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Marcotonio-desu โ Discuss
Published: 2012-07-11 11:23:05 +0000 UTC; Views: 1016; Favourites: 17; Downloads: 9
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Seriously, guys, it's a matter of effort, not technique."Learning the Difference" series strikes again!
Previous: [link]
Obs: dA is making me lie, I didn't use flash to make this, but Toonboom.
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Comments: 41
Did I finally demonstrate that I know the difference?
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Aaaactually, I had seen Todd blinking and I thought "Wow, that guy is nuts, re-drawing the head for every eye step. But it's such a breath of fresh air to see someone doing it the hard way..."
But NOW, Eva has become a static-blinking automation! Shame on you, using such daemonic digital technology to tarnish your craft!
Heh, but that's okay, blinking characters are not what I targeted on my critique, but rather people submitting endless pieces of blinking characters to the Animation groups, when it has so little animation, up to the extreme of being 2 frames. It's uninteresting from the perspective of someone subscribed to an animation group.
One thing many animators do and you could experiment with is drawing, when a character is not moving, 3 times the pose, and loop through the 3, to add a bit of flickering to the image.
That really depends on the style of what you're animating, though.
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Yep. I'm definitely nuts. 
But I wanted to try three completely different methods of animating blinking, and it was convenient with 3 OCs, each clearly best suited for one of them. So that's why Eva became an automation! 
And then Dappy was just weird... but he turned out surprisingly well.
I might try that animating thing... There are a lot of things I want to animate.
I want to do walk cycles for all four of my main OCs, with a "high energy" walk and a "low energy" walk for each of them, plus I want to animate that fight scene from Todd VS The Monsters. Properly.
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I dunno... I'd rather see someone blinking like on the left, then on the right
So... is this animation or not animation?
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Hehehe, I have to agree with you, I like to live.
About your animation, yeah, we can see you did more than erasing the eyes and putting a straight line in place to call a blink; and you fully animated the motion, not just put two poses in a "teleporting" way. xD
Many props for doing it traditionally and colored above all! \รต\รต
That's something to call "my first animation".
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Thanks. I wanted the animation to be even better, and I had thought there was a computer program that could blend 2 similar images together to make an intermediate frame so I could smooth out the animation without drawing additional frames, but from what I hear there isn't.
Is there a program like that I could have used now?
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When you make everything digitally, there is a workaround. For example, if you draw a circle in Flash, then make it a square and tell the software to "interpolate" it, there will be an automatic calculation of the lines and the program will create inbetweens frames from circle to square, but in a very straightforward way. It looks kinda stiff, so you have to put more custom shapes to reach a more organic feeling.
The more frames you actually draw, the less the interpolations will look fake (and the less interpolations will be needed), so there's no remedy other than drawing. xD
3D animation consists totally of this, you first animate only key positions, like teleports, then you put the program to make a slide between the positions. Then you add the leg movements. Then you add more points between the starting/finishing spot, etc. A "perfect" animation has 24 frames per second, but most non-blockbusters are made at 12. Less than this and it starts to get silly.
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I guess I had the silly idea I could, like, interpolate traditional frames, but at least I knew that the more frames I drew myself, the less crappy the computer's job would look. But I swear I heard of a program that animators were using in the early 90s to make a computer draw intermediate frames in traditional drawings...
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Well, the only way I see this happening would be by... let's say we have frame A and B and want to create a frame C between them.
You take A as base, put B at 50% opacity above A and ta-dah, it's not exactly a inbetween frame of movement, but it gives a smoother feeling of transition between the frames.
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That's exactly what I didn't want to do. Like I see those morphing programs on the internet, and I want something like that. Something that can take two pictures and blend them gradually from one to the other, and I want to use that kind of thing to make in-between frames, but the software was cumbersome, and usually crashed when I tried to use it... And it would apply special effects I didn't want. *sigh*
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Ohhh now I get it. Well, this is a very inaccurate algorythm and will make the inbetween like it was a blob/cauldron of colors, very unnatural. A good example, again using flash, but appliable in parts for scanned/filmed frames:
[link]
As you can see, it's mathematical, so no respect for realistic movement or even solidness is not granted. And that being a vector drawing, the tweening tend to be more precise than analogical material.
You should give a try nonetheless, I'd recommend video editing softwares but I didn't get a grip of them yet. :C
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Thanks for providing the link. That's what I want to do, but of course we know I won't be using Flash. But it was nice of you to show it to me, and link directly to a part of the video of importance.
I think I'll try finding an appropriate video editor and see if I can do it.
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The first one is technically animation... even if its not as impressive.
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Yeah, and we can call a baby's scribbles drawings. But it is still terrible. xD
But I believe we are better than babies and can step forth, make it better with some effort. I mean, babies can't even walk! D:
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Yes, I never denied that. The quality of something is a differant subject than what that something exactly is ^^
I certainly do agree we can do far much more than... babies and stuff and it is more appropriate to move forward~
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Both are... How can the second not be animation for anyone if the first is. !!
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GLAD TO HELP!
Haha, for real, even if it's through a guilt boost.
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I have found AzucChan again on the deviantART site.
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It's like when found me HERE ! Caught! I was!
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OMG XD wtf the pic
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Hohoho, while some people I've seen in the animation group get inspired by dropping objects in their own feet, I get inspired by getting bored with those lots of shameless blinking.
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Some people are just hobbyists and do the best they can/don't strive for technique or chose more limited methods(can work sometimes). Others are more ambitious like the examples you gave. In the end people do what they want. To each his own.
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Only thing is it doesn't work. In my opinion, it's belittling animation. Not saying it's not practicable, but certainly an effortless gimmick can't be put side to side with actually animated.
As I said, not a matter of technique, but getting your hands dirty. I did this in 4 hours with no knowledge on the program, which I was just testing.
Nothing is 100% subjective, as I state in my signature.
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But is anyone really trying to belittle animation if they are TRYING it? Maybe that person that just does 2 frames, gets feedback and tries to become more ambitious and maybe they don't. Can't be upset with that. It happens. 4 hours of you getting your hands dirty could be the equivalent of those few frames to another person. In a way you belittle their effort by comparing them to yourself and others who are a little more daring, no? Heck I started out animating little two frame flipbooks on note paper and i thought it was amazing. Some people don't get past that stage of being comfortable :/ Also just want to say I'm in no way trying to make you sound bad, I'm just trying to understand your perspective. You seem like a really ambitious person which I respect as a fellow animator myself. I just like talking to people about these kind of things.
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Oh, those good ol' flipbooks. xD
My notebooks had those in almost every page.
I'm definitely trying to push people to try harder in here, and by no means offend, just show how thinking greater might maximize their works. Thing is, anybody making blinking eyes IS capable of more, there are lots of people submitting really well done works to our groups galleries, but the "animation" consists of two~three frames of blinking eyes. Anybody capable of drawing well enough and making a gif can explode into an infinity of creativity. What I see, though, is people just put a little movement to make a gimmick and have a reason to call views: "Click, me, I'm animated!". Lies. Animation is about giving soul, not trapping viewers with cheap material. :c
And don't worry, I'm not the kind of person to get irritated by a discussion or only willing to read agreeing posts. That's why I started this one in the first place.
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People should know you're not the kind of person who gets irritated by discussion and that is only willing to read agreeing posts by reading your sweet signature... And I shouldn't even be in this conversation, should I? ... *returns to work now, for real*
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gotcha!lol Thanks for not raging, good to know there ARE mature people on the net.
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The eye is a minor detail. When sketching out a scene I usually have simplified eyes that just make a place on the face.
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For a sketch and a scene, there is no shame on that. My point is that displaying a simple blinking as the "animation" part breaks the meaning of it.
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Yeah I guess so. Even I didn't use something like that when I was a complete noob. I had dun-dun-dun Inbetweens.
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I agree with your point here. 2 frame 'animation' is more like just key frames. Takes the effort to slot in the inbetweens before the thing is called a proper animation.
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Yeah, and even then it's pretty boring and could have lots of extra movement, blinking eyes seem like just an excuse to call still portraits animations. THESE [link] are what blinking eyes should convey.
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I could see this if the only thing being animated is an eye but the blink on the left is animation, especially if you have other moving parts. It also really depends on the character. While an exaggerated blink may be right for some, it might not fit for others. Certain situations call for certain things.
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"if you have other moving parts"
That's the point. If it's simply an eye doing 2 frame movements, not animation. WHERE'S THE SOUL?
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Oh, I see what you mean.
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I think the 'eye' thing isn't the point. I mean, nobody's eyes are going to explode into weird shapes like that, either. If there's much meaning at all, it seems to be that animation should eventually be about creativity and figuring out how to make something look and feel as natural as possible instead of slapping mostly-related pictures together and tossing it up on dA for all to see. Even one or two more well-placed frames would make the eye on the left feel more like an actual blink. If you can put two frames together of something so simple, you can do four.
Tho you're right, too; sometimes it's a matter of inexperience and therefore feeling like OMG I DID IT. And when it's a matter of style, there's not much to be said about any "art," no matter who hates it..
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