Animation 10: Point A to Point B Exercise
- Oct 7, 2016
- 4 min read
For our first practical animation-based activity in Animation 101, we were tasked with moving a small wooden cube from point A to point B using stop motion animation techniques. For this we were inducted into the stop motion room by our resident technican, James Russell. We were shown how the lighting, cameras and software operated. After that we were to book our cameras using Siso, in order to complete the animation task for the following week.
(Our induction)
The walls are thin and work more like separators than actual structural walls, this is to help animation students work individually in a focused environment.
(One of the standard animation rooms.)
On the Monday after our first session of Animation 101 I took myself down to the room I had booked out on Siso and began setting up my work space.
I used my sketch pad to try and align what would be my animated object on a straight path.
I then also set up my camera to be hooked up to the software of the computer. Utilising the guidelines on the smallscreen I then adjusted the focus so my foreground and back ground were blurred and my mid ground was the centerpiece of the framing. I did this through my cinematography knowledge on the Rule of Thirds. (ref.) On reflection, what I would coo differently here is ensure that my tripod is stable on the ground; unfortunately, I only noticed after animation that one of the legs on my tripod was more elevated than the other two, resulting in the screen being tilted.
Before I began moving the block at all there were still a few things that I had to check, such as how I was to set up the animation software:
What I'm going to ensure in my next animation activity, is that I properly experiment and play around with the software before I perform my assessment, as I believe that my haste in this particular activity ruined the enjoyment of the task. By trying to just complete the task right away and by not playing around with the stop motion software, I actually ended up taking longer overall.
When work on my animation began I took out my bar sheet as a reference for what I needed to do in order to effectively carry out the brief.
I planned out that I needed to move the block for 50 frames from point A to point B. In order for this to flow smoothly I would have to make sure the block moved the same exact measurement of space each time. I firstly tried marking out the width of the pencil I had with me, but I quickly found that this was ineffective because the distance from point A to point B were to great for me to fit 50 pencil widths into (see picture above).
I restarted the animation and this time I used a ruler to mark out 25cm, I estimated that this way I could try and move the block by half a centimetre each from to make 50 movements.
However, most likely due to mental exhaustion, I realised that I actually had wasted time marking out 250mm. It was truly remarkable that I thought this would work. For my next session, I really need to focus on having enough mental energy and frame of mind when going into the studio. I'll attribute this blunder to the fact that I was perhaps nervous and stressed for my animation being reviewed, therefore I really wanted to get my first go right. I need to realise that it's okay to fail on my first try, as long as I can look back and learn from where I went wrong.
I then clearly measured out the 50 half centimetres and things went pretty smoothly from there.
I uploaded the video and submitted it to Vimeo for review. Here is the result:
I also attempted to recreate the same animation in Maya:
In my next session I am really going to focus on what went wrong here and listen to what my tutors have to say in terms of my own improvement. Although my first mistake has felt embarrassing, I need to get over myself and realise that I'm not expected to know everything at this point. UPDATE: The Animation 101 tutor, Joe Dembinski informed me upon review that despite my A to B being quite precise I had made one error, due to my pencil marks still being visible on my video. When I started my next animation activity, I redid the A to B activity, making sure that this time, there were no pencil marks present. I'm glad I had to redo this, as it felt a lot easier the second time around and I also now understand that using a ruler and making very faint pencil marks have just the same effect and precision. All in all not using pencil marks as guides is a good habit to get into.
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