Week 11

The week 11 lessons were very interesting; I love learning about animation and how it has evolved over the years. Traditional animation seems very time consuming since you have to draw each layer. I liked making the connection that in animation programs a lot of the time you can see the layer underneath, just how you can see the previous paper when you are using a light box.  2 Dimensional animation is very similar to traditional, or cell animation, but you can create rigs to move certain body parts at a time instead of having to redraw everything for each frame. 3D is a lot more common nowadays, especially within Disney I would say. Sometimes I prefer 2D to 3D because I have noticed there is more shape variety in 2 dimensional animation. It was intriguing to hear about how motion graphics is characterized as not being character or story driven, and the focus on sound combining with motion. Stop motion is so impressive because of the amount of patience you need and how much attention to detail it takes. My favorite type of stop motion is claymation because of the eerie tone the movements. 

I really liked hearing about Studio Ghibli. I did a paper on Japanese animation, anime, and Studio Ghibli was a pioneer for many aspects of it. Hearing about the storytelling process for Pixar was very touching. I had never thought of Monster's Inc. as a story about a man becoming a father. The process of animation is so extensive even before you begin animation you have to storyboard everything. I took a film class in high school and always found storyboarding easier than actually shooting. I had trouble translating my drawings into video. 

Here is my storyboard for the animation project. I wanted to keep it simple, but I paid a lot of attention to have the legs move when I began animating.