, the team members involved with post-production are responsible for textures, light and shadow, depth of field, final edits, and sound. Pre-production is a section towards the beginning of the animation process that involves storyboarding, model sheets, and wire-framing at the latest part of pre-production. The team in the production phase is responsible for backgrounds, key framing, and providing the animation with continuity so that the viewer doesnt feel lost when the frames switch. As far as people on a team and what they are responsible for, there are five main jobs on a team: the producer, director, writer, art director, and voice character artist. Each of these members are responsible for a different portion of the final product, the art director is responsible for look, style, color palette, and details. The producer is responsible for finance and delivery of the final piece whilst the director is responsible for vision and guidelines on an animation. The voice character artists have to make the characters believable or more life-like for the viewers. Even though there are multiple people working on an animation at a time, it can still take quite some time to finish an animation.

Although most would first think of cartoons or movies when animation is mentioned there are actually more obvious places than that in which animations are located. Most everyone in the United States today has a mobile phone. These are one of the most common forms of animations that you normally wouldnt think about. When someone swipes their finger across the slick screen of a smart phone and a new slide is revealed, animation is responsible for the smoothness of the reaction. Even less modern than smart phones, a digital watch is animated. When the time ticks from 1:00PM to 1:01PM, animation is responsible for the number change. Now some of us might think of video games when we think of animation. Animation in video games is far more complex than that of a simple advertisement or cartoon. Most animated cartoons are represented with 2-dimensional figures and characters whereas games have a 360 degree, 3D environment. When animating a game the team has to put in so many more factors and minor details to make the game seem more realistic and believable. Along with the environment advancements the animators have to worry about human interactivity such as movement, actions, and reactions. The team has to make these environments stable and believable so the game doesnt lose atmosphere. These are just a few examples of where animation is located that someone may not think of at first. It is my general opinion that animation has a long way to go and will advance in the next 5 years to something that we couldnt have even fathomed. In just two years animators used ten times the amount of hair on a character named Elsa from Frozen than they did with Rapunzel, you know the girl that has way too much hair? It truly amazes me to think that theyve come so far in two years to have the need to develop a new program to handle a characters seemingly flawless hair. Even animations that we see on a daily basis that we dont really think about will improve along with technology. In my eyes I dont see animation stopping any time soon or ever

dying out due to the fact that we will need animators no matter what. With time never stopping or going back to traditional methods, animators will have to keep up with technology and figure out what needs to be done to make everyday life easier for the average human being.

Evaluative Works Cited Castro, Gonzalez, Ugail, H. Cyclic animation using partial differential equations. The Visual Computer: Volume 26, Issue 5 (2010): n. pag. Web. 10 March 2014. This journal is about attaining efficient methods for achieving cyclic animations using partial differential equations. Animators use these equations to determine what to do with repetitive motions like walking or running. Each bone and joint in the body moves whenever we move so animators use this knowledge to help them in achieving believable movements. The article explains is full detail the process with figures and formulas so that the reader can follow along without being completely lost. The question that I needed answered from this article was: Can you use a certain process to help speed up certain key parts of animation? The article in the journal explained in full detail that the PDEs are used quite often to help create smoother movements in animation when needed. This is another well known journal and is quite credible. The journal is mainly about building a visual library or basically knowing many things about colors, settings, and how things need to look and interact in certain environments. Fiore, Fabian, Reeth, Frank, Patterson, John, Willis, Phillip. Highly stylized animation. The Visual Computer: Volume 24, Issue 2 (2008): n. pag. Web. 10 March 2014. This is another article from the journal, The Visual Computer. It compares 2D animation to 3D animation along with explaining what animators use different brushes for. This article covers many different concepts and pieces of animation that are critical in the overall process of animation. It covers things from joint movements, in-betweens, rough and completed figures, 2D and 3D renderings, and many more things. It talks about looking at things from a smaller, more basic perspective and doing the fine tuning after youve thought of what you want it to look like in the end. The questions that this article answered for me were: Are styles of animation any different than another or do they serve better purposes in certain situations? The answer here is, most definitely, yes. Certain styles are used to enhance the feeling that the animator wants to portray to the audience or client. For instance, the style of the renowned Tim Burton immediately gives off a childish but mildly disturbing effect whenever we see one of the movies hes done such as, The Nightmare Before Christmas. This is the same journal from another source that I have and is a highly credible journal that has been around for years. Many animators have dedicated time into making the journal as informative as it is. Hall, Larisse. Personal interview. 29 February 2014. When I went on this interview I wasnt entirely sure what I wanted to ask her due to the fact that the school doesnt offer a direct animation degree so I knew beforehand she could only give me very limited information. However, her information did help back up the above sources by her basically telling me exactly the same thing the sources told me. I asked her the following questions: How long has animation been around? How does someone go about getting involved in animation? Is the process of animation a difficult task?

She did answer each of the questions I asked to the best of her ability but she told me in the email that it may not be too helpful, but thats okay. Her answering the questions helped back up the sources that I used. This is a credible source because it is the subject librarian for the arts. New York Films Media Group. Films for Humanities & Sciences. 2007. eVideo. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. This is an eVideo that explains the animation process that is used in the modern world. Although this video is nearly seven years old, all of the techniques that it includes are still extremely relevant in todays world. It talks about every step in the production process from preproduction, production, post-production, and many other processes animators have to go through when creating an animation. It goes on to say that there are a few different positions that need to be filled when on a team which are the producer, director, writer, art director, and voice character artists. This video asks the question that I had about what exactly the animation process is. It covers every single part of the process in great detail as the video was thirty minutes long. It also answers my question: what are the different jobs each position on a team covers? I was really curious about this one due to the fact that my dream job is to be in an animation studio with a team creating awesome animations. This is a credible source due to the fact that it is an informative video used to teach students about the animation process and I wouldnt be surprised if I see it again when Im in the animation department here at the school. The film is credited by the Films for Humanities & Sciences group as well. Yang, Yang, Zheng, Nanning, Liu, Yuehu, Du, Shaoyi, Su, Yuanqi, Nishio, Yoshifumi. Expression transfer for facial sketch animation. Signal Processing: Volume 91, Issue 11 (2011): n. pag. Web. 10 Mar. 2014. This article talks about what the process is for transferring facial expressions and indicators. It goes in depth with each step that the animators take in transferring an expression. They start with a photo or video of an actual person and use the indicators of that persons expression to help guide their animation. These are referred to as NETs or neighbor-expression transfer. The NETs use examples from neighbors and help reconstruct an expressive face. The article also explains a certain formula that the animators use to help mitigate reconstruction error, or in laymans terms reducing the amount of error in the intended expression. The questions that this article answered for me were: what steps or processes are used in getting an accurate human model? How do you know what proportions to use in accordance to each facial expression? Are models used as a viable option to reference? All of these questions were answered and more in this article. It was quite lengthy but did a number for my research. This article is credible due to the fact that it is a well-known international journal. The article from within it was quite long but it was beyond informative for my topic and I will probably come back to this article quite a bit when drafting.

Reflection

The hardest part of researching was honestly just sitting there and reading the articles that I chose since they were so ridiculously long. I know it is not necessarily a good thing to choose articles with truck-loads of information but after reading each of them I was really glad that I did. The easiest part was probably watching the eVideo that I chose and taking notes on it because I was actually quite interested in what each of the animators were saying. Other than that I think I was okay with everything else, besides the fact that I spaced out and forgot to turn in my Primary Research Responsesad day. I think I like the topic of my research the best out of everything but it is giving me a really good outlook for what Im going to be doing in the future, hopefully, and I just cant wait to get started. I would use more sources if I wasnt already chock full of information on my topic which is going to make writing the actual paper and drafting go much more smoothly for me. This research has actually made me want to get started in animation even sooner. Im really impatient with school most of the time because Im the type of person that just wants to jump in and start spitting out ideas and character designs for stories, movies, or even short video films. Doing the research for this assignment has made me a little more impatient but has also given me an awesome insight to the people Ill be working with and what Ill be doing. I cant wait!