Animation Blog

1.  The first animation I will talk about is the movie Avatar.  I know it is mostly motion capture, but I still consider it an animation.  However, the textures used in this movie were so unique and marvelous that it made everything come to life and made the movie the big hit it is.  The textures made it seem like everything was thought about and planned; the plants, trees, aliens, ships, everything was beautiful and unique because it forged a world that was not like any other previously made.

2.  The second animation I will talk about is called Legend of the Guardians: Howls of Gahoul.  This movie is just a beautiful animation altogether, but we are talking about textures here.  *Spoiler Alert*  The parts of this movie when the textures are at their finest is when the group of howls finally find the Guardians’ Tree and the final battle scene.  Again, like with avatar, they were creating a world, except this world was relatively the same to earth, but what made it popular was that it was being portrayed through an howl’s perspective.  This made all the textures all the more important because howls are going to perceive things more differently than humans will.  All the colors were amplified to make it look more majestic, magical and epic.

• Gum
• Dirt
• Robot Arms:  Claw arm, Flamethrower arm, Gun arm.
• Grass
• Telephone poles
• Buildings
• Street and Sidewalk (environment)
• Phone lines
• Misc. rocks, etc.
• Robot Model

Final Battle Scene:

This scene uses a lot of quick shots to portray action and chaos, as well as many upward shots of the huge dragon to portray its size and dominance of everything else.  Although they break the 180 degree rule, it is because they are switching back and forth between characters that are doing different things, not interacting.  Also, what makes me really enjoy this scene are the many following shots of Hiccup as he is riding Toothless, his dragon.  Those aerial following shots really give the audience a feel of the immensity of the environment and what the vikings of the movie are up against.  All in all it has very good cinematics that explain what is going on without the storytellers having to spell it out for you.

Continutity-  The consistency of concepts and storytelling that are being witnessed  by the viewer or audience.  An example would be characters  that keep their persona throughout the whole story and don’t change how they look.

Mise-en-scene-  Is the design aspect of a visual work of art, such as a movie, game, play, etc.

Composition-  The visual flow of a movie, picture, or installation, etc.  Composition is also how the viewer’s eye moves around what they are looking at.

2D Animatic

-This short animation is about a sidewalk cleaning robot, Hydro Scrub 4000.

-During a lazy Sunday afternoon, this little robot is seen cleaning a small sidewalk.

-After cleaning a couple of littered pieces of trash and seeming very bored, the robot comes across a chewed piece of gum stuck on the ground…and so began the most troubling cleanup for this robot.

-Thinking it is going to be another boring clean-up, the robot goes ahead and cleans, but it does not work the way the Hydro Scrub hoped.

-Surprised, the robot tries again and fails…again…

-Now, the robot is growing impatient and angry at the piece of gum, so he tries his hyper speed cleaning mode, which is partially spinning his scrubs extra fast and going over the trash with zooming speeds.

-When hyper speed mode fails, he tries brute force mode, which, strangely, is just yanking at the thing with a tiny claw from its tool compartment.  After yanking and failing, the robot switches to more fiery methods.

-He whips out his flamethrower from his tool compartment and torches the gum with no remorse.  However, this only makes it worse by having the gum melt solidly onto the sidewalk panel.

-Now mad with rage and fury the robot tries his last ditch effort to “clean” the sidewalk.  So he whips out his jackhammer from his tool compartment and goes to town on that sad little sidewalk panel.

-There is now smoke and debris flying around everywhere as the robot tears the sidewalk to shreds.

-When the madness and mayhem subside, the Hydro Scrub robot is revealed once more and this time he is hovering over a destroyed sidewalk panel WITH…no gum to be found.

-Pleased, the robot regains his pride and honor as a sidewalk cleaner and makes ready to clean some more trash, but…as he turns around to be on his merry way we can see remnants of the gum all over his back.

This is Billybob, a 40-year-old male who likes to go by the name “snow white”.  As a child, all Billybob ever wanted was to be in American Idol.  He loves to sing, so much that he makes a routine of going out in public every day at noon to sing, while wearing costumes.  Billybob is as determined as they come, never giving up, ignoring all those nasty comments from jerks, and always following his heart.  There is just one problem; American Idol has a strict no costumes policy.  Billybob can’t sing without his costumes on, he gets very nervous and has a very bad case of stage fright.  He does not like wearing normal clothes, it makes him extremely uncomfortable.  However, one day, an idea is given to him by a close friend.  Billybob can wear his costumes, but also will wear normal clothing over the costumes in order to be able to participate in American Idol.  It is, as Billybob would say, a win-win situation.  People see normally clothed Billybob and Billybob sings as beautifully costumed Billybob.  Eventually he does go on American Idol, sings for the judges, and went on to live his dream.  His new hit album, Thigh High Explorers, has been released to stores near you.

Character #1:  His name is Mr. Backface and he is Mr. Johnson’s largest pain in the a**. He loves to play pranks and mess around with Mr. Johnson’s life, preferably by making it as hard as possible.  He will make it seem like Mr. Johnson is insane and scary by screaming obscenities in public (like someone with tourettes).  However, the only thing that Mr. Backface cannot handle is when Mr. Smith wears hats.  That dark, cold abyss is enough to make him feel really uncomfortable.

Character #2:  This is Mr. Cuddles.  As cuddly and cute as he looks, he is actually quite crazy.  He collects all of these animal toys because of his desire to take over the world.  You see, Mr. Cuddles is determined to kill his owner, simply because of the name he gave him…Mr. Cuddles…  These toys have been technologically enhanced by Mr. Cuddles and are programmed to follow all of his orders.  First he will destroy his owner, then he will go after the rest of humanity.  Oh and did I mention he DOES NOT enjoy cute things one bit.  They make him want to throw up.

Character #3:  Mr. Cuddles owner.   Yeah, now you are rooting for Mr. Cuddles right?  His…Her…umm…Its name is BlooBloo Pop.  It lives in its own little fantasy world thinking that one day he will make the whole world “cute”.  Now, as a small child…umm…thing, it always wanted to be a superhero (hence the name, the outfit, the hair, the weirdness, and questionable appearance).  BlooBloo Pop always tries to dress Mr. Cuddles in cute little outfits as a start for his larger “cute” world goal.  However, Mr. Cuddles always retaliates with war, which is something BlooBloo Pop does not handle well and makes him uncomfortable.