Excuse me, what is animation? What is its design principle? And what is the artistic expression of animation?

In order to get better animation effect, animation designers have been exploring unremittingly. They don't expect to succeed every time, but failure is likely to be the starting point for the next success. It is in this alternating process of failure and success that we have accumulated a lot of valuable experience and some animation principles that will become classics in the future.

In the animation industry, whenever a newcomer joins, he will be asked to do some exercises that are conducive to understanding action design, so that everyone who wants to be an animation designer will regard this as an industry rule. To everyone's surprise, these exercises eventually became the basic principles used by animation designers in the creative process.

Disney animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Kingston summed up the following twelve classic animation principles by comprehensively refining the valuable experience of animation predecessors for many years, which can be used as reference by animation designers at any time.

This 12 animation principle is the highest guiding principle that has accumulated decades of experience. Animators should regard them as sacred principles. Although Disney's animation was a hit as early as the 1930s, the original animation principles have not changed. Even these rules developed from 2D animation can almost be applied to 3D animation.

One or twelve classic animation principles

1, extrusion and stretching

This is the most profound animation principle. In the action process of people or objects, interactive actions such as pulling and colliding will show compression and stretching, and through this action, the texture and sense of quantity of objects will also be shown.

This is not necessarily the real physical expression, but most people expect to see this exaggerated expression in animation, flattening and stretching, and exaggerating the deformation degree of the character's body as much as possible to achieve the tension and effect of the action (joy, surprise ...).

Step 2 get ready for action

The emotions and information expressed by the characters in animation must be immediately conveyed to the audience through body language, so that the actions of the characters can bring clear expectations to the audience. After this preparatory action, the audience can guess his next action. On the other hand, it is difficult to convince the audience to project cognition on the role.

In the action design of the character, this is quite critical. It depends on the animators' long-term observation of human emotions and actions with different characteristics to obtain the accumulation of various expressions and experiences of body language.

3. Performance design

The story that the characters want to describe in the scene needs to be completed through clear performance, bringing the atmosphere and strength of the scene or climax into the position and action of the characters in the picture. An emotion may take more than a dozen small gestures to express. Every little gesture should be clearly expressed. Simplicity, completeness and neatness are the necessary standards of this principle. Too complicated actions happen at the same time, which will make the audience lose the focus of watching.

4, along the painting method and fixed-point painting method

This is a relatively different skill in animation, which is used to distinguish the types of actions that need to be considered when drawing animation. When drawing in sequence, draw one action step at a time, one by one, until the whole action is over. The rule of fixed-point painting is to draw the main action posture diagram first, and then draw the middle animation to connect the main posture diagram.

5, follow action and overlapping action

In the process of motion, all parts of an object will not move together forever. Some parts will move first, others will arrive later, and then overlap with the first moved part.

This is a common expression in animation, for example, when running, the body leaves the picture first, the ass stays in place, and then pops up with a whoosh.

6. Slow in and slow out

Slow down the start and end of the action; Speed up the middle movement.

For an action that starts from a static state, it needs to be set to be slow first and then fast. Before the end of the action, the speed should also be gradually slowed down, and stopping an action at the beginning will bring a sudden feeling.

7. Arc motion curve

The actions in animation, except mechanical objects, almost all move in a smooth trajectory. Therefore, when drawing the middle picture, we should pay attention to the action of connecting the main picture with a smooth curve, not a sharp straight line, so as not to form an unnatural feeling.

Let the character's actions follow the arc trajectory, not walk in a complete straight line. On the contrary, if it is a mechanical action, it will be stiff and straight, and the characteristics of different roles will be conveyed through the difference of trajectories.

8. Secondary actions

Take small amount of exercise as the main exercise, supplemented by exercise. When the character performs the main action, if the related second action is added, the main action of the protagonist will become more real and convincing. However, this second action should appear as a cooperative action, and it should not be too independent or too violent to affect the clarity of the main action.

For example, you can use jumping steps to express your happy feeling, and at the same time, you can enhance the effect by increasing the movement of your hands ... The second movement may be quite subtle, but it has the effect of making the finishing point, but what is the appropriate second movement must be transformed into the body language style of the animator through the accumulation of experience and observation of the movement!

9. Time control

Action is the most basic and important part of animation, and the most important thing is rhythm and time.

Time control is the soul of action authenticity. Too long or too short action will damage the authenticity of animation. In addition to the type of action affecting the right or wrong of time, the characterization of characters also needs "time control" to cooperate with the performance.

10, exaggeration

Basically, animation is exaggerated ... Every emotion and every action of the characters in animation must be conveyed in a relatively exaggerated way to be more realistic (convincing). If the protagonist enters a happy mood, it will make him happier and show more sadness when he feels sad.

Exaggeration can be expressed in many ways, but the meaning is not entirely a wide range of actions, but an excellent action selected after careful consideration, which conveys the essence of the role's actions.

1 1, the three-dimensional sense of painting

This is a skill that every animator must have. Besides genius, the only way to get it is to practice hard.

12, scenic spots

When designing a role, the audience can intuitively understand the attributes of the role through modeling or unique gestures, thus improving the audience's impression of the role. In cartoons, everything the audience wants to see is attractive, not only cute characters, but also evil villains.

Second, "Want" and "Don't" in animation design

"To":

1, it's time to design and arrange your action design in the form of sketch. At the beginning, you can quickly grasp the desired picture sense with 2 or 3 key postures, and then slowly correct and enrich the action design.

Before the official start, you should first consider the preconditions you need in this scene and make the expression you should have in the simplest way.

3. Communicate with the director more and discuss with him at any time if you have any questions. We also have to admit that the director is human and he won't eat you.

4. When you finally decide which gestures to use in this scene, you should also consider the size of the picture specification box.

5. Make your main posture clear and concise, so that the audience can understand it, and redesign your movements to make the audience accept it.

6. When exchanging ideas, don't just communicate with the director, but also discuss with other animation designers. In this way, you will certainly get better help when designing satisfactory movements.

7. Perform the action you want to draw first, and feel if there is any problem with this visible action. Don't be afraid of being laughed at. If he laughs at you,

8. When designing expressions, don't be stingy with your mirror and try not to draw from memory.

9. Pay attention to the ratio of the characters you draw to other characters. If you only draw 50 drafts in succession based on the first main picture, this is easy to do, but in the end, you will find that the proportion between the characters will become smaller or larger.

"don't":

1. Don't start painting in a hurry without any design arrangement.

2. Try not to draw from a difficult angle unless you think it will have a good effect.

3. Don't draw it too simply or too complicated unless you think it will have a good effect.

4. Don't trust the shape and proportion in the design draft too much, sometimes it is not very accurate.

When you haven't had time to figure out how to draw cartoon characters, don't rush to draw them.

6. Don't be afraid to discuss with the director the problems you encounter when designing actions.

7. Don't add or subtract the drawing specification box without consulting with the director.

8, don't draw meaningless movements, try to follow the tips of photography norms, otherwise it will be thankless.

9. Don't use some gestures that you don't think look good. If they don't look good on the draft, they won't look good on the screen.

10, don't ignore the tips in the photo table. If you are only asked to do normal actions, then do it. Remember, it's not how much the character does, but what he does is useful.

1 1, don't ignore these "yes" and "no" tips mentioned above! The correct filling method of photography table,

Third, the analysis and grasp of animation modeling

Most animals have bones, including humans.

Therefore, in the work and study of animation designers, in order to better grasp the characteristics of their satisfactory shapes and design actions, they must be familiar with the depicted shapes before designing actions, that is, animation designers must be proficient in how to analyze animation shapes.

Analyze how to master animation modeling through the following points:

1 First of all, we should understand and be familiar with the composition of internal joints of limbs of various animals (mainly human beings), that is, the composition of bone structure.

2. Be familiar with the basic body composition and the proportional relationship between them.

3. It is very important to practice various dynamic postures of realistic modeling, and at the same time pay attention to mastering the application of dynamic lines to help determine dynamic postures.

4. In the process of practicing modeling dynamic posture, pay attention to the coordination of the perspective of each joint.

5. After mastering the realistic animation character structure, it is not a problem to master the lovely animation character.

6. In addition to the practice of overall modeling, we should also strengthen the dynamic practice of local modeling.

Learn to generalize complex shapes into shapes suitable for animation.

Animation is the art of lines, and a large number of lines used in modeling will easily lead to visual fatigue for the audience, so we should learn and master the inductive ability of animation modeling.