VFX Year 2

What makes animation good or bad?:​

​

The animation medium is a great way of storytelling. It allows a team of filmmakers to do whatever they want. The possibilities for storytelling are endless and on top of that it has the ability to appeal to almost everyone, no matter the age, if the story is done right. However a lot of the animated movies you see nowadays are pointless, weak plotted movies, such as Boss Baby or The Emoji Movie. Movies like these are clearly aimed for kids and that's all. Other target audiences aren't accounted for. More kids are gonna enjoy these types of stories, much more than adults would enjoy an in-depth one; therefore making the companies more money. Kids are more likely to remember a wacky, silly looking character that makes funny noises, than a character that just resembles a human. This makes perfect sense from a marketing standpoint, however it really makes animation a wasted potential for greatness. There are of course some great animations out there being created, but they are all just being pulled away from the spotlight because of these animations that only kids are watching. For me, the perfect animation is when a film does appeal to all audiences; a film that does have those enjoyable characters, but also has a great story to follow. A good example of this is Disney Pixar's Wall-e.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wall-e is one of my favorite animated films. After re-watching it now I am much older, I realized that the film actually has a good story to go with the enjoyable characters. If you haven't watched it already, Wall-e is basically a love story between two robots; Wall-e and Eve. Humans have evacuated from the world onto a giant spaceship, because the worlds is full of waste and rubbish. Wall-e is one of the last cleaning robots on earth, and he is unlike the other robots that were operating. Wall-e has a personality, like a human. His big eyes show emotion surprisingly well with the way they move when he reacts to things. Another, more advanced robot; Eve, comes down from the space ships to look for potential life or other robots. Eve also has personality, but tries to hide it while she's on the ship. When she lands on earth and thinks she's alone, she shows her true colours. Once they meet they, quickly develop a great bond with each other.

The crazy thing about this movie is that there is technically no dialogue at all. Both robots only know their names and that's it, but because both of these character have wacky and emotional personalities, you are still interested in what you are watching. This means that the movie relies on visual storytelling nearly all of the time. This makes the movie unintentionally really good for children, because to them all they see is to robots goofing around, but older audiences are getting captivated into the great story. Personally, this is a great way of making an animation appeal to all audiences, and it should be used more often nowadays.

​

When you think of animation studios, most likely Pixar or Dreamworks come to your mind. Both of these studios have created many great animated stories in the past, and they are 2 of the biggest animations studios out there.  And that's the problem. There is a lack of competition. Pixar especially, have been dominating the animation medium in the past decade, and it's not like they can't make good movies. When you think about it, they really have no reason to take their time making well thought out stories every few years, when they can make simple stories every year that follow the trends of today to attract kids, and make the same amount of money or even more. If another animation studio like Dreamworks, or Sony Picture Animations stepped up there games, then Pixar would be forced to step theirs up. There are still companies that are making great films, like Spiderman: Into the Spider-verse by Sony. But if there was the same amount of competition in the animation medium than there is within normal film making, then we would see a lot more of the those great animations coming out more frequently.

​

From a technical view, nowadays you expect animation to have photo realistic environments most of the time. Take Toy Story 4 for example. The human characters aren't really considered realistic, but when you look at the environments around them and some of the other character that aren't human, they look virtually perfect. Some studios try to make there human characters on the realistic side, which is fine, however you need to be careful your audience doesn't fall into the uncanny valley. The concept of the uncanny valley suggests that humanoid objects which imperfectly resemble actual human beings provoke uncanny or strangely familiar feelings of eeriness. Unless this is your purpose (and it's highly likely that it isn't) within the story, then you don't want this to be within the animation otherwise it will distract the audience from the story. It is also a necessity to have solid animated characters because your characters could feel lifeless and robotic if not done correctly. Its important to have both of these instead of one because missing one of them would do the other justice.

​

Animation in Blender:​

​

There are two main to animate within Blender; one method being unique to blender. This method is called shape keying. Shape keying is a very simple way of doing very basic animation, which makes it a very beginner friendly method. It similarly works with keyframes like when you are using rigs. You make a shape key keyframe for the first pose you want your character to be in. Then you move the limbs and facial features to the next position you want the character to be in and make that as a new pose for the shape key keyframe. This method requires no rig at all to be created, however you can only set 2 shape keys at a time (2 poses). You can have in between values, and you can edit the curve for the keyframes to make it ease in and/or ease out. With what the shape key can do, this makes it very useful for anything that isn't a full character, for example a bouncy ball, or a table folding out, or any other object that wouldn't require a rig. 

​

The other method of animation is what every other software uses, and that is animating with character rigs. I have done some research, and I have found some useful information by Steve Lund, also known as CG Geek (Blender 2.8 Tutorial : Rig ANY Character for Animation in 10 Minutes!, Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SBYb1YmaOMY), You create a skeleton rig, line it up with your character model and assign it to the model. Once that is done you can link joints to other bones so the joint bends correctly. When you have the rig complete you can pretty much create any pose or action you want if you know how to work with keyframes and their graph editor curves. This method of animation is highly superior when it comes to animating characters, as you are able to create as many poses and actions as you want, but of course a lot more work is required. Rigs can be as complex as you want them to be. You could have a simple rig that only maps a character body, to a rig that lets you move the position of the nose, where the characters eyes are looking etc. 

​

No matter what art style you are going for, it is important that your characters animation obeys the law of physics. According to John Lasseter (The Principles of Animation, Available at: https://www.evl.uic.edu/ralph/508S99/squash.html),  squash and stretch is one of the most important animation principles. When an object moves, its movement indicates the rigidity of the object. Many real world objects have little flexibility, such as furniture, however most organic objects have some level of flexibility in their shape. Take for example a bouncing ball. A rubber ball bounces higher and squashes more upon impact than a hard ball. The ease with which an object squashes and stretches defines the rigidity of the material making up an object.

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​

​