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!
Young Bloggers
Traditions and Monkey Bread
As the day fades into the night on Christmas Eve, flour and laughter fills the kitchen. Hands reach over hands, kneading the soft dough, then rolling, rolling, rolling into balls for the next day. Raisins and sugar come next, and we nestle the balls, covered in the sugar, to rise for the night. The next morning we pop the bread into the oven and munch on it as we open presents, laughter filling the room yet again, this time accompanied by the warm smell of bread and the crinkle of wrapping paper. In this time of year, family traditions start to appear. Whether someone bakes a family recipe, goes on a certain trip, or just spends time with family, traditions show up left and right in the holiday season. Traditions are comforting. It is a consistent event that happens every year—something that will never change. For our family, making Monkey Bread has always been our Christmas tradition. My grandpa first started it when my mom was only old enough to toss flour around the kitchen. The tradition continued down through our family, all the way until I was helping my grandpa, and finally until my sister joined us. Of course our grandpa was watching over the whole production, running it all. The making of Monkey Bread has always been one of the highlights of the holidays for my family—something that makes us think in the middle of the summer, only five more months until we make Monkey Bread again! My grandpa has always been one of the main reasons I love the holiday season. His presence with us, hilariousness, and general love made the holiday season the best time of the year. Even after he died a couple of years ago, the holiday season has little slivers of him weaved into it. Tradition brings him back. When I cook Monkey Bread it feels like he is standing next to me, correcting my mistakes, gently teasing me, loving me through and through. My grandpa died only a couple of weeks before Christmas, and even though we were still going through the shock of his death, we hunkered down on Christmas Eve and made Monkey Bread. That day, it eased the pain that we had been going through. It showed us that it was okay, that life could go on, that his ideas and memories were still alive in us. Next time you experience a tradition, think back to what or who started it. Was it your great-great-great-great ancestors, your religion or culture, your close family, or you? What does this tradition mean to you? Why do you do it? Do you have a tradition that means something to you? If so, please leave a note about it in the comments. I would love to hear about your traditions. For me, tradition is sweet. It is a window back into good memories and into the lives of people I love. I can’t wait until it is time to make Monkey Bread again. Note from the editors: Here is a link to a Monkey Bread recipe from King Arthur Flour. This is a very good flour company and their recipes are trustworthy. However, you do not have to buy their flour to make this recipe. Any unbleached white flour will work as well. This bread is leavened with yeast. Instant yeast that is called for in the King Arthur recipe is kind of dried yeast that can be added directly to the flour. It doesn’t have to be mixed with water first. To be honest, most dried yeast these days will work if you just add it to the dough. However, if you buy a yeast that suggests first mixing it with water, then do that. Compensate for the water you add for the yeast by adding less liquid from the recipe.
Books vs. Video Games
Books are in many ways a different universe. They lead to imagination and adventure more than any other object or activity. Some might argue that this isn’t true. Well, what else could possibly be so imaginative? Back before electronic devices such as phones, computers, and television, there was no real entertainment besides books and the outdoors. This was not a bad thing; books can be educational, and they massively improve a reader’s vocabulary and language skills. But then video games came along. Video games became the ultimate entertainment, everybody loved them. But they began to be a problem. Less and less people were reading books, rather spending countless hours before their screens. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but eventually, almost everyone played video games or had some sort of console at home. Books were being left alone. Whereas books had some productivity, for they were educational and allowed readers to learn in a fun way, video games didn’t teach anything, and were just, to put it simply, a way to pass time. When one sits down to play a computer game, they are literally just sitting there, doing nothing, at least in real life. The game is designed to make you feel like you are a part of the adventure, the main character, the magic man. But really, you aren’t. You’re simply sitting on a couch, doing nothing. Some might argue, “well reading is the same thing, sitting down, doing nothing”. But that isn’t completely true. When you read, your brain takes in information and stores it in the back of your mind. It increases the level of imagination a reader has. Computer games, however, don’t. They make your imagination worse. Instead of thinking up a brilliant idea for a board game or an outdoor activity, all you can think of is the game, and nothing else seems to appear in your brain. So the real question is, books or video games; which is better? The answer is simple: books. Next time you sit down to immerse yourself in a video game, think about it. Are you really doing something productive??? Do you agree with Lukas? Let us know what you think in the comment section!
