Project 4. Simple Hand Drawn Action

Animation, 2009 Sarah Lawrence College Professor Robin Starbuck
Assignment #4 – Simple Action Hand Drawn
Assignment – 2 weeks Due: October 30

DOWNLOAD LINK


Time: 45 second - 24fps – 3 frames per drawing for a 45 second piece = 360 drawings

Student Group: Work alone

Assignment: Produce a simple action hand drawn animation

Parameters:

No sound

Hand drawn animation on bond paper with sharpie or 6B, 7B, 8B pencil

Design a simple action with a main character and an object. Your character will enter the film, carry or find an object, interact with this object and leave the screen. In addition you must (as all good animations do!) have a secondary action. So if your bird flies onto a birdbath, takes a bath and then flies off, you might have a cloud passing, or an insect flying, etc. Remember examples in class. Of course you can have as many simultaneous actions as you like. For your next project you will be asked to select a poem to work with. If you have something in mind already then you might use this project to create your first scene or A scene of the poem piece.



Objectives: This assignment is designed to allow you to learn the process of drawing for animation, You will learn to register your drawings on the pencil test stand, pace your animation for effective action, and use freeze frames and zoom where/if needed, You may include text in this short film but it is not required.



Process:

1 - Workshop with Scott Duce on October 16

2 - Select a style of peg bar and prepare 400 pieces of paper (or buy paper already punched)

3 - You will be working on a light board. You may work in 129/136 or check out a light board from the ER

4 - As you draw BE SURE to have your registration outline drawn on each paper. This will guarantee that all of your action will be inside this picture plane (and your peg bar won’t show on camera)

5 – Be sure to number your drawings outside the picture plane (small). Very important as your drawings WILL get mixed as you work.

6 – If you need to add in drawings you can label these 4a, 4b, 4c, and etc…

7 – You should shoot at 24 fps using 2 or 3 frames per image. Remember you can zoom in a little in final cut so if you want to hold on a single image for say 8-10 frames this will give you zoom capability in FCP. FCP blurs as you zoom in so you will have to keep this to a minimum.

8 – Be sure you have ENOUGH LIGHT – keep focus on manual focus and CHECK focus

9 – With the still cameras you will have much better resolution but you will NOT have preview (shutter must be open for preview). You can check out a video camera and use it on the Oxbury (wood) stand if you like. Or use the graph sheet I have left for you in 129.

10 – Add color if you like. Remember watercolor will wrinkle your paper. Colored pencils, pastels, acrylics are good.

11 – You will be starting Photoshop next week. You CAN hand color in Photoshop but remember you’ve got 360 drawings here, which is a monster project in Photoshop.

12 – You CAN do your animation by drawing and erasing (as per Kentridge)– which means you will use one piece of paper or several for several scenes. Again you’ve got no preview so you might want to use a video camera if you go this route.



Friday October 23rd see documentary on William Kentridge

Films:

Emily Dunn, Bird, George Griffin, Winsor McKay, etc.

The Foxhole Manifesto by Jeffrey McDaniel

From Animation Anthology

Words: Lev Yilmaz

Animation in the Home Studio

Hairy Birds