Mary and the Witch's Flower Trailer

From Studio Ponoc (formed by former members of Studio Ghibli) and animated with OpenToonz!

Paperman

This Oscar winning animation is from Disney and director John Kahrs. This animation shows the power of compositing!

The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr Morris Lessmore

 

William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg collaborated to make this Oscar nominated animation. It utilizes both traditional and modern animation techniques and technologies. 

Hedgehog in the Fog

Hedgehog in the Fog is a beautiful cut paper animation by Yuriy Norshteyn. It is considered by some to be the best short animation ever made.

Thumbelina

Lotte Reiniger's cut-paper, silhouette animation. Talk about gorgeous!

Facial Expressions

Understanding Comics and Making Comics by Scott McCloud are both about comics but are actually very relevant to the animation artist as well. They are both in comic book format (way more fun than the typical textbook) and well worth the read.

Atormenta

This animation by Cesar Diaz is a little on the dark side, but is a beautiful example of sand animation.

The Old Man and the Sea

A stunning animation by Aleksandr Petrov using the paint on glass animation technique.

Lip-synching for Flash

Having your audio line up with the movement of your character is an important part of your animation. It is very distracting to the viewers of your animation if the sound is out of sync.

First set up your audio:

• Export your audio file from Audacity (File --> Export Audio --> Save As .AIFF file)
• Import your audio file to the Library (File --> Import --> Import to Library)
• Create an empty layer & label accordingly
• Drag Audio from Library to the empty layer
• With the audio layer selected, in properties change “loop” to “stream”

When Lip synching there are certain mouth shapes that match up with different sounds or phonemes. Some examples are posted below. Use these as guidelines but keep in mind there is nothing as helpful as watching your own face or the face of a friend make the mouth shape. You could use PhotoBooth on the Mac as a mirror.

There are several options on how to lip-sync in Flash:

• You can lip sync by drawing frame by frame - takes more time but is often the most natural looking

or

• You can create separate symbols of each mouth position & swap them 
• In each keyframe that you need a different mouth shape: Right-click on the symbol --> Swap Symbol
  
• Choose the symbol you want to use for that keyframe

or

• Make one mouth symbol - this could be inside a head or character symbol but could also be on its own:
• Click on the mouth symbol to enter edit mode
  
• Create a new keyframe inside the symbol for each mouth shape
• Obviously you need to actually change the shape on each keyframe
• Make sure you keep a list of which frame number represents which sound
  
• Leave the symbol edit mode to go back to your scene
  
• Click on your character/head/mouth symbol and click on properties --> Looping --> Change "Loop" to "Single Frame"





• In each keyframe you need to change the mouth position, you can change the frame number (the number to the right of "First:") in the properties panel as necessary

Keep in mind as you are syncing your audio, you often want to add the mouth shape into the frame before the sound actually starts. Good Luck!

Drawing From Observation

Objective: To improve your drawing skills by drawing from observation.

A lot of people draw what they "know" something looks like instead of looking closely to draw what is actually there.

The Bouncing Ball

In Animation, it is customary to practice animation concepts by creating an animation of a bouncing ball. The act of animating a bouncing ball teaches you about important animation skills:

• Frame rate
• Timing
• Arcs
• Squash and Stretch
• Volume/scale
• Keyframes
  

Basic Sound Editing in Audacity

Watch the following video to learn more about the tools available in Audacity and how to use them.

Audacity: Recording Audio for an Animation

Audacity is a free program designed to record audio. It's capabilities are similar to professional sound editing software and unlike Garageband, can be used on a Mac or PC. Watch the following Videos for basic instructions on recording in Audacity.

Welcome to the AB Digital Arts Blog!

Here you will find information about a variety of art concepts and techniques. Topics will include the elements of art and principles of design, digital art, animation, and basic drawing techniques including human proportions and perspective.