12 Basic Principles of Animation

Squash and Stretch

Mercury on the PSP is a good example of Squash and stretch, the player controls a blob of liquid mercury and must solve puzzle's by navigating over tilting surfaces, The Mercury shows realistic movement, it squashes and stretches when pushed into a corner and contorts it's shape.

Anticipation

Dead Space is a an example of bad representation of 'anticipation'; Anticipation is an action performed prior to the 'main' action, in order to prepare the audience for what the character is about to do, but in Dead Space, when aiming with the weapons, there is no anticipation of transition, the gun essentially clips into the players hands, and Isaac (the game's protagonist) suddenly takes up his aiming stance without any preparation.

Staging

In Journey, the player starts the game sitting in the sand, as they move the joystick the character begins to move, the player is naturally drawn up a sand by some eye-catching stone rods in the ground, once the player reaches the top of the dune, the camera pans and the players focus is drawn to a mountain emitting light in the background, this instantly sets up the objective of the game without using text or cut-scenes.

Straight Ahead Action & Pose to Pose

Straight ahead action and pose to pose are both different techniques in animation, using the straight ahead action method the animator starts from point A and draws wantonly frame after frame, pose to pose is where an animation maps out poses and fills in the missing frames after ward, Typically in video games Straight ahead action is never used as it wouldn't work within the context.

Follow Through and Overlapping Action

Assassins Creed lll (or any of the Assassins Creed games in general) are a great example of overlapping action, since the characters in the game are usually wearing multiple layers of clothing of varying weight, so you get a real sense of all the different materials weighing down on the Conor's legs and reacting to Conor's movements, When he is running for example, the material is sent into the air as it collides with his legs and is swept back by the wind and each material is affected slightly differently.

Slow in and Slow Out

I couldn't really show exampled of this using still images, but a game that makes good use of the 'slow in and slow out' principle is Red Dead Redemption, in Red Dead Redemption, when the player pushes forward on the joystick Marston (The games protagonist) takes a second to build up speed, even just to make it up to the slowest walking speed, and when the player tries to stop while running, Martson will use his lean back on feet and use his body weight to slow himself to a halt, rather than just stopping on the spot. 

Arcs

 There isn't much to say about Arcs, arcs are the effect of gravity and pivot points on the movement of an object, in the case of Super Mario ll (or any game with the ability to jump) Mario jumps and follows an arc, as he is bough back to the ground by gravity.

Secondary Action

In Dead Space in one of the animations for final Boss, The Boss grabs Isaac and pulls him to the ground, the primary animation is that of Isaac being grabbed and pulled into the air by the monster, but Isaac doesn't just let the monster take him without a fight, he screams, shakes his head in despair and struggles, even as the monster drags him into the air he desperately claws at the ground.

Secondary Action can be used to add some extra character and context to a motion, for example, the monster could have just gabbed Isaac and pulled him into the air, but adding Isaac's struggle adds an element of desperation and adds to the feeling of urgency and horror.

Timing

Timing is about the number of frames it takes to perform a certain action, it can be used to a dramatic effect.

Exaggeration 

Exaggeration is used in Crash Bandicoot when Crash performs in spin attack. When crash performs his spin attack his body becomes an almost unrecognisable blur, this creates an impression of speed and power, which makes the attack feel more effective than if his body were simply to spin at a realistic rate and without exaggerated forms.

Solid Drawing

Solid drawing is the act of drawing a character or object in an animation, and taking into account the object as a 3D form, if a character turns around and their proportions change as a result of the animator not properly taking into account how the character looks from all sides, this would be a poor example of solid drawing, solid drawing is usually achieved by creating a character sheet beforehand and using a pose to pose method of animation.

Solid drawing is never really an issue within video games as they tend to use 3D models which are always consistent from every angle, or sprites, which are limited in number and easy to quality assure.

Appeal

Appeal is how a character appeals to an audience, an appealing character doesn't necessarily need to be a character that the player can sympathise with, but it can be a horrific monster, but as long as it evokes some kind of emotional response, the character can generally considered to have 'appeal'

Analysing the Composition in Two Paintings

Ivan the Terrible And His Son Ivan - Ilya Repin

Source: 

http://faculty.risd.edu/evarshav/RepinIvanGrozny&HisSon.jpg

This painting, whether intentional or not seems to use the 'The Cross' composition, the top half, or the back or the room is very dark while the bottom of the image, at the front of the room is very well lit with very striking red no-less, the contras is quite extreme; there is almost no light in the top half and almost no shadow in the bottom half.

Splitting the image in half vertically is Ivan the Terrible and his Son injured in his arms, the composition serves to aim attention direct to the urgent scenario happening right in the centre, they are almost framed in a diamond shape too.

Here I just drew lines showing the cross and the surrounding diamond, I also used red arrows to illustrate how the use of this composition forces the viewers attention on Ivan and Ivan in the middle.

Moby Dick - Jon Foster

Source:

http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTuQyffjEDD2EGM1wynn8bzgFr_IwhHUFJE1Com6HXclG0Wwgo6pw&t=1

This painting also uses 'the cross' composition technique, but in a less forceful way, it seems like it's used mostly to break up the painting the way the lighting changed from the top half of the painting to the bottom is very unnatural and stylised, The horizontal break in this painting is very subtle where-as the vertical line is extremely obvious, the figure stands tall and straight right through the middle of the image, but the horizontal line is created by the harpoon, the rope as it wraps near near the middle and serves almost to guide your eyes up and down the image.

Again I just marked on the cross, and I also noticed that the diamond shape was present again, it could be a recurring feature of paintings that follow 'the cross' composition, I also marked in red where I thought that the cross and diamond led the eyes when initially viewing the painting.

Final/Environment Image

My final image is sort of an environment art, it shows the Barbary pirates in a British style ship (with the red flag) infiltrating the British in order to raid their ships.

Szalja Model Sheet

Finished my model, sheet, he should have a rat companion but I didn't include it here, not much to say really, just got to move on and get everything else finished.

Synopsis

Britain has a peace treaty with North Africa preventing pirates from the area raiding their ships, but on the 21^st of October 1805, Szalja Bouzid and a crew of Barbary pirates would use the impending Battle of Trafalgar as a distraction to raid British ships hopefully unnoticed.

While travelling amongst with the British on their way to Cape Trafalgar they experience an unexpected hull breach and are forced to take refuge on a nearby island, while on the island they meet a woman with jet-black skin and hair, she claims to be a witch, she tips them off to a cave just north-east of their location. The cave contains three chests full of Spanish gold, guarded by three small men, each with eyes larger than the last. Szalja must distract the men in order to take the money, using a golden spoon given to him by the witch, she would let him keep all of the gold that he could hold on the condition that he give her the one silver coin in the largest chest.

Of course, Szalja is a pirate, he never returns to the witch’s island. Upon rubbing the silver coin he finds that he can summon one of the small men on command. He uses his newly acquired friends to search the British ships while they are busy, to find out which one holds the most valuable loot, he acquires a target, he discovers that the Captain of that ship is holding a very valuable necklace, an equally valuable ring and a particularly important looking sword. By the time Szalja finds a way to steal these items, the witch had already begun to put an end to his scheme, she had presently made an deal with the ship’s Captain, telling him that Szalja had lots of Spanish gold and one Silver coin, that if he could return the silver coin, he is free to keep all the gold that he can find.

Szalja obliterates the Captain and his entire crew with the help of his own, after stealing the necklace, the ring and the Captains ornamental sword, he returns to the witch’s island, and ends her life with her late-friend, the Captain’s cutlass. 

Model Sheet Progress.

This first image was originally supposed to go along with the Model Sheet as a thee-quarter view but when I actually started my front-view, I changed a few things that I was unhappy about.

Here is the front view of the actual model sheet, a few things have been changed, most importantly I think, the turban, I felt that the original turban was a little unrealistic and too stylised for what I was going for, I removed the bow and arrow and instead gave him a sword although it is rather small at the moment, I may need to change that, I forgot his rat companion, but he will still be included.

Turban decoration

Playing around with the idea of adding some decoration to the turban, since I forgot the feather from the iteration design I kind of like it but I'll wait until I have the whole three quarter view finished before I decided for sure whether to keep it.