Monday, September 3, 2012

Project 2 "Stop Motion Frame Animation"

★ ★ ★ 

DUE in class SEPTEMBER 10th.

1.) Walter Benjamin READING.
In addition to two critical QUESTIONS about reading posted to your blog.

2.) Your EXTERNAL DRIVE.
(Hopefully already acquired.)

3.) COMMENT on at least two of your peers' assignment entries
onto their blogs! You have an account to do so now!
You learn just as much from others, if not more, than yourself.

DUE in class SEPTEMBER 17th.

The assignment to be explained BELOW.

★ ★ ★ 

WORKSHOP TIMES

Sunday September 9th. 1-4 PM.
Sunday September 16th. 1-4 PM.
(Or by appointment and office hours.)

★ ★ ★ 

A S S I G N M E N T  2 .
"Stop Motion Frame Animation"
aka. SMFA aka. Something Mother Frickin' Awesome.


4:3 ratio examples of the
aesthetic that you will
likely encounter this time.
Food for imagination.





1. Original triptych example I posted.
(A very rushed interpretation of
Haiku poet Basho's famous poem)
"Old pond...
A frog leaps in.
Water's sound"

 



2. An animated version of one panel!
Using a special feature called "frame
animation" in Photoshop CS6.
(All PS beyond CS3 have this.)
Again, quite rushed. I expect
you to trounce this.



(By the way, to embed it like this...
Copy the embed code from Youtube/Vimeo/etc
and punch in place of the normal dimensions
tallscreen dimensions. This (for the blog)
measures to 320(w)x640(h).

(Also, I seem to have lost HD quality for
some reason online. That can change.)


So there you see it : You will be animating one (or more?) of your Triptych panels for the next assignment. Using the aforementioned 'frame animation' feature on Photoshop CS6. Ever hear of or just love programs such as Flash or After Effects? Photoshop is beginning to adapt to that field as well. Think of the frame animation feature on it as the very fundamentals of animation. If you don't know a thing about animation, the perfect place to start. If a little more seasoned, never a bad time to brush up on your basics.

Rules.
-Must be at LEAST 5-10 seconds long. If that short, make sure what is there is good quality.
-Export frame animation at 1080(w)x1920(h) resolution from Photoshop.
-Export as Quicktime file (No worries, we'll review these technicalities as they come.)

-***IN ADDITION*** ***FAQ*** (9/12)
Q : My file size (exported video) is incredibly large and takes far too long to upload to Youtube/Vimeo/etc. How may I remedy this?
A : One of us (Priscilla) found a solution to that. She had a longer video which ended up at 8-9 GB in size with the original specifications. She altered settings to be at "H.264" at Medium quality and it went much better! Then again, you can possibly up the quality if you have a shorter video. The given one was 52 seconds (impressive!). I will be annotating the blog post to reflect this issue.


-Must be uploaded to a video aggregate site (Youtube, Vimeo, etc) and embedded to your blog by SEPTEMBER 17th before class! Preferably embedded in the format I utilized above, but not necessary. See that [COMPOSE] [HTML] duo of buttons at the top left of editing Blogger?


Top left. Below orange "B".

You'll copy your embed code from the video site onto Blogger and paste it via [HTML] to get results. ALONG with a more abridged artist statement from your triptych assignment, seeing as conceptually, this-and-that will not be too distant. But talk about how the meaning changed WITH video!

Look at THIS artist when considering this for example purposes : http://www.tinkin.com
(I am in the process of inviting in a professional NYC based animation artist / old colleague of mine to speak to you as well about her work which I will show prior to.)

This is Photoshop CS6, and since it is in its rather infancy as a program, there are lesser tutorials about it. Yet, I'll reiterate that the frame animation feature has been available since CS3 so a tutorial you will find at latest CS5 will be of great use. HOWEVER, I took a screen cap and will explain base mechanics.

1. OPEN one of your three panel files in Photoshop!


Click to enlarge.

2. Look at the bottom left / bottom. There should be an option
for TIMELINE. Select it. There may be another option to
decipher between VIDEO and FRAME ANIMATION.
You want FRAME ANIMATION. Select that. You will
get at the bottom one 'frame' of something similar to above.

3. Think of animating this "literally" like a stop motion
animation in reality. You will tediously place each little
object in its place... Then take a snapshot! (Repped in
the program as a 'frame' or 'one of those boxes'.)
 Arrange one by one your layers throughout the timeline
that you want to be seen in that moment in time.


4. When done with a frame, click "paper" icon to make a
duplicate frame of the one you have before. OR... look for the
"fading circle" icon to TWEEN. Basically, edit a
second frame to be the end spot of your first frame...
Highlight both frames... select TWEEN... And add
however many frames needed to smoothly animate
in between the two! It takes not long to understand.

5. Recognize how long each frame is. Mine is 0.1 seconds a piece.
That means 10 frames per second. And 50 for 5 seconds, the MINIMUM
amount needed for the assignment. The "0.1" can be edited as well.

6. When ready to put online, go to FILE -> EXPORT -> RENDER VIDEO.


These are the settings you should need.

Most important is to figure out the basics of animation using Photoshop for the project. You will want to know how to place your layers in the frames, tweening, durations, movement, etc. Essentially the animation tool allows you to use your layers in an image to animate between them- it is really that simple - the complexity is in figuring out the various tools and using them effectively. Watch tutorials as many times as it takes to figure out how to animate something. Attend office hours and workshops as well. Have fun and get started immediately! If you put this off until the last minute *cough* you will regret it thoroughly.

★ ★ ★ 

TO REITERATE.

DUE in class SEPTEMBER 17th.
Your STOP MOTION FRAME ANIMATION.
In the parameters given.

And also... ON TIME.


★ ★ ★ 

WORKSHOP TIMES

Sunday September 9th. 1-4 PM.
Sunday September 16th. 1-4 PM.
(Or by appointment and office hours.)

★ ★ ★ 

No comments:

Post a Comment