Animation Unit - Illinois State University



Animation Unit

Ed Stewart

eostewa@ilstu.edu

an·i·ma·tion n

2. the making of movies by filming a sequence of slightly varying drawings or models so that they appear to move and change when the sequence is shown

3. a movie or pictures consisting of a series of drawn, painted, or modeled scenes

an·i·mate v.

3. to present or record something in the form of a sequence of moving still images

5. to bring somebody or something to life

Animation in the sense we use it for this assignment is to take something inanimate and create the illusion that it can move (such as pieces of paper, coins, dolls, etc.). If you want to use humans you need to create the illusion that they can move in a way not typical or expected so that the effect can not be duplicated by having the person move in front of a video camera.

You can have a person sit in a chair and create the illusion that the chair is “driving” them around or have them sit on the floor and create the illusion that they are driving around. However, if you have them walking, dancing, picking things up, etc. in a normal manner you may as well shoot a video rather than one frame at a time because you are not animating.

You can write on a sheet of paper so that you do not see the pen and create the illusion that the words are magically appearing on the paper.

The process

You will need:

• A tripod, and a digital camera with an empty memory chip that will hold at least 300 pictures on the lowest setting.

• Most digital cameras will download easily but you want the files to be about 100 – 200k after you resize them. If the camera has a docking system you will need to connect the dock and install the program.

• You will need to take at least 300-400 images for a minimum of about 30 - 60 sec. Times vary depending on the length of time each image is on the screen.

• When you are ready to download your images you want to put them in a folder. If you have iPhoto you can access the images directly through iMovie. Each clip should be about :00:03 sec. This can be done either by manipulating the rabbit – turtle icon or by clicking on the window showing the time and typing the time.

• Allow about 2-4 hours to shoot and 2-4 hours for editing your animation. Times will vary depending on the complexity of your action and length of your video.

• You will be moving your objects in increments and taking pictures of the changes. If you have multiple objects make sure you move all objects a little with each change.

• DO NOT WAIT UNTIL THE WEEK THE PROJECT IS DUE TO DOWNLOAD YOUR IMAGES AND EDIT!!!!. Murphy has permanent residence in Technology. Your project will be late and you will receive a lowered grade.

PHOTOSHOP: “Batch Processing”

• After you have shot all of your photos you will have to download them to the desktop and reduce them to smaller files. iMovie recommends that the images be 640 pixels wide by 480 high. Rather than doing each of the images one at a time you should “Batch Process” them.

• First have a folder on the desktop with your images and then create another folder as a destination for your resized images IF you don’t want to loose the originals. If it doesn’t matter you can make you source folder your destination folder.

• To batch process the images create a folder with all of the original photos and a new folder in which you will put the resized images.

• You will next hit “Create New Action” (see diagram below) in the “Actions” window on the right side of the screen. If the Actions window is not on the desktop go to the pull down menus at the top of your screen to Window and scroll down to Action and click on it (there should be a checkmark by Action for it to be out.

• Create New Action is the icon that looks like a piece of paper with the bottom left corner folded up (See diagram—it is the 5th from the left). A dialogue box will pop up for you to title the action. I suggest “Batch Size” since that is what you are doing. After you title the action hit the Record button in the upper right hand side of the box. Note the record in the “Action” box will turn red.

• Open the folder with your images in it and drag the first image to the Photoshop icon on the dock so it opens up in Photoshop.

• Go to the pull down menu at the top of the screen in Photoshop and click on Image scroll down until you get to Image Size.

• You should have a new box on the screen with the pixel dimensions in dialogue boxes. Make sure the “Constrain proportions” checkbox on the bottom of the screen is checked and then set the Width to 640 pixels the height should automatically reset to 480 pixels.

• Save the newly sized image to your new folder (“save as” – find the folder you created for the resized photos – and select or simply save the image to its original folder), quit the image by clicking the red dot on the upper left corner of the image, and then click the Stop recording icon on the Action window to the right of the screen.

• Go to “File” on the pull down menu at the top of the screen and go down to “Automate” and select “Batch.”

• There are three sections in the Batch screen: “Play,” “Source,“ and “Destination.”

• In the “Play” section click on “Action” and scroll down to “Batch Size” which you created just before you recorded your actions.

• In the “Source” and Destination” sections, make sure the first bar is set on “Folder” (because you are having the program select from one folder and placing the sized images in another folder).

• In the “Source” section click “Choose” and select your source folder from the screen that appears and click “Choose” at the bottom of the screen.” Make sure that “Override action ’Open’ commands is checked (just under the “Choose” button in that section).

• In the “Destination” section click on “Choose” and select your destination folder (the folder on the desktop you created to place the newly sized images) and click on “choose” or hit “return.”

• Make sure “Override action ‘Save As’ commands” is checked, then click on OK on the top right hand of the Batch screen (or hit return).

• Your images will start automatically resizing.

• When it is finished check the destination folder to make sure the images are resized (they should be 100-200K rather than 1-2m.

iMovie

Getting Started

• Click on the iMovie icon.

• Go to “File” and in that pull down menu select “New Project”

• Name your project and save. This prevents you from accidentally overwriting someone else’s project.

• There is a menu on the bottom right with: Clips, Photos, Audio, Titles, Trans, Effects, and iDVD. Click on “photos.”

You can try to open the folder with the new resized images directly from the desktop, select “all” (click on one image then hold down the apple key and the “a” key at the same time) and drag them to the timeline. On occasion the images have been placed out of order.

You can place the resized images into a folder in iPhoto and then import them from iMovie.

Once you have the images imported onto the clip holder you can follow these stages

• Go to the top of the section and uncheck the “Ken Burns” effect. This effect creates a “pan” effect or zoom in/out movement within a still image.

• Set the image time to :00:03 (the lower the number, the smoother the movements. (You may see the Rabbit or Turtle icon in some versions on either side of a slide button).

• Click on the first slide and then press down the apple and “A” for all if you are going to place all images in the film. NOTE: The images are numbered in the camera and will appear in the order they were shot. If you shot any scenes out of order you will have to rearrange them which you can do by selecting sections from the clipboard or by arranging them while they are on the timeline.

• Drag the clips to the bar at the bottom (timeline) where it says, “drag clips here to build your portfolio.” This should set all of your clips for the same time and place all of your clips in sequence (if they were downloaded in sequence originally.

Sound

• Click on “Audio”

• You should see a selection of music to choose from iTunes. You may also load a CD from which to select music.

• Place the playhead (which is the small triangle at the top of the time line that moves as you play your movie) to the section where you want the music to start playing.

• Select the track by clicking on title

• Click ”Place at Playhead” or drag the tune to the sound track where you want it to start playing.

• You can alter volume by clicking on the line on the sound track. A little yellow ball or pushpin should appear and you can move that up or down.

• You can splice the sound track by placing the playhead where you want to cut the sound and hold down the Apple key while pressing “t” which will create a line in your track. Place your mouse on the side of the soundtrack you want to delete and click. That side should be dark and the other side light. When you hit the “Delete” key that portion of the music should disappear.

Titles

• Click on “Titles”

• Click on different types of titles and see what they look like on the small screen.

• When you find the type of title you want type in the title in the text box.

• Check “Over Black” if you do not want the title to appear over the video images.

• Drag the “T” icon to the place on the timeline where you want the titles to occur.

• You can select the font and the size from the menu bar above the text box. You can also select the text color.

Check and Save Your Movie. (you should do this frequently – obsessively during the process. Think Chicago voting – “early and often”)

• Press the left double arrow to take the play head to the beginning.

• Press play to see the movie.

• Remember to save your project at various times along the process.

• To download your movie to various formats go to “File”

• Select “Export” from there select: “To Camera” or “To Quick Time”

• If you are exporting “To Camera” make sure your video camera has a blank tape, set on VCR or Video, and plug into the computer with “Firewire.”

• If you are exporting to “Quick Time” make sure you have a CD in the computer.

• If you have iDVD put a DVD-R in your computer and click the iDVD icon under the clipboard.

NOTE:

Do not wait until Friday before the project is due to edit your animation. There are many things that will happen that you cannot anticipate (cross platform issues particularly) that will cause your project to be late. Expect technical difficulties and plan accordingly. Late work is late work and will be graded accordingly

Make sure that your subject matter and images are age and public school appropriate. You are not making these as college students but as responsible adult teacher-type persons.

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Action

Stop Record Play New Set New Action

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