Painting the Horizon

I was going through my youngest sister's DVDs and I came across Cinderella 3: A Twist in time. I realized I'd never actually watched it and figured there'd be worse ways to spend an evening.

And it was actually mostly OK. The animation was solid overall and actually pretty neat at points, and the Prince is suddenly the most hilarious thing.



And this is now my response to everything.

Yesterday I turned 21. Whopee. No parties this year, because I'm not into that whole "going out to drink" thing and my apartment can't accommodate more than three or four people at once. Not that I mind. My cousin and her dog visited me, though, which was cool.

Also, my animation classes are over. Okay, so there's still tomorrow, but we're just showing our animations, not actually working on anything anymore. The stop motion animation turned out alright, the drawn one... well, we only had little less than two weeks to learn a new program and make a whole animation with some kind of plot with it, so obviously no one's animations were going to be Disney level. Or even Cartoon Network level. I'm still kind of embarrassed by the corners I had to cut and some frankly crappy bits that I just didn't have time to do any better. I think I still stand a very good chance at getting top marks for the course, though.

Oh, yes, about the program we used for the drawn animations. It's called Toon Boom, and apparently a lot of professional animators use it (well, likely a more professional version, but still). I think Family Guy is animated using Toon Boom. In any case, a lot of tools that are unique to the program and a lot of amusing quirks that make working so much harder when you're only learning the program. I can see how it makes things easier once you know how to work it, though.

Anyway, I'll probably upload my animations to YouTube and post them at some point. If I can get over my embarrasment of not rivaling professionals.

So that's the first week of animation now. This week was pure theory.

We watched some documentaries on the history of moving pictures. Turns out animation was actually around before live action moving pictures. I was aware of the existence of magic lanterns, but I'd never thought of them as a form of animation, which they are.

We reviewed filmmaking basics, such as the 180 degree rule (there's an invisible line between two interacting characters. You may only shoot the scene from one side of that line. The camera may only occupy the other side if it is moved there during a tracking shot), shot composition, lighting, and transitions.

Then we watched some animated shorts. Steamboat Willie and some Wallace and Gromit, plus a few short cartoons geared towards really small kids.

As we left the class today, we were tasked with writing storyboards for our own animations. We will all be making two: One in stop motion and the other in 2D drawing.