How to create Good animation, for beginners! Animation Cheat Sheet included!

How to create Good animation, for beginners! Animation Cheat Sheet included!

by | Nov 28, 2013 | Animation

What makes a good animation? The word, good, itself is too vague to begin with. As a beginner, although we are happy to see that we can make something move, that is not what we want and definitely not where we end. We want our animation to look good, look great or even WOW! So let us start with understanding our definition of the word good.   Great animation has several contributing factors. As a beginner, maybe 12 principle of animation is too much to digest, so let us take baby steps and look at a non organic animation such as bouncing ball. How do we consider an animation to be wow for a bouncing ball? It has to bounce realistically and moves like a real ball. However, your perception and my perception of the word, realistic, might not differ quite a bit. You might say a realistic ball will look like a basketball bouncing while I will say that a tennis ball bounces more realistically. No matter which kind of ball, identifying the ball is probably the first step before you even animate. Set yourself a target by deciding your subject and its action.   Once we have our target, then we will need to know how realistic the motion should be. I do not think we can describe the realism of a motion well enough, so the fastest way is to search on YouTube and look for a recording of a real ball bouncing. By looking at the video, we can be sure that we are on the same page for our realistic perception.   Animation can...
Stop Motion Animation with iPhone

Stop Motion Animation with iPhone

by | Apr 8, 2012 | Animation

Recently I discovered this iPhone app called Stop Motion Recorder. My initial intention is to create flipbook animation into video and this app turns out to be really easy to use. It has good features to help animators in creating fun and creative stop motion. While I was goofing around during work, I created my first stop motion video with my iPhone. Here is how it looks like: I'm trying out the features of this app and its functionality. In order to create this stop motion animation, all I need is: 1. Put my iPhone on a stand (for stability of recording) 2. Turn on Stop Motion Recorder and have it on standby 3. Have fun placing your toys and plan what I want to do with my toys 4. Click 'Start' on the app. You can choose manual capture using sound command, or you can set it to capture a shot every 3 seconds. I experiment with the my Evangelion swinging his weapon and fly away. This is the outcome: The good part about Stop Motion Recorder is that it allows different Frames Per Second (FPS) settings from 6fps to 12fps, which is handy for animators to churn out a smooth animation video. Few other quality features included are union skin, deleting unwanted frames, rotating video, etc. And of course for $0.99USD, this is definitely a good buy for me. For more details, you can read more at this link. As part of the Bovine Workshop with my student, Tommy, I wanted him to experiment something new in creating animation. Based on what Tommy had learn in my...

Need help in animation?

Step By Step Checklist To Realistic Animation (Printable Version)

Use this cheat sheet to help you monitor your animation progress. I've also included check points to help you apply principle of animation which will make your animation looks realistic.

Need help in animation?

Step By Step Checklist To Realistic Animation (Printable Version)

Use this cheat sheet to help you monitor your animation progress. I've also included check points to help you apply principle of animation which will make your animation looks realistic.