Future

Despite having 90% of the market dominated by Japan and the US, the Chinese animation industry is in a unique position. The industry is growing significantly for the first time since the pre-cultural revolution days. The number of kids in mainland China exceed the US by about 80 million, and the technology gap between home and professional studios is narrowing. An example of a 1-person production with a successful fan base would be the 2002 Japanese anime Voices of a Distant Star. While this has been proven possible in Japan, China needs to figure out better ways to economically equip their youth, especially in a generation that might later be dominated by user-generated contents.

On the contrary, colleges in China are producing animation graduates and postgraduate students, but not in large numbers. China needs 150,000 talented animation experts for film and television and 100,000 for game animations, but there are just 300 animation majors graduating each year. SARFT have also announced it has opened up domestic cartoon industry to private investors as of late 2004. By 2005 the division has approved 15 animation production centers in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Dalian and other cities. Other trends like cosplay are picking up in animation festivals around mainland

Flash animation market

On September 15, 1999 FlashEmpire became the first flash community in China to come online. While it began with amateurish contents, it was one of the first time any form of user-generated contents was offered in the mainland. By the beginning of 2000, it averaged 10,000 hits daily with more than 5,000 individual work published. Today it has more than 1 million members
In 2001, Xiao Xiao, a series of flash animations about kung fu stick figures became an Internet phenomenon totaling more than 50 million hits, most of which in mainland China. It also became popular overseas with numerous international artists borrowing the Xiao Xiao character for their own flash work in sites like New Grounds.

On April 24, 2006 Flashlands.com was launched, hosting a variety of high quality flash animations from mainland China. The site is designed to be one of the first cross-cultural site allowing English speakers easy access to domestic productions. Though the success of the site has yet to be determined.
In October 2006, 3G.NET.CN paid 3 million RMB (about US$ 380,000) to produce A Chinese odyssey, the flash version of Stephen Chow's A Chinese Odyssey in flash format

Conventional animation market

From the demographics perspective, the Chinese consumer market has identified 11% of the audience are under the age of 13 with 59% between 14 to 17 and 30% over 18 years of age. Potentially 500 million people could be identified as cartoon consumers[6]. China also have 370 million children, one of the world’s largest animation audience[7].
From the financial perspective, Quatech Market Research surveyed ages between 14 to 30 in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou and found that over 1.3 billion RMB (about US $163 million) was spent on cartoons every year, but more than 80% of the revenue flows straight out of the country. Further studies show that 60% still prefer Japanese anime, 29% prefer Americans, and just 11 percent favor those made by Chinese mainland, Taiwan or Hong Kong animators.
In 1999 Shanghai Animation Film Studio spent 21 million RMB (about US $2.6 million) producing the animation Lotus Lantern. The film earned a box office income of more than RMB 20 million (about US $2.5 million), but failed to capitalize on any related products. The same company shot a cartoon series Music Up in 2001, and although 66% of its profits came from selling related merchandise, it lagged far behind foreign animations

One of the most popular manhua in Hong Kong was Old Master Q. The characters were converted into cartoon forms as early as 1981, followed by numerous animation adaptations including a widescreen DVD release in 2003. While the publications remained legendary for decades, the animations have always been considered more of a fan tribute. And this is another sign that newer generations are further disconnected with older styled characters. Newer animations like My Life as McDull has also been introduced to expand on the modern trend.
In 2005 the first 3D CG-animated movie from Shenzhen China, Thru the Moebius Strip was debuted. Running for 80 minutes, it is the first 3D movie fully rendered in mainland China to premiere in the Cannes Film Festival[9]. It was a critical first step for the industry.

In November 2006 an animation summit forum was held to announce China's top 10 most popular domestic cartoons as Century Sonny, Tortoise Hanba's Stories, Black Cat Detective, SkyEye, Lao Mountain Taoist, Nezha Conquers the Dragon King, Wanderings of Sanmao, Zhang Ga the Soldier Boy, The Blue Mouse and the Big-Faced Cat and 3000 Whys of Blue Cat[10]. Century Sonny is a 3D CG-animated TV series with 104 episodes fully rendered.

Terminology

Chinese animations today can best be described in two categories. The first type are "Conventional Animations" produced by corporations of well-financed entities. These content falls along the lines of traditional 2D cartoons or modern 3D CG animated films distributed via cinemas, DVD or broadcasted on TV. This format can be summarized as a reviving industry coming together with advanced computer technology and low cost labor[3].
The second type are "Webtoons" produced by corporations or sometimes just individuals. These contents are generally flash animations ranging anywhere from amateurish to high quality, hosted publicly on various websites. While the global community has always gauged industry success by box office sales. This format cannot be denied when measured in hits among a population of 1.3 billion in just mainland China alone. Most importantly it provides greater freedom of expression on top of potential advertising.


Characteristics

In the 1920s, the pioneering Wan brothers believed that animations should emphasize on a development style that was uniquely Chinese. This rigid philosophy stayed with the industry for decades. And animations were essentially an extension of other facets of Chinese arts and culture, drawing more contents from ancient folkores and manhua. An example of a traditional Chinese animation character would be Monkey King, a character transitioned from the classic literature Journey to the West to the 1964 animation Havoc in Heaven. Though the concept of Chinese animations have began loosening up in recent years without locking into any particular one style. One of the first revolutionary change was in the 1995 manhua animation adaptation Cyber Weapon Z. The style consist of characters that are practically indistinguishable from any typical anime, yet it is categorized as Chinese animation. It can be said that productions are not necessarily limited to any one technique. That water ink, puppetry, computer CG are all demonstrated in the art.

Chinese Animation

Chinese animation are animations from China with increasing collaboration from Hong Kong and Taiwan. Unlike Japanese anime which developed a distinct style early on and multiplied globally, Chinese animations have only started to re-emerge to a more modern sense in recent years.

The history of Chinese animation began in 1918 when an animation piece from the US titled Out of the Inkwell landed in Shanghai. Cartoon clips were first used in advertisements for domestic products. Though the animation industry would not begin until the arrival of the Wan brothers in 1926. From the first film with sound The Camel’s Dance to the first film of notable length Princess Iron Fan, China was relatively on pace with the rest of the world. Though China's golden age of animation would come to a complete halt when the communist party of China led by Mao Zedong introduced the cultural revolution[1]. Many animators were forced to quit. If not for harsh economic conditions, the mistreatment of the red guard would threaten their work. The surviving animations would lean closer to propaganda. By the 1980s, Japan would emerge as the official animation powerhouse in the far east, leaving China's industry decimated in reputation and productivity. Though two major changes would occur in the 90s, igniting some of the biggest changes since the exploration periods. The first is a political change. The implementation of a socialist market economy would push out traditional planned economy systems[2]. No longer would a single entity limit the industry's output and income. The second is a technological change with the arrival of the Internet. New opportunities would emerge from flash animations and the contents became more open. Today China is drastically reinventing itself in the animation industry with greater influences from Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Please Don't Wait Until the Last Minute

Your graduation is probably hinging on this demo reel, and when the stakes are that high, the odds of Murphy's infamous Laws honing in on your limited time will skyrocket exponentially. If it can go wrong, it will; your files will corrupt, your roommate will accidentally drop something heavy on the CDs containing your working files, your personal computer will crash, the school's computer labs will close early, every Wal-Mart, Target, and Office Depot within a fifty-mile radius will run out of blank CD-Rs, or you'll lose a crucial CD or zip disk in a moment of panic and not find it until you're red-eyed and terrified at 4 a.m. the morning that your reel is due. Your instructors will give you more than enough time, and will expect you to take advantage of it.

Don't disappoint them; in the end, you'll only be letting yourself down. Believe it or not, that's really all there is to it; it's just a matter of applying your artistic skills in a slightly different way. Seems simple, doesn't it? It can be. So start thinking about your demo reel now, and if you're still working your way towards that final point, it can't hurt to start keying your projects towards the compilation of that presentation piece. Good luck, and happy animating.

Plan Your Content's Sequence and Timing.

There's a lot to arranging your demo reel; it’s a matter of varying content between types (for example: 2D interspersed with 3D), of building up to a finale, of sequencing to your music. You want to arrange your clips so that your stronger samples support your weaker samples, but you also want to try to tell a story, and can at times cleverly arrange unrelated clips so that they seem to connect.

The best method is to get all of your clips together, and then arrange them in a program like Adobe Premiere. Play with them a bit; shift them around like puzzle pieces with your edited music track attached, until you're sure that you're happy with the arrangement and it has the impact and tells the story that you want. You should start off with something good to hook the audience, but not your best; blend back and forth between your better pieces, and the good-but-not-stunning pieces, so that you're displaying all of your work without losing them in long stretches of mediocrity with the best pieces only at the beginning and the end. Arrange your clips to build up to your finale, which should be your best piece; the last clip will be the final image that stays in the viewers' minds, and a large part of forming their final impression. You want to go out with a "bang", and leave them amazed

This is where your music will really help you. Once you've got your clips basically arranged, it really helps if you can start tweaking that arrangement, adding or removing frames here and there to shift things just enough so that key moments in the animation combine with key moments in the music track. It's a lot like orchestrating a cinematic soundtrack; if you're using a music track that has a long, thrumming crescendo leading up to a loud cymbal crash, you could time it with something a simple as a character jumping off of a building; the crescendo builds up the fall, and the impact of landing hits with the cymbal crash. Using your soundtrack in that fashion can really make your demo reel "snap", and turn it from a simple arrangement of clips into a dynamic, powerful music video.

Don't Be Afraid to Cut Your Work.

This can apply in two ways

first, don't be afraid to leave work that doesn't measure up off of the demo reel, completely. You don't have to include everything, and if you have weak material that may drag the rest of your reel down, just cut it entirely. If you're just using it as space-filler to meet the minimum length requirements, odds are it'll be pretty obvious and your audience will lose interest quickly.

Second, don't be afraid to cut even your best work. In the course of your school career, you'll probably produce content that could be two or three times the length of your final reel; find the moments in the work that you choose to present that display your skills in the best light, and clip them. You can even cut more than one piece from an animation, and space the parts out depending on where they fit best with your music. There's no need to agonize over just how you're going to fit that dramatic, minute-long scene of a slow camera pan over the same landscape. Cut just enough for viewers to get a good impression of the quality of the work, and move on.

Arranging Your Content

Choose Appropriate Content.

This, to me, is the most important thing to remember. Your friends and classmates may be impressed by the realistic textures applied to certain censored body parts, or by how well you penciled a hand-drawn sequence of the famous "lift and separate", or the amazing amount of detail involved in the bloody entrails splayed about in a two-minute grisly, pixelated bloodbath; employers, however, will not be. Nor will they look favorably on your animated tribute to your eternal devotion to whatever mind-alterations happened to get you through semester exams without bursting a vein; odds are they've seen it before, far too many times, and it will not leave a positive impression no matter how well it's animated. There's nothing wrong with having fun with your demo reel, and your animations; the majority of animation is about fun, but when preparing your demo reel, please try to keep it clean and family-friendly.

Professionalism doesn't just include the quality of your work; it includes the maturity to impose the appropriate restraints on the samples that you send to represent yourself. Remember that employers will see your demo reel long before they ever see you, and the content of that reel can cause them to form various impressions of you, both good and bad. Even video game companies that specialize in topless beach volleyball games will look for that professionalism in a reel; they'll be more interested, first, in how well you can maintain a work ethic in a professional environment. You can show them your fascinating technique for rendering bikini tan lines later--at the appropriate time.

Use a Soundtrack, and Use it Well.

You may be wary of setting your demo reel to music, but choosing the right soundtrack can make or break a reel; synching your animation clips to a music track can add a needed "punch" that can leave a real impact on viewers. Try to choose something that can be easily edited down to within your reel's time constraints; often tracks without words are better for this, and finding that right "cutoff point" within your allowed time range will probably end up deciding the final length of your reel. Try to use music with a clearly-defined beat, quick-paced and infectious without being jarring; a clear climax of the track can also help you use the music to string entirely unrelated clips of animation into a sequenced story with a beginning, middle, and end.

However, one thing to always remember when choosing music for your demo reel is the issue of copyright infringement. This is a very heated topic lately, as we all know, so I'll pass on the advice that of one of my old animation instructors gave to me:

Know Your Time Constraints.

Often your demo reel will be given to you as an assignment in a class devoted to completing the project in time for graduation; many schools impose time constraints within a certain range. I remember that my demo reel had to be at least a minute and a half long, but no more than two minutes; this is an average range, though some schools will go as high as three minutes. Later, you may be piecing together a new demo reel to meet submission guidelines for a specific employer or call-out, but no matter the reason, you should always check the minimum and maximum lengths of time allowed. This will help you plan your content, and how you will space it.

Preparing a Professional Demo Reel

The First Steps in Planning

For an animator, the demo reel is like that final exam in your senior year, complete with all of the extra work, stresses, and last-minute panics. And like the final exam, it can mean success or failure--not only in your education, but in your career. You've probably worked on a variety of projects during animation school, some fun, some not. But do you need to include every last one of those projects in your demo reel?

The answer, surprisingly, is no. While you may think that potential employers will be fascinated by an hour-long epic of every last product of your college career, trust me when I say that they won't be. On average, they'll sit through about of three minutes at the most, and they'll already have decided if they're interested or not in half that time. The rest is a waste of your time, and theirs; the most important thing about your demo reel is maximizing the impact of your reel while effectively utilizing the time provided. Let's go over a few things to keep in mind while preparing your first demo reel.

Story boarding

The storyboarding process, in the form it is known today, was developed at the Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation studios.

Storyboards are graphic organizers such as a series of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of previsualizing a motion graphic or interactive media sequence, including website interactivity.

Usage

Film : A film storyboard is essentially a large comic of the film or some section of the film produced beforehand to help film directors, cinematographers and television commercial advertising clients visualize the scenes and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that indicate movement

Animatics : In animation and special effects work, the storyboarding stage may be followed by simplified mock-ups called "animatics" to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence. More commonly, a rough dialogue and/or rough sound track is added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.

Business : Storyboards were adapted from the film industry to business, purportedly by Howard Hughes of Hughes Aircraft. Today they are used by industry for planning ad campaigns, commercials, a proposal or other projects intended to convince or compel to action.
A "quality storyboard" is a tool to help facilitate the introduction of a quality improvement process into an organisation.
Design comics are a type of storyboard used to include a customer or other characters into a narrative. Design comics are most often used in designing web sites or illustrating product usage scenarios during design.

Interactive media : More recently the term "storyboard" has been used in the fields of web development, software development and instructional design to present and describe interactive events as well as audio and motion, particularly on user interfaces, electronic pages and presentation screens. An interactive media storyboard may be used in the graphical user interface for the user experience design of a website or interactive project as well as a visual tool for planning the content. In contrast, a site map or flow chart may be better to plan the information architecture, navigation, links, organization and total user experience, especially when the sequence of events is less predictable or the audiovisual change between events is of little design importance.

Gaming : Like all storyboarding uses on interactive media, it can be used for games to present the game's storyline

Advantages : One advantage of using storyboards is that it allows (in film and business) the user to experiment with changes in the storyline to evoke stronger reaction or interest. Flashbacks, for instance, are often the result of sorting storyboards out of chronological order to help build suspense and interest.
The process of visual thinking and planning allows a group of people to brainstorm together, placing their ideas on storyboards and then arranging the storyboards on the wall. This fosters more ideas and generates consensus inside the group

Phenakistoscope

The phenakistoscope (also spelled phenakistiscope) was an early animation device, the predecessor to the zoetrope. It was invented in 1831 simultaneously by the Belgian Joseph Plateau and the Austrian Simon von Stampfer.

One variant of the phenakistoscope was a spinning disc mounted vertically on a handle. Around the center of the disc a series of pictures was drawn corresponding to frames of the animation; around its circumference was a series of radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images with the appearance of a motion picture (see also persistence of vision). Another variant had two discs, one with slits and one with pictures; this was slightly more unwieldy but needed no mirror. Unlike the zoetrope and its successors, the phenakistoscope could only practically be used by one person at a time.

The word "phenakistoscope" comes from Greek roots meaning "to cheat", as it deceives the eye by making the pictures look like an animation.
The Special Honorary Joseph Plateau Award, a replica of Plateau's original phenakisticope, is presented every year to a special guest of the Flanders International Film Festival whose achievements have earned a special and distinct place in the history of international film making.

History of animation

A flip book is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners. Software packages and websites are also available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip books.

The first flip book appeared in September, 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnet under the name kineograph ("moving picture"). They were the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular (as in the older phenakistoscope). The German film pioneer, Max Skladanowsky, first exhibited his serial photographic images in flip book form in 1894, as he and his brother Emil did not develop their own film projector until the following year. In 1894, Herman Casler invented a mechanized form of flip book called the Mutoscope, which mounted the pages on a central rotating cylinder rather than binding them in a book. The mutoscope remained a popular attraction through the mid-20th century, appearing as coin-operated machines in penny arcades and amusement parks. In 1897, the English filmmaker Henry William Short marketed his "Filoscope", which was a flip book placed in a metal holder to facilitate flipping.

Maya LIGHTING

Some of the Topics to cover in Maya LIGHTING


Faking Global Illumination with point lights
Light Linking using three point lighting
CORRECT ANAMORPHIC SETTINGS IN MAYA
Realistic Reflections - Fresnel and HDRI
Car Headlights / Misc Lamps
Locator Controlled Depth of Field
Command Line Rendering
Faking HDRI in Maya
Structured Importance Sampling of Environment Maps
Creating and lighting a realistic cell phone
Lighting In Layers - By Jeremy Birn
The concepts for lighting in 3d
Raytrace Transparency
Compositing a 3D rendered object into Video
Render globals - video
Spotlight Color - gnomon video
Glow Threshold - gnomon video
2d Motion Blur from command line - video
Using the RGB + Alpha Channels to speed up the rendering times - video
Creating Gobo's - video
Light linking fog
How to map a material on a shadowed part of an object in Maya
Adjusting the shadow density of a lighting
Specular, diffuse and ambient lighting per light
More Rendering in Layers/Passes
Darkness Tutorial - Compositing using Maya, PaintFX, and Photoshop
Texturing and Rendering a Sci-Fi City
Cartoon Shading in Maya 5
Render Passes for Maya - Tutorial
Backlight glows
Advanced Global Illumination
Three-Point Lighting for 3D Renderings
Faking Radiosity
Faking outdoor illumination in maya
Faking ray-traced shadows with detph-map shadows in maya
How to use the skyLightControl window
How to use the skyLight with an animated textures from an envSky
How to fake real specular highlights with the skyLight (HDRLI)
Creating motion-blurred shadows in Maya
How to bake shadows in Maya
Wireframe Rendering
Single Sided Wireframe Rendering in Maya
Non Photo Realistic Shading in Maya
Batch Rendering Multiple Maya Files
Environment Mapping Without Raytracing
Correcting Glow Flicker in Maya
Creating a fast Athmo
Faking Global Illumination
Baking (« convert to file texture ») Workarounds
Lighting flat objects
Rendering Guide
material & light tutorial
Depth map auto focus
Display resolution or filmgate?
A Desk Lamp Light
Shadow Quality
Spotlight Decay Regions
Controlling Fog Density
Transparency Shadows
The Fisheye Camera
How to bake shadows in Maya
Faking radiosity in Maya
Multi-Patch Model Tesselation
How to render a real volume in Maya
BACKLIGHT SHADER by Emmanuel Campin
Faking ray-traced shadows with detph-map shadows
Creating motion-blurred shadows in Maya
Water Waves Plugin
Camera/Light texture projection
IPR Rendering 24
How to Prelight a scene
Light Linking in Heavy Scenes
Rendering in Passes and Layers
Simple Fog
Depth of Field as a Post Process
Spotlight Fog
Faking outdoor illumination in maya

A Few New Principles for 3D Computer Animation

A few of the new issues that need to be addressed by new principles of three-dimensional computer animation include: visual styling, blending cartoon physics with real world physics, using cinematography, mastering facial animation, and optimizing user-controlled animation.

13- Visual styling in three-dimensional computer animation means more than just how things are supposed to look. Visual styling also has a significant impact on rendering, on animation techniques, and overall production complexity. As we develop a visual look we must keep in mind that it is feasible to produce within the boundaries of the project. A certain look for the skin of a beast, for example, might look cool but might also require too complex a rig, too detailed a model and too complex an animation process.

14- It is possible today to blend motion from different sources, and we need to develop a clear approach for blending cartoon with realistic motion. Before production starts it is necessary to define clear guidelines for a variety of motion/animation styles including cartoon physics, realistic cartoon, realistic human motion and rotoscoping. Above all, we must direct live performers when capturing their motion to add intention to their movements.

15- Since we have absolute control over camera positions and movement in three-dimensional computer animation, we should make the cinematography a crucial component of our animation, not just an afterthought. The composition, lighting, and sequencing of our moving images has a huge impact on storytelling. Most of this work can crystallize during previsualization and the assembly of the three-dimensional animatics. The lighting style needs to be addressed separately, since it impacts both the look and the rendering pipeline

16- Most of the thoughts and emotions of characters are expressed on their faces. Three-dimensional computer animation offers more facial animation control than ever before, including the subtle motion of eyelids and eyeballs. Establishing early in the process the level of facial control and techniques has a positive effect on the styling of the character and the design of the production flow. Building a catalog of facial morph targets or blend shapes for production and reuse is today as essential as building walk cycles.

17- Computer and platform games put much of the animation control in the hands of gamers. This poses the challenge to create great animation that works regardless of what move the gamer decides to make. Games are a combination of user-controlled animation and preset/narrative animation. One of the creative animation challenges is to find a balance between the narrative and the improvisational aspect of the game. Look at the model of participatory street theater (different from traditional stage theater) for ideas on how to constraint the gamer-action to establish strong staging. User-controlled animation relies on strong animation cycles with built-in anticipation that are able to branch smoothly into reaction shots. Fortunately many of today's game engines have built-in intelligence that can smooth transitions between animation cycles. The combination of preset and dynamic user-controlled cameras is also unique to games.

7- Using arcs to animate the movements of characters helps achieve a natural look because most living creatures move in curved paths, never in perfectly straight lines. Non-arc motion comes across as sinister, restricted or robotic. In three-dimensional computer animation we can use software constraints to force all or some of the motion within arcs. Even motion-captured performances can be fine-tuned with curve editors, as long as the motion is not flattened.

8- Secondary action consists of the smaller motions that complement the dominant action. In three-dimensional computer animation we can take advantage of layers and channels for building up different secondary motions, for example, a layer for hair, a layer for the character's hat, a layer for the cape, and so on

9- Timing is the precise moment and the amount of time that a character spends on an action (figure below). Timing adds emotion and intention to the character's performance. Most three-dimensional computer animation tools allow us to fine tune the timing by shaving off or adding frames with non-linear time-editing. Timing can also be controlled and adjusted by placing each character on a separate track, and using sub-tracks for parts of the character such as head, torso, arms and legs.

TIMING

10- Exaggeration usually helps cartoon characters to deliver the essence of an action. A lot of exaggeration can be achieved with squash and stretch. In three-dimensional computer animation we can use procedural techniques, motion ranges and scripts to exaggerate motion. The intensity of a moment can be increased with cinematography and editing, not just with performance.

11- Solid modeling and rigging, or solid drawing as it was called in the 1930s, emphasizes the clear delineation of shape necessary to bring animated characters to life. Solid and precise modeling helps to convey the weight, depth and balance of the character, and it also simplifies potential production complications due to poorly modeled characters. Animation rigs are at their best when they are optimized for the specific personality and motion of the character. Pay attention to silhouettes when aligning characters to the camera.

SOLID MODELING AND RIGGING

12- Character personality, or appeal as it was originally called, facilitates the emotional connection between character and audience. Characters must be well developed, have an interesting personality, and have a clear set of desires or needs that drive their behavior and actions. Complexity and consistency of motion are two elements of character appeal that can be easily developed with three-dimensional computer animation. Writing down the ways in which the character moves (Fig. 10.5.7), how he/she reacts to different situations, and how he/she relates to other characters can help define the main characteristics of the character's personality. Fine-tune the personality with the key poses and the character turnarounds.

Principles of 3D animation

Applying the Twelve Principles to 3D Computer Animation

The twelve principles of animation were created in the early 1930s by animators at the Walt Disney Studios. These principles were used to guide production and creative discussions as well to train young animators better and faster. These twelve principles became one of the foundations of hand-drawn cartoon character animation. The twelve principles, as they are commonly referred to, also helped to transform animation from a novelty into an art form. By applying these principles to their work these pioneering animators produced many of the earliest animated feature films that became classics: Snow White (1937), Pinocchio and Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942

The twelve principles are mostly about five things: acting the performance, directing the performance, representing reality (through drawing, modeling, and rendering), interpreting real world physics, and editing a sequence of actions. The original principles are still relevant today because they help us to create more believable characters and situations. They can be applied to almost any type of animation, even though they work best for comedy. But, some of these principles require updates, and a few new additional principles are also needed to address the new techniques and styles of three-dimensional computer animation.

1- Squash and stretch, the first principle from the original twelve, is used to exaggerate the amount of non-rigid body deformations usually with the purpose of achieving a more comedic effect. Three-dimensional squash and stretch can be implemented with a variety of techniques: skin and muscle, springs, direct mesh manipulation and morphing. It can also be implemented in more experimental ways with weighting, especially for dynamics simulations, and unusual IK systems.

2- The technique of anticipation helps to guide the audience's eyes to where the action is about to occur (Fig. 10.2.4). Anticipation, including motion holds, is great for "announcing the surprise." In three-dimensional computer animation it can be fine-tuned using digital time-editing tools such as time sheets, timelines, and curves. More anticipation equals less suspense. Horror films, for example, switch back and forth from lots of anticipation to total surprise

3- Staging, or mise-en-scene as it is also known, is about translating the mood and intention of a scene into specific character positions and actions. Staging the key character poses in the scene helps to define the nature of the action. Three-dimensional animatics are a great tool for previsualizing and blocking out the staging before the primary, secondary and facial animation. There are many staging techniques to tell the story visually: hiding or revealing the center of interest, and a chain reaction of actions-reactions are a couple of them. Staging can also be aided with contemporary cinematic techniques such as slow motion, frozen time, motion loops, and hand-held camera moves.

4- Straight-ahead action and pose-to-pose are two different animation techniques that yield fairly different results. In the early days of hand-drawn animation pose-to-pose action became the standard animation technique because it breaks down structured motion into a series of clearly defined key poses. In straight-ahead action the character moves spontaneously through the action one step at a time until the action is finished. Motion capture and dynamics simulations, even three-dimensional rotoscoping, are clearly the straight-ahead techniques of three-dimensional computer animation. They can all be blended intelligently using channels.

5- Follow-through and overlapping action are two techniques that help make the action richer and fuller with detail and subtlety. Follow-through action consists of the reactions of the character after an action, and it usually lets audiences know how he or she feels about what has just happened or is about to happen. In overlapping action multiple motions influence, blend, and overlap the position of the character. In three-dimensional computer animation a lot of the common follow-through motions of clothing and hair, for example, can be animated with dynamics simulations (figure below). The layers and channels in three-dimensional computer animation software allow us to mix and blend different overlapping motions from different areas of the character.

FOLLOW-THRU

6- Slow-in and slow-out consist of slowing down the beginning and the end of an action, while speeding up the middle of it. A snappy effect is achieved when motion is accelerated and retarded in this way. In three-dimensional computer animation slow-ins and slow-outs can be fine-tuned with digital time-editing tools. When using motion capture techniques for cartoon-style animated characters it is essential to remind performers to do slow-ins and slow-outs. The inverse variation of this effect, a fast-in and fast-out, is often times seen in TV commercials and music videos where the beginning and end of the sequence are accelerated while the middle is slowed down giving it a surreal or dreamy feeling.

Principles of Traditional Animation

Many of the principles of traditional animation were developed in the 1930's at the Walt Disney studios. These principles were developed to make animation, especially character animation, more realistic and entertaining. These principles can and should be applied to 3D computer animation.

The following principles were developed and named:

Squash and Stretch - defining the rigidity and mass of an object by distorting its shape during an action
Timing and Motion - spacing actions to define the weight and size of objects and the personality of characters
Anticipation - the preparation for an action
Staging - presenting an idea so that it is unmistakably clear
Follow Through and Overlapping Action - the termination of an action and establishing its relationship to the next action
Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action - The two contrasting approaches to the creation of movement
Slow In and Out - the spacing of the in-between frames to achieve subtlety of timing and movement
Arcs - the visual path of action for natural movement
Exaggeration - Accentuating the essence of an idea via the design and the action
. Secondary Action - the action of an object resulting from another action
. Appeal - creating a design or an action that the audience enjoys watching

28 principles

Here is a list of things (principles) that appear in these drawings, most of which should appear in all scenes, for they comprise the basis for full animation

• 
  -Pose and Mood
  -Shape and Form -Anatomy
  -Model or Character -Weight
  -Line and Silhouette -Action and Reaction
  -Perspective -Direction
  -Tension -Planes
  -Solidity -Arcs
  -Squash and Stretch -Beat and Rythem
  -Depth and Volume -Overlap and followthru
  -Timing -Working from extreme to extreme
  -Straights and Curves -Primary and secondary action
  -Staging and composition -Anticipation
  -Caricature -Details
  -Texture -Simplification
  -Positive and negative shapes

Principles of 2D animation

There are some principles of animation that can be consciously used in any scene. We should familiarize ourselves with them for both animation and animation-cleanup.
To illustrate these principles, I have chosen a supposedly simple scene. When the scene is analyzed, it is apparent how far one may go in using these principles.

The action in this scene is quite broad, making the principles easy to find, but they should be applied to subtle scenes also. Rarely in a picture is a character doing nothing- absolutely nothing. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty spend a short time in complete inactivity, but even then certain of these principles were used.

The use of held drawings and moving holds can be very effective, but only if they contain the vitality of an action drawing. Again, the use of these principles makes that possible.

How do u?

How Do You Become An Artist?

An Artist requires an innate talent as well as a proper environment to become an artist. You cannot be a good artist unless you have a natural inclination towards becoming an artist. Similarly, your training and grooming has an important role to play in shaping up your dreams.

To be a successful artist in your own lifetime, you need to balance institutional learning, good business sense, hard work and talent

What is Meant By?

What is meant by animated movies?

Animated movies are movies that use computer graphics to 'animate' characters and scenes. Animate means to 'bring to life' or 'make move'. It is similar to cartoons but not quite. While for cartoons, artists just draw still pictures on page after page with slight alterations, in order to make the characters movie, in animated movies it is the computer graphics experts who are used for applying the animation process, instead of using sheets of paper.

Artists still draw and outline the entire script of the animation movies, but it is the graphics designers who piece it together. Computer animation is a much more advanced process than the simple 'cartoon' days, and it helps create better graphics, smoother animation, and overall better quality motion pictures.

The First Ever Made

When was the first ever movie made?

"The Story of the Kelly Gang" is widely considered as the world's first feature length film. It was a 70 minute length movie released in 1906. The story of the movie portrays the life of the legendary Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly (1855-1880). Charles Tait wrote and directed it. It is said that the film's actual reel length is 1219.2 meters. The Story of the Kelly Gang was released on 26th December 1906 in Australia at the Melbourne Town Hall. The movie starred Elizabeth Tait, Godfrey Cass, Nicholas Brierley, and John Tait.

The very first movies, when the technology was new, were very simply clips of everyday actions. For example, the Lumiere brothers filmed a train arriving and people getting off it. Thomas Edison filmed a man and woman kissing.Two of the earliest films that attempted to tell a narrative story both appeared in 1902: THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY (filmed in New Jersey, not far from my home town of Dover!) and George Melies's fantasy A TRIP TO THE MOON. Both of these were very short silent films.

History Of Anime

What Was Disney's First Animated Feature Film?

Disney's first animated feature film was Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, which was released on December 21,1937, and was the first animated feature to be filmed in technicolor. It is the tenth highest-grossing film of all time in the United States, when inflation is taken into account, and was the most successful motion picture in 1938.

The film was a major box-office success. It made more money than any other motion picture in 1938, and was the highest-grossing film in American cinema history for a short period of time.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves has been re-released every seven to years since its original release, which is a Disney tradition. For its 50th anniversary, which was in 1987, the film was restored. It was the last of the early Disney animated films to be released on VHS, being released in 1994. It came to DVD in 2001, and will be re-released again in October 2008, as a platinum edition.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarves was followed by Pinocchio, which was released in 1940 and Disney's second animated feature.

What is What?

How many types of Anime are uses now a day?

There are many different types of animes are used in the market. Anime topics can be children’s stories, fiction, drama, adventure, specific character, science, horror and many other types. These animes can be shown in single episode or can be series. Following animes types can be discussed here:

Action Animes: In this type of animes fighting shown by sword or any other weapon like guns, pistols, bombs etc.

Horror: Characters shown in this type may be of horror type like ghost and gin can be shown in it. Mostly children like it very much.

Romantic Anime: These animes created for the boys and girls. If anime based on girl character it will attract boys and if the main character is a boy it will attract to girls ultimately.

Fiction: Story based animes are related to any fiction. It is specially created for kids to understand them about stories.Science:Informative type of anime produced for students. It is provided with very useful information.Anime some time took a person into a unrealistic world. It is a best media to make an imaginary world.

Q...What are the Animes and how it can be produced?

:A:!!! Anime is an English word and abbreviation of word “Animation”. But mostly animation word is used in Japan. But in West it is pronounced as “Anime”. In the beginning anime were drawn by hand. Computer made a great revolution in the anime production. Now a days most of the anime s are produced computerized.

In the past people use to draw a story or any fiction to make anime and show for the entertainment proposes. Anime can be shown on TV an on other medias like DVD and VCDs. But in later years a new change made in anime development. It can be created in the form of video games and full-length motion pictures.

Mostly anime are produces for children to show them fiction and different types of stories in the form of animation. It is very helpful to understand a story with animation. Anime is the basics of art. After that people use to develop this art in various other manners. In many country it is a very good business to produce animes like in Japan, China, America etc.

Q.What Does Maya Mean?

A...Maya can mean a number of things. As a Spanish name it is just a form of writing Amalia and in the Russian it is just another form of Mary. The name Maya from Hindi has far more history and culture attached to it then the European substitutions for other names.

In short the Hindi word Maya means a dream or an illusion. In Hindu tradition Maya is personified through a great goddess along with the other two concepts of “Prakruti” or matter and “Shakti” or activity. In Hindu philosophy man relies on all three to exist but it is Maya that lets him perceive the other two. In Buddhism Maya refers to the name of the woman who conceived Buddha Shakyamuni. In scriptures her name appears as either Mahamaya or Mayadevi meaning Great Maya and Goddess Maya respectively.