12 Animation Rules

These are the 12 animation rules created by Disney 

Squash and Stretch

One of the most important principles, it's purpose is to give a sense of weight and flexibly to an animated object. Much like a bouncing ball, it'll require and squash when gravity pulls down and a stretch for the force of the squash to make a bounce which shows it's flexibly. without the squash and stretch the object will appear solid like a bowling ball.

Anticipation

This is used to prepare viewers of an certain action that will take place within the animation. An example of this is a jump, if someone is to jump they need to bend their knee's and and show expression of power needed for the jump, without it, the audience is unaware of what is about to happen.

Staging

This is to simply show/highlight what the most important aspect of the scene you want your audience to focus on etc. This can be done in many ways through shadowing, framing or even the use of the camera.

Straight ahead action and pose to pose

Straight ahead action is what the editing of the animation takes places as you go through the actions in the animation, it flows to the beginning to the end, this creates a nice flow and everything appears to be spontaneous within the animation. Pose to pose an animated will set up key frames through out the scene in which they are creating. After this is done a middle frame is added in to help connect the animated poses making the animation perfect and well animated and consistent.

Follow through and overlapping action

This is when a character starts running not all of there aspects move at the same time, it needs a drag effect to help all aspect move to show a dragging effect, it's also perfect for a stopping or slowing down process within an animation. Example if someone starts running their hair will flow back as the wind flows through them, and their arms will swing more, when they stop running their arms will swing forward from the force of the stop, including same for clothing and hair. This shows a more natural and realistic approach, without it the character or object will just suddenly stop with no drag behind it.

Slow in and slow out

These actions are often used to soften the animations. An animation of a man swinging a sword is a good example, the preparation for the swing of the sword will be at first slow as he prepares to swing, he speeds up because of the force driven behind the swing and then slows down as the swings comes to an end because or the muscles in the character to stop the sword and the force driven behind the sword slows down. Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. These are better used for shock scene and surprise effects, or even comic effect.

Arcs

Arcs are used for natural movement, without arcs animation would just simply follow a straight line, making it look unnatural, by using an Arc a turn of a head, swing of a an arm, turn of a body can follow an Arc, making the movement natural and convincing. The arc is usually in a U shape.

Secondary action

These are extra animated features to help bring the scene to life, e.g. someone running with have their arms swinging, their hair will be bobbing and the clothing such as pockets with be moving along with the force of the animation, adding in these details to an animation really helps bring that natural convincing feel.

Timing

Timing is everything, if you want to create strong emotions in an animated character then timing will be needed. With the number used it can make a fast animation or a slow animation creating wonderful effect if used correctly. Timing can be translated into different emotions, such as moods, reactions, and even personality, for example a simple wave, if they are waving fast it appears to be a happy wave, speed it up it's a silly cartoony wave, slow it down it then appears to be an unhappy wave. 

Exaggeration

Probably one of the most useful aspects to use in an animation, being able to exaggerate your actions within your animations is the best way to make your animation more appealing and entertaining. exaggeration are done by fast speed, jumps, explosion, body language and facial expression etc, this all helps step away from that normal and realistic animation effect, helping your animation become watchable and enjoyable.

Solid drawing
This helps give the illusion of depth and solidity within your animation, to achieve this you need to be able to draw you animation with perspective and good balance, this helps bring out your animation without making it look flat, by using perspective a view can tell how big and wide the character or object is.

Appeal
Appeal within a character can helps show they're personality and. This doesn't mean only the main character focus, this is everything and everyone as you need to make the viewer feel that the character is real and interesting. Examples making a likable character can be done by a simple baby-like face which tends to be effective. Characters with a hard to read face will lack appeal, like the joker from batman dark knight, but by using a captivating in the composition of the poses, or the character design the character can regain that appeal to the viewers.

Outcome: Understanding the 12 rules of animation is important to take into note when planning or creating an animation. These rules are there to follow and assistant me when animating to create the best type of character realism and animation within my work, depending on the style of animation I'm going for. e.g. cartoon comical or a realistic movement and animation scene.

Basic Animation First Lesson

Bouncing Ball Animation

Our first go at 3D animation was to create a bouncing ball, but first we needed to explore and understand how the key frames in 3DS Max work. Hitting the auto key button allows use to go into animation mode within 3Ds Max.

(Example of key frames being used.)

We first moved our ball around to understand how the key frames our ball was in moved and animated when placing them within different locations within different frames. Once done we then put in some eyes and grouped them together to make a little ball character. We then animated the character ball to bounce.

(Example of ball character being moved around and animated)

To give the illusion of the ball bouncing we moved the ball character upwards then down, then scaling it to give the impression the ball was being squished by the pressure of the force to make a bounce.

(Example of Scaling  the ball on a key frame to give impression of pressure.)

Now that my animation is complete, I then moved onto rendering my animation into a video file, as seen in the link below.

Opening Doors Animation

Making the crate was created simply by placing in a box and sizing it to what I wanted. Once the box was sized I then converted it to an editable poly, there we inset and then extruded to make our box look like a crate.

(Example of the crate created.)

Now done we needed to make the hollow inside of the crate, we did this by selecting a face of the chosen area of the crate that I wanted to be the entrance, and extruded it then by using the move tool to pull back inside it's self to make the entrance.
We then needed to make the doors for the crate, this was done by placing boxes and then flattening them down to look like doors and placing them together. I then went into the hierarchy tools, and created the pivot point for my doors, so they will have a hinge to animate a swing effect, also locking the door is once position making it easier to animate.

(Example of hollow inside of crate and door animation.)

Hitting auto key to activate animation, I rotated the doors to open then close. When I was happy I then rendered the animation as seen below.

Texturing

Not having a lot of experience in 3Ds Max, we thought it might be a good idea, to explore the basics of how texturing is done and created. We unwrapped our model into a UV, there we flattered the map to lay out all the area's of our model, once done we exported our UV map as a JPEG and took it into Photoshop where we could do some simple painting over it.

(Example of UV mapping)

Once into Photoshop, I put a grey overlay on and started painting with the colour orange on the sides to give the impression of rust. When I was happy I then imported my map into the materials and placed it on my model, still not accurate what what i created when applied I then added the image of my UV mapping into the UV editor to add that accurate texture. 

(Example of the map I made, and it applied to my crate.)

Video below shows the same animation of the doors opening but with a texture applied to the crate.

Outcome: Today I learnt a great deal about how an animation might work within 3D software, I have next to no experience in 3D animation, so I've always wondering how animations were created within a 3D environment like 3ds Max. Understanding how key frames and and auto key work, helps me fully understand how to perform the basic beginnings of an animation, these principles can also be applied to software packages like Maya as well. Learning how to texture and use UV maps in 3ds Max was very interesting to learn, I have no experience or training within 3ds max, so learning how to texture, create objects and animate is all good to understand how to use 3ds max.