Doc:Tutorials/Animation/BSoD/Principles of Animation/Intro

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Blender Summer of Documentation: Contents | Manual | Blender Version 2.41

About this text...

[edit] A Little Bit of History

[edit] The Golden Age of Classic Cartoons

What's up, blenderhead?

It's said that in the early 1930's a man named Walt Disney was particularly unhappy with the quality of that era's animation. The emerging industry was establishing itself and cartoons already had sound, but the existing knowledge wasn't developed enough for more ambitious projects, like longer films with compelling characters and story. Thankfully, this man could do something about it.

That was a time when newcomer Mickey Mouse was becoming well known worldwide, but still featured the same "rubber hose" type of animation found since silent Felix the Cat shorts from the previous decade, with stretchable limbs that could be drawn pushed and pulled into unrealistic forms. Movies were short and based on a succession of visual gags, with little or no concern for realism.

This doesn't mean those pioneers were not able to create good material, much to the contrary. But as technology and expertise evolved, glimpsing at more ambitious possibilities for the medium, it became clear that a new language of animation was needed. Disney's approach to solve this problem was broad and systematic: experts from other areas were hired, the animators started having art classes and were encouraged to think, research and experiment.

From this initiative came the Nine Old Men, a core team of animators that -- together with other greats -- created all the classic Disney works during the period known as the Golden Age of American Animation.

From their studies, experiments and work, this team condensed and compiled twelve basic principles, the foundation for the new animation they were looking for. A knowledge just as important today as it was back then.

Naturally, these principles included and expanded upon the tricks of their craft, but also borrowed insights from other arts: drawing, painting, sculpting, acting and staging, illusionism, photography, and so on. Equally important, they were inspired and complemented by Disney's and their writer's strong beliefs in the importance of character development in stories.

[edit] For a bit more...

The history of animation and the people across the world responsible for it all is vast, rich and as amazing as the best cartoons. We have collected some links about it in this page:

• References

[edit] Document Structure

[edit] Core

The principles form the core, each one presented in its own page and following this order:

• Introduction to the principle
  • What it is
  • Why use it
  • How to apply it

After that there may or should (when completed) be three other sections:

• In Blender: resources in Blender useful to apply this principle
• Physics: short informal comments about the Physics behind some aspect of the principle
• Story Development: application of the principle or ideas inspired by it in story and character personality development

Right now each of these lives on a separate page, but if they grow enough to justify it, we can have a page for each principle, too.

Finally, we end with:

• Notes: notes related to the principle

[edit] Tutorials

Actual small tutorials and projects related to one or more principles will be collected in this section, each one having its page and a link to a .blend file.

[edit] Main References

• The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston

Our primal source of information about the principles, written by two of the Nine Old Men. It is a true classic, covering many decades of Disney's history, since the beginning, with its cartoons, expertise, technology, struggles and specially the people who made it happen. Recommended for anyone even mildly interested in how animations are made.

Authors' website

• [Digital] Character Animation 2: Volumes 1 and 2 by George Maestri

Two good introductory books dedicated to most or all aspects related to professional 3D animation. The first one covers the principles, influenced by Disney's book, but with a slightly different approach in some parts.

It's not hard to find articles by Maestri online. For an example of the material on the book:

HyperGraph's character animation articles: walking tutorial

• Stop Staring: Facial Modelling and Animation Done Right by Jason Osipa

Great book, devoted to head modelling and animation: blend shapes, control setups, lip sync. High-level, high-quality material.

Two excerpts can be found online:

• One at Gamedev.net
• Another at Sybex (Publisher)

• DVD: Learning 3D Character Animation with Jeff Lew

Great DVD. In less than 4 hours it covers the fundamentals present in books about 3D animation in a more enjoyable and music instructional dvd way, plus giving a good glimpse of how a professional animator works. Jeff Lew authored the Killer Beans I & II shorts and later was lead animator in the movie Matrix Reloaded.

There are samples of the DVD and a few animations downloadable from his site.

• Website: Keith Lango Animation

Blog, plus very good free tutorials, short animations and more.

• Website: SIGGRAPH's Hyper Graph project

Educational material on CG, including animation with articles by John Lasseter and others.

[edit] Pre-requisites

Ideally, readers should have good working knowledge about Blender's interface and animation resources before dedicating time to the material in this text. The principles are not hard to understand, neither are our examples in Blender, but since they are answers to common problems in animation, prior experience can make the journey more enjoyable and productive.

So we invite the readers to first:

1. Learn the basics of animating in 3D with Blender:
   1. keyframing
   2. animation curves
   3. spaces: Ipo Curve Editor, Action, NLA, Timeline
   4. building a character for animation
2. Try a few quick animations, like some of these:
   1. collision between two cubes on a plane
   2. bouncing ball
   3. short actions with a rigged character:
      1. walk (a step or two is enough)
      2. jump
      3. stand up or sit down
      4. take an object, throw it away

[edit] Work in Progress

• The documentation is far from finished, there should be many additions:
  • The tutorials section needs many examples of the principles in action
  • Images, many more images
  • Story development and Physics pages need to cover more principles
  • The References page needs content: links collected from this doc, the rest of the wiki and elsewhere
  • The text as a whole needs another read / improve pass a week or two after being "finished"
• Planned: to have pages called Gallery, one per principle, with more images illustrating its application.

Summer of documentation 2006 -- Willian 22:09, 28 June 2006 (CEST)