EX.2 The Pendalum Swing

Something ive never heard of, but apparently useful.

As you can see in the vimeo link, found in the final post of brief 1. I created a basic (very basic) looking wonderland themed clock and in the basic pendalum swing (diagram below) i positioned it and used stop motion to time it all together, giving it a second swing either way. 

I understand the reasoning of this exercise, but i didnt spend enough time on it, so it turned out very amtuer looking. So note to all f you beginning regardless of how much you understand a project, put the time and effort in and prove it. 

Another wee note to all of you beginners, like many people i highly recommend the animators survival guide. 

I read several animation books, and storyboarding and movie making technique etc books through this brief, and yes all books will have small notes of wisdom other than that they can be a chore to read and very confusing, the one holy grail of books for a beginner is most definitely the animators survival guide, found basically anywhere.

Dont let the thickness of this massive book put you off, its a remarkably easy read, from start to finish it would take you about a day, and its jammed packed full of diagrams and situations (examples below) explaining what animation is, how they are made. It stats you off with the basics, pendalum swing, inbetweens, an animators actual job description, and of course a history and reasoning on the golden age of animation. If you werent sure you want to be an animator, look at this book, and ill convince you one way or the other if animation is for you.

As a student i really hate it when you have to go through a recommended reading list, and they usually arent even remotely relateble to your given topic, or worse when the books tend to cost you an arm and a leg and all it will ever do is gather dust under your bed, maybe act as a prop to that wonky desk thats annoying you all semester, either way i wouldnt recommend a book if i was a hundred percent its the one everyone should read at some point. preferably at the start. 

I will refer to this book a few times in brief one, simpley because if you've read it you will realize, this first brief, basically follows the book chapter by chapter, finally a book that actually belongs on the recommended book list. 

 Above is the pendalum swing, as you can see thanks o gravity when you attach a ball to a string and swing it back and forth, it will dip. it doesnt go back and forth in a line, regardless if the keyframes are lined up, and inbetween should make the moveent look natural. So although this seems like a silly exercise, after all how many times will you be required to animate a swinging ball in your life, this actually is teaching you a fundamental lesson on inbetweens and making animations look as natural and realistic as possible, ragardless of what you are animating.

Ive mentioned inbetweens a few times, no im not going to go into much detail about it, since i find them extremely easy to comprehend, but above is a very basic diagram describing the point of an inbetween and a keyframe. extremes/keyframes and inbetweens, are terms used alot in animation, so get yourself familiar with them. get lost in the terminology of things and youll get lost entirely in a conversation come group work/presentation time.

As you can see from the above, a keyframe is the main action, its whats happening, the inbetweens is what makes the little man shown above walk from a to b and stop and pick up chalk in the middle. timing will be an issue in this kind of short also. It seems confusing but once you jump in there and start animating it will all make sense relatively quickly. Building skill to make it look the way you want, now that is a whole other problem. Basically the inbetweens is what makes the animtion come to life, and the more inbetweens you have the more realistic or detailed youre animation likely is.