Class 5

The animation starts off with a single character standing in a blank space. As the animation progresses, objects and architecture are drawn around him. Starting with a potted plant, it goes all the way to a full office with people talking. To draw this many detailed objects, but also have all be drawn in as the animation goes on must have made it taken so long. Not only that, but making everything drawn to the speed appropriate so that everything was drawn within the span of the song must have eaten up even more time with the motion editor. I'm amazed that flash can do this kind of thing, and I never would have though of trying it out.

Class 3 Animation Post

In this class we watched The Danish Poet. This film looks very much like a cartoon I would watch as a kid, or the drawing style I'd expect from a comic in the newspaper. It is very simple in how it is drawn. For instance, the main character Casper's hair is simply a brown shape with lines through it. It's this simplicity in how the characters and scenery and drawn that makes the animation easy and enjoyable to follow. The way the characters are drawn makes them more interesting and, in my opinion, helps make the characters more enjoyable.

Class 4

This animation uses stop animation. The first part of it has everyday objects forming a person's head. As two head's approach each other, they split apart into individual pieces and seem to almost battle each other. In one part it showed a book biting into a plate and shattering it again and again. What amazed me was the ability to make things seem like they were in midair despite being in stop animation. It must have taken them a while to plan and execute all of this.

The next animation we watched was by the Quay Brothers, titled The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer. The animation has one part where a pair of sticks, which seem to be used as a pair of arms, looks and turns a pamphlet around and opens the pamphlet up. When the pamphlet is open, some pins move around the table. Unless the table the animation was done on was soft enough, I can't imagine how they could have gotten the pins to stay upright on the table.

Class 2 Animation post

The first animation we watched was the adventures of Prince Achmed. The animation is supposedly the oldest surviving animation in existence, and this surprised me. The amount of detail both in the characters and the fluidity of their movements stuck out to me. A good example of this is the first scene, in which the magician creates the flying horse. The almost water like effects as the horse took shape is something I would expect from special effects of today, not with the techniques available back then.

The second animation we watched was The Bendito Machine. This has a style similar to the adventures of Prince Achmed, but it made with modern techniques. On thing that stood out most for me is the when the second machine was being assembled, parts rained from the sky and assembled into this complex structure. From what I've done with flash thus far, I can only imagine how long it took him to do that construction of the machine alone! It certainly is impressive what one can do with enough commitment.

Class 1 Videos

The first animation I watched was Gertie the dinosaur. The biggest thing I noticed in it was the repetitive movements used in between the actions that Gertie performed. For example, for the first 2 or 3 minutes, Gertie would go stand there and shift her two front feet up and down. The significance of this is the importance of idle movements, that give the character more life-likeness. Without the idle movement of shifting her feet, it would appear to be that there was no animation occurring between actions instructed to Gertie.

The second video I watched was How a Mosquito Works. The big thing I saw here was the use of shadows. First when the man was going through the door, and again when the mosquito was off balance on the man's face. The significance of shadows is that it adds to the realism of the cartoon by making it more 3 dimensional.