Animation Practice

 

Frame By Frame Mastery: Is Animation Really That Hard?

    The Birth Of Animation

Animation is the process of bringing illustrations or inanimate objects to life through motion pictures. Animation techniques manipulate photos and drawings to give the illusion of movement and present a narrative to viewers on screen. Its history goes far beyond the history of film, as early animators over the course of centuries discovered ways of creating movies without cameras or recording technology. There was the first animated sequence captured on standard picture film: J. Stuart Blackton’s The Enchanted Drawing (1900), which used a live-action actor, props, and stop-motion techniques to create a two-minute comedic scene.

  Sudden Practice

The reason why I learned how to animate is an answer you won’t be expecting and it’s because we need to post 3 blogs with different topics and luckily, I came across with the idea of doing an animation. I’ve been exposed to a lot of animation because I enjoy watching anime and for sure all of us have seen at least one or two series in our lifetime. To be honest I've been wanting to do animations for a long time, it's just that I haven't found the motivation to actually learn about it. Now with the opportunity to do my schoolworks and find a new hobby, I’m slowly trying to step out of my comfort zone and finally start doing animations with the help of a few apps to utilize my animation journey as a beginner. The tool that I’ve discovered is Flipaclip, this app is free and accessible to people like me who are just starting on how to do animations, it has a lot of features layers, being able to add audio, customizable grid, onion skinning, and choosing your own frame rate that helps me to explore new ideas to further improve my skills. Right now, I’ve learned how to draw mouth movements of characters to match whatever they are saying.

    Skill Building Phase

So far I can say that animating is not that hard if you really put your heart into it. There will be challenges that you will face while trying to improve such as, 2D animation is very time consuming, it needs a lot of attention to make your animation smooth, and being consistent in your style can be difficult. Throughout all that, it is fun to see yourself improve after practicing for a while. Overall 2D animation is not for everyone since its not beginner friendly mainly because there's a lot of principles to master and not everyone is very good at arts.

    Knowledge Gained

To summarize everything, animation is not just a mere form of entertainment, it also serves as a form of communication through the whole world, where we convey our messages through our sketches and drawings. As technology advances, more and more people are making the internet a mainstream for everything, a shop, entertainment, school learning, and many more, so not only does it improve the way people draw with the use of technology, but it also helps us to have a better way of art preservation where it can be stored without any damages. Aside from entertainment, doing animations has a lot of benefits because you can make money out of it and teach people using your creativity.

Sources:

- A Guide to the History of Animation - 2024 - MasterClass. (2021, August 7). MasterClass. https://www.masterclass.com/articles/a-guide-to-the-history-of-animation

- Di Placido, D. (2024, February 20). The Mickey Mouse ‘Steamboat Willie’ Situation, Explained. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2024/01/04/the-steamboat-willie-mickey-mouse-situation-explained/?sh=722f141d2bc8

- (2021). lip sync chart I use. www.reddit.com.