Animation and Animation techniques

[Shanethefilmmaker]

One of the things I noticed in this section was, you talked a lot about art and images, but never about animation or animation techniques. So I thought I'd start the topic on it.  One of my specialties, is animation. I use it to make music videos for my work mostly, for promotional purposes. 

 

My best example being this series. 

A Hero's Struggle Music Video Series

A dark comedic parody of the Superhero Genre. 

 

What I used to animate was simple, but very time consuming:

The Software was what follows.

Adobe Photoshop 7.0 (You can use newer, but that's my preference.)

Adobe Image Ready 7.0

Google Sketchup (Or any drawing software.)

Conversion Software specifically from Gif to WMV or other video softwar.

Window's Movie Maker. (Or any video editing software)

 

The scenery is the easiest as you just draw whatever fully.  I chose a cityscape because it was the easiest.  If you wanted to do damage, all you had do would be to erase a section and add cracks or burns depending on the damage.

 

The people on the other hand are the most difficult.  To save time I made templates in sketchup.  Pre-detrmined movements on a blank model, which I later added detail to, for individual characters.

I would then through photoshop put each individual movement apart from one and other through layer techniques. When I was done what I needed, I would put it in Image Ready. I make a gif of what I wanted to animate, save it then convert it so I can work on it in editing. Once I pieced things together, I put my music on and bingo, instant music video.

 

Let me know if you all also have your own techniques I'm curious to know.

[ImKeN]

Fascinating stuff. I'm also curious about this art form even though I probably wouldn't create such lengthy ones myself: music already takes up a lot of my free time.

 

Thanks for sharing, I 'liked' your video!

 

Ken