[Animation Practice] 30/10/12 - Animation Preproduction

During today's lesson we watched a few animations we brought in, however before that we had a discussion about Storyboarding, types of camera shots, type of pans ect.

We touched upon every aspect in film and animation making, we started off with the basic one though; Storytelling. We talked about the three act structure again and the 3 meanings; the beginning, the middle and the end.

After we discussed storyboarding, we were informed that storyboarding goes through 3 different stages; A very rough design, a first pass of the shot and then finally a tidied up shot with key information about said shot. The storyboard is a very important process in animating, as it helps visualize the project and shows stage direction.

After this, we were told briefly a few key points about pre-production, this includes;

The Aspect Ratio;

1.33:1 - 4x3
1.78:1 - 16x9
2.35:1 - Cinemascope

The TV Cutoff guide;

Title safe, the green area. (See link above)

Action safe, the yellow area.
Cut off zone, the red area.

The Composition;

Composing with light
Selective focus
On a surface
Depth
Asymmetrical form
In line
In colour
Geometric shapes

Rule of Thirds

Type of Shots;

Extreme long shot
Long shot
Medium Long shot
Medium shot
Close up
Extreme close up

Camera Angles/Movement;

Horizontal/eye level
Down shot
Up shot
Tilt shot
Tracking in/out shot
Pan
Zoom
Zip pan
The shake
The tilt

180 Rule;

This keeps the character on one side, as to not confuse the audience on where to look when one person is talking.

Direction;

The Animatic;

Bar Sheet
Pipeline

This is just a quick run down of what we studied in the first half of the lesson, after we began to watch a few more shorts.

The first short we watched was one made by fellow class mate and close friend, Anthony Price called Oddball Omnibus, below is the animation:

The thing that I love about this animation, is that I watched each step throughout the year of the animation take place, I watched how it progressed through each scene, how the animation style improves slowly through the animation and the fact that I helped write the final few scenes... yaaaay! We watched it and talked about what we liked and didn't like about it, there wasn't much that people didn't like, it was mostly Anthony looking back at his work and realizing how much he has improved since creating this, everything else was positive feedback! After this we went to watch my other class mate and close friend's animation, Emma Pinder's Flow animation. Below is the animation:

We watched this animation and talked about what we liked and what we didn't like, pretty much good feedback, though we didn't talk that much about the animation though we discussed whether it is easy to follow or not, in which after a discussion about the animation we concluded that it was after you realize what is actually happening on screen. The other animation we watched was one that our tutor Rossie showed us, The Sandman... Because you know, Halloween and such! Below is the animation:

As much as I hate to admit this, and this gave me ALOT of dirty looking in lesson when I admitted this, I don't really like this type of animation, nor do I like Tim Burton movies. Before anyone gets on my case, I know this isn't created by Tim Burton, however Paul Berry after creating this then went to work with Tim Burton on the Nightmare before Christmas animation. I am not that much of a fan of puppet animation at all, manly because I have a slight Pupaphobia, nor am I a fan of clay animation, though I can tolerate it better than puppet animation. This animation is one HUGE reason why I have a strong disliking to puppets, they are freaky as hell! In this animation we discussed the use of light and camera shots used, which I did like fortunately about the animation.