Masaaki Yuasa is my favorite artist, He is a Japanese animation director, screenwriter, and producer. He is famous for his unique painting style, fantasy scenes and excellent story board. His fantasy world is characterised by his surreal style of drawing and his wild imagination, especially in his adaptation of the original work by Tomihiko Morimi, “The Great Series of Four-and-a-Half Stacked Myths”, in which he presents a cyclical and delusional story with twisted lines and rich colours in an exaggerated animation form. In his work, painting style has to give way to imagination and effect, bringing the viewer a unique view of the world.
This week we started the second rotation class: photographic. Here are the study summaries for October 11and 12.
11/10/2021
First of all, we have a basic understanding of four visual elements: shape, size, color, texture. Then our teacher used a photo to show us how to analyse a photo from different angles. Like: perspective, tension, frame cropping, compression, repeating elements, the conception of positive/negative space. and the contrasting of the four elements. After that, we learn about the balance of a picture. The weight of a picture is decided to the image’s property, (like the color, dark or light, and the size, also the split angle, etc.) There is always a gravity point of a whole picture.
Then we learn about how to use Photoshop to processing pictures. The first day assignment is try to take ten photos, then choose three of them to write a short visual analysis. My final work is in this picture.
12/10/2021
We have continued to learn how to use PS. The teacher taught us how to use the curves function to adjust the brightness, saturation and contrast of the image. And the assignment for today is taking photos and thinking of the design elements like dynamic, tension, negative space, then pick 3 ones you like and use Photoshop to put them together to show a message. My Making process and the final work is in this picture. And there is a link to pdf.
We use the light box for hand-drawing ,and learnt two ways to make animation.
Straight ahead :Straight ahead is a method of animation where you draw one frame after the next using the previous frames as your reference. This method is used to show coherent change ,it’s like flipping through a corner of a textbook in primary school and drawing animation page by page. The disadvantage is that it can easily run away from the animator in terms of the continuity. Things tend to grow and shrink as scales and volumes change over time. It is also difficult to pre-plan the specific timing of actions and gestures.
Pose to pose :The “key frame” method. Draw the key pose first, then use dichotomy method to make up the middle frame. The advantage of this method is that you can plan the action upfront so you know exactly what is happening and when. It works a bit like storyboard, which aims to connect the key storyline. The disadvantage is that you lose the creative flow and therefore the action can feel a little choppy and predictable.
Straight ahead :Take two words from the internet and use them as inspiration and draw a two-second animation. I was given two random words :Anatomy and floral. So I drew an animation of a flower breaking down.
Pose to pose :Draw 3 key facial expressions or poses for one simply drawn character head then create all of the breakdowns and in-betweens in order to move the character’s face from one to the next.(add link)
Timing and spacing :Timing is where the action is timed out. This ability comes with both experience and through observation. Spacing is how close or far apart the object is from frame to frame. To better understand timing and spacing, We use the movement of the ball to visualize. In the arc shape of the ball’s movement, The faster the bouncing ball, the wider its spacing. And the more sparse the distance between the balls. The spacing means the variation of sparseness and density in ball’s arc shape. In order to understand this better, we practiced the movement of a ball with it’s own designed arcs.
Ease out and ease in :Including the principle of “The more dense the number of frames on the time line ,the slower the animation effect will be expressed.” We can create ease out and ease in to play a buffer role.
For the assignment ,I designed a debating character. I use a girl’s image with a strong character ,and use the following animation chart to work out my in-betweens.
Click the download link below to view the text above.
