I've known about Animusic for some time now, and anxiously awaiting Animusic 3.
Animusic is a music-driven computer animation. It is a computer animation where virtual instruments play their own music. Not only is it very progressive with odd metered music, but all of the musical instruments are animated to the actual notes and positions they would play as a real world musical instrument. Even devices that are only able to exist in the computer realm have a system of quantified notes. I have watched them again and again (really, many times) and still, honestly still, I see new and understand the animation each time I watch it.
Pipe Dream is Amazing and memorizing because of its musical accuracy. (Animusic 2)
Resonant Chamber is one of my favorites to watch, the only problem is I wish I had more eyes to watch and study multiple areas at once. (Animusic 2)
We did an in class demo of stop motion using two pairs of shoes. Each class member was able to take turns in moving the shoes a few frames each. Paired with some music and we have ourselves a little and fun dancing animation!
an·i·ma·tion (n): The act, process or result of
imparting life, interest, spirit, motion, or activity.
motion is a technique used to physically manipulate objects to make
them appear as thought they are move on their own. It is used as a
frame by frame process where the object(s) are moved in small movements
and each frame is photographed. Playing the frames as a whole
sequence, the frame by frame creates an illusion of continuous motion.
There are many types of Stop Motion Animation.
Different types of Stop Motion:
Object animation involves
moving animation of any non-drawn objects such as toys, blocks, dolls,
etc. and are not as malleable as clay or wax. Object Animation is not
meant to look like any type of 'character' being animal or human.
Direct manipulation animation is a simplified graphic animation where the artist adds or subtracts to a drawing documenting the frame by frame image.
Clay animation where each animated piece is a character made out of a malleable substance of clay, usually Plasticine clay.
Cel animation is the original animation which is traditionally draws each frame by hand.
Puppet animation the form of performance in which the artist manipulates puppets. Time-lapse is a cinematography technique where the frame is captured at a slower rate than play back.
When replayed at normal speed time appears much faster and
thus lapsing. ie: watching a fast pace flower bud bloom.
Variations of Stop Motion Include:
Stereoscopic: is a technique capable of recording three-dimensional visual information or
creating the illusion of depth in an image. Basically when you have to wear the 3D
glasses to watch something. The first all stop motion 3-D feature is Coraline(2009)
Go Motion: Creates a realistic motion blur between each frame, so it is not as choppy.
The main difference is that stop motion is made up of still images where as go motion
take the frames while the object is in motion. Go motion was used in ET, and is rarely
Computer-generated imagery: 3D computer graphics, special effects, can be seen in movies,
television, commercials, video games, etc. Pretty much has made stop motion obsolete,
however stop motion is still used because of it's unique look. Example: Robot Chicken
Stop motion has been a widely used process since the early 1900's when it was developed.
The Process of Old School Classic Stop Motion an excerpt from artofstopmotion.com
"Willis O'Brien's technique comprised mainly
of building miniature settings and animating his puppets within them. For
many scenes, if humans needed to be present, he ingeniously integrated
rear projection screens into his miniatures and hidden projectors would
project the live action clips one frame at a time. King Kong brilliantly
demonstrates the use of this system. The process, however, became a bit
prohibitive in cost.
Ray Harryhausen needed a way to integrate
his creatures into settings without the need to build many elaborate miniature
sets, the reason for this being that the film he was scheduled to work
on, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,
had a miniscule budget. He finally devised a process of his own, which
is still used today, the split-screen rear projection system.
This process consists of shooting locked down
plates in which to incorporate the model(s). The plate is projected onto
a rear screen and a wooden frame holding a removeable sheet of glass is
placed in front of it. Mr. Harryhausen would then calculate where the creature
was going to appear. If the creature needed to appear behind a series of
buildings, he would break the plate up along this line, eventually blocking
off half of the image. Let's say he blocks off the botton half of the plate
first using black paint on the glass. (this will prevent that section of
the film in the camera from being exposed). He then places the model between
the sheet of glass and the rear screen and he aligns it so it will appear
to be behind the buildings. When he looks through the lens of the camera,
he'll see the top half of the plate, the partially obscured dinosaur and
an irregularly (in this case) shaped mask covering the inferior portion
of the frame. He will then proceed to animate the model and when finished
he will replace the sheet of glass in the frame with it's exact opposite.
A black mask will be covering the top portion of the image. Mr. Harryhausen
will then complete the process by rewinding the film he shot and reexposing
it, but only filming the bottom half of the plate on this pass. When developed
and projected, the creature will appear to be incorporated into the background
plate. Needless to say, this process saved time and money and created a
totally realistic effect and all in-camera. And for those who are familiar
with Mr. Harryhausen's work, he named the process Dynamation for
most of it's use and Dynarama on The
Golden Voyage of Sinbad."
Being in a Digital Methods class has sparked my thinking of animation. Since the times allow people tremendous technological access, it seems anyone can feel like a professions, or try for that matter...that has begun my thinking that the easily accessible technology only seems to further the capabilities of the makers. The more we use it, the better it is becoming. Technology is everything now. Even at the doctors office, the nurses each have their own lap tops to type into instead of writing and then send it off to a main data base.
As I've heard, 'When the student is ready the teacher will appear'...it's become clear to me how much animation is out there. I guess I've never been concerned to look before. Here are a couple interesting Collage Animation pieces similar to what we are working on in class. Enjoy!