Gamification

Games have become a large part of media in this generation. As play has become such an important part of most of our live through various ways such as games, sport, thrill-seeking, etc.
So let's start with the ways in which we play.

Animation Research (Annotated Examples)

This post will show all my examples of good practice I have found during my research for all my animations.

Animation: What's He Building In There?

Crowdsourcing

Participatory Culture, the consumers are no longer just the viewers of content, but also creators. Previously we were a Read-Only culture, viewing the media but lacking the capability and availability to also write this media. The internet has rapidly advanced us into a Read/Write culture in which many fans also produce their own content based on their favourite medias. Consumers are now Prosumers.

Transmedia

Transmedia Storytelling is telling a story, or multiple stories, that are not contained in one single medium. These stories can span over, TV, websites, blogs and even merge into the real world in the form of ARGs (Alternate Reality Games).
This method creates multiple points of entry for audiences, while also creating a diverse world that fans will be more likely to engage with.

Animation: Kinetic Typography

Paratexts

Paratexts is the concept of anything that may accompany the main text of a piece of media, whether it be industry or audience created. Paratexts have a great influence of our understanding over the main text before we are able to even see it and can be a very powerful tool in advertising.

Animation: Stop-Motion

Cinema of Attraction

"What precisely is the cinema of attraction? First it is a cinema that bases itself on the quality that Leger celebrated: its ability to show something."

Early cinema is where to look at when we are talking about "The Cinema of Attraction"
This was a time in which film was still a mainly unexplored medium. Filmmakers would experiment in various ways that they could use this new media. Due to this, many films were based more around the methods and effects used to create the scenes, rather than a narrative story. Any story element to the films were often just used as an excuse to tie-in all the effects used in the movie.

Animation: Walk Cycle

Defining Animation

Defining animation has only become more difficult as it has evolved. One of the first definitions applied to animation was that of Thomas Hobbes in 1681: "That expression which makes us seem to see things before our eyes"

Improved Walk Cycle

Bouncing Ball

Wolf Run Cycle

Principles of Traditional Animation applied to 3D Computer Animation

This reading is about the development of animation from 2D hand-drawn animation to the current 3D computer-based animation. The introduction of computer assisted animation initially helped in traditional methods such as Storyboarding, Keyframe Animations, Inbetweening, Scan/Paint and Multipane Backgrounds. As research into computer animation continued, image rendering became more prominent than animation itself, this lead to many traditional techniques not being applied to these new methods. This 3D based animation left out the more traditionally trained 2D animators.

As these 3D animation systems have become more user friendly. Many more people are now enabled to produce high quality computer based animation, while also allowing for more bad animations also, mainly due to the lack of the fundamental principles that were common among traditional animators.

Walk Cycle Animation

12 Animation Principles

• Squash and Stretch
• Anticipation
• Staging
• Follow Through and Overlapping Action
• Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose
• Slow In and Out
• Arcs
• Secondary Action
• Timing
• Exaggeration
• Solid Drawing
• Appeal