Dylan Gibson

Why Animation is Important

Animation, while often thought of as a more or less modern medium, has been being used in different forms since 1906! Throughout the last century, we have used it to entertain, as propaganda, and to tell stories that invoke emotion. The earliest known animated film was made in France in 1906, titled Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, and was made from chalk pictures. Since then, other small animations were made, but the first animated cartoon with synchronized was made by Walt Disney in 1928, called Steamboat Willie. Many cartoons like this followed, and they were used to entertain viewers with gags and charades of drawn characters. Nine years later, Disney released the first full-length future film, Snow White. And in 1993, software for 3D animation was created. All of these events lead up to the animation and films we see today. From Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse to live action movies with CGI, to popular YouTube animators like the animator Jaiden Animations, animation has become a popular form of storytelling that has helped shape the modern world. Animation is important because it makes us be able to tell stories and communicate emotions and ideas in a unique, easy-to-perceive way that both small children and adults can understand. Animation has helped connect people throughout the world in a way that sometimes writing and live-action films cannot. Today, anyone can pick up a drawing tablet and show their ideas to the world. Drawn figures can be funny, or make something sad or serious have a playful, less intimidating feel to it to make the viewer feel more comfortable. Other times, it allows people to be united by a single passion, such as a fandom, and work on huge projects (called MAPs, which stands for multi animator project) about their interest to make something as high-quality as a professional film, such as The Five Giants [COMPLETE Warrior Cats M.A.P.], regardless of  what beliefs and opinions differ. Often, it has simply served as a way to make a heartwarming story that makes you think. Through live-action movies, people can form biases based on appearance and real-life personality of an actor playing a character. But as an animated character, the character feels like their own being. No matter what the exact use, animation is one of the most powerful creative tool we have, and we should continue to use it as a form of uniting people, no matter their beliefs, biases, or interests.

Software Review: Toon Boom Harmony

What it is: Toon Boom Harmony is a popular animating software that many professional animators use in films and animated series. It is also a software that I use frequently. Pros: Toon Boom has a LOT of complicated, amazing features!! One example is a tool allowing you to be able to animate something across a screen without needing to animate the cycle over and over again.  All you need to do is animate a cycle once, and then apply a tool to it that will make the animated figure appear to move across the screen! Another nice feature is how easy the software is to learn.  After just watching a tutorial like the one below, almost every other tool, so long as you have some animation experience, comes naturally to use! You also have many options when it comes to making your brush lines look different. You can have them look like a pencil, chalk, square, or pen! There are so many amazing other features in this program that I couldn’t even BEGIN to cover! Cons: Due to its many features, Toon Boom is also a very complicated program. Glitches occur if your computer software is not updated enough, and if your file’s name has spaces in it, it can also glitch out a bit. In addition, if you have not animated on too many other programs, you may have a hard time understanding the controls. One last con is that this software can cost from $180 to $876 a year, depending on how advanced the model is. My overall opinion: I think that if you have a fair amount of prior animation experience and can afford the high cost of the software, Toon Boom Harmony is definitely worth buying! If you want to buy it, you can find the manufacturer’s website by searching on the name of the software. There are a number of free video tutorials at the site, as well.

The Basics of Animation: Walk Cycle

Animation is a complicated activity. It may look easy enough, but it’s actually not all that simple. It takes many steps to create even the most simple of animations. In this blog entry, I will be showing how to make a walk cycle, which is a character walking in a loop, in three steps. –Editors Note: The examples that are included here are posted to YouTube. Be sure you have autoplay turned off so that the examples are not immediately followed by someone else’s videos. Step 1: Creating basic shapes The way you always start off any animation is by animating basic shapes. You would start out with shapes like circles, squares, and ovals. However, you NEED to have these shapes very rough and sketchy looking, so they are easy to draw over. Make several drawings (frames) that are only a tiny bit different from each other. The walk cycle linked below is an example of this that I made about a year ago. Walk cycle 1 Step 2: Lineart and Shadow Lineart is just going over the shapes that you made previously so they pop out, and the animation looks much better. Adding shadows is something that some animators do at the same time as lineart, and others do at the very end. I choose to usually do the shadows at this point, as they make the characters more realistic. This next link is this second step that I have animated. Walk cycle 2 Step 3: Coloring Coloring is the final basic animation step. This obviously makes a character completely pop from a background, and just makes the animation more clean and beautiful. I have included the final product in the following animation. Walk cycle 3   Congratulations! You just made an animation!!! Go give yourself a pat on the back and a doughnut for your hard work. Animation isn’t easy, but it’s all worth it! If anything, you come out of animating with the knowledge of what full-time animators who create cartoons and movies have to go through. This particular animation was created through an app available on iPhones and iPads called Framecast. It’s a good program for short animations, and is great if you’re just trying to learn how to animate. I hope you have a great day and hopefully try out animation yourself!