All language subtitles for Lesson01 - Animation Techniques

This first lesson

is just a quick introduction to the animation world!

I will quickly explain

what's the role of an animator

and the different animation techniques!

Be a character animator means...

bringing to life a fictional character!

This is enough for me to make this job awesome!

I mean you take an inanimate 3D mesh

and you add movement,

the expressions...

and this character starts to have a personality,

to have feelings and...

yeah, this is what I mean!

I always say that animation

is not about move a character...

but it's the capacity to bring it to life!

It's pretty easy to learn how to move a rig,

but what you should be able to do,

to became a good animator,

is to GIVE LIFE to this character!

As animators we move

and let's speak this characters,

in practice we control their movements like actors

and in this way we create the illusion of life!

So the animation is an illusion, yes...

but can be so real

that you became part of the character that you animated!

Putting in him something of yourself,

of your feelings and emotions,

of your style...

and these emotions and feelings

will be transferred to the users!

Let's start saying that...

to be a 3D animator you don't have to be a good drawer!

Of course, it's a plus if you are...

but it's really not necessary!

I have no great skills in drawing at all!

I mean... I draw a lot

but I can't say that I'm a good drawer!

So we must dispel this fake myth!

NO! You don't need to be a good drawer

to became a good 3D animator!

In my lesson I will talk about 3D animation,

but let's quickly talk about

all the main animation techniques!

Now let's see in details

how these different techniques work!

This technique was the most well known

and common used

starting from the beginning of this 20th century

until the advent of computer animation!

It's composed by a sequence of hand drawings

created on a series of pages!

All the drawings are made on an animation desk,

or light table!

A light table has a translucent surface

illuminated from behind with the light

collocated into the table!

On this surface you put the sequence of papers!

When you draw the animation,

thanks to the light inside the desk,

you can see in transparence the drawings

of the previous and following pages!

An animation is composed by a sequence of frames,

each frame is represented by a drawing!

The frame rate, the number of frames per second,

can change depending on the type of project:

in movies we usually have 24 frames per second,

for TV series and commercials... 25 frames per second,

and for videogames we usually have 30 or 60 frames!

I said that the computer animation is split in 2 categories:

3D and 2D!

The 3D is the animation of objects

created in a three-dimensional space!

Using a 3D software, like Maya or 3DMax,

we animate a 3D object!

We start from a mesh, the model,

that is created by the modeler,

On this mesh the rigger will create the skeleton,

the RIG,

the series of bones, joints and the selectable controls

that the animator will use to move the character!

Selecting and moving this controls

we create the motion!

For 2D animation we still intend something generated on the computer

but the images are be-dimensional!

The result is more close to the traditional animation!

Some software for this type of animation are:

Toon Boom, Anime Studio, Flash...

With this technique we physically
move a real object, a puppet!

Frame by frame, we pose the character

and we take a sequence of pictures!

For example is the favourite technique of Tim Burton,

that used it for all his animated movies!

The puppet usually has a structure inside,

like an iron skeleton,

that allows to easily pose him!

That was the very first lesson

and I'll wait for the next one!

Creation of a 3d project!