1B: One frame at a time (posted 13 March 2009)
Oskar Fischinger - was noted for his abstract animations paired with popular music of the day. His contribution to Disney's Fantasia was the abstract movements to J. S. Bach Toccata and Fugue in D Minor sequence for Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940). He quit without credit because all studio artists simplified and altered all his designs to be more representational.
The thing to note about his work as you embark on today's exercise that the heart of animation is the manipulation of graphics over time.
A good example of work based upon his notions can be found in
The building blocks of animation:
- Line
- Color
- Motion
- Shape
- Environment
- Time
Last week, you made flipbooks. This week we do the digital version of this. There are myriad ways to attack the problem. Essentially all we need is a way to string a series of individually drawn images together. We could use Flash, Fireworks, Imageready, and others. Over these 10 weeks we will attack the animation problem a variety of ways. Today we will use Photoshop.
Helpful links:
www.adobe.com/go/vid0027 for an introduction to the video layer.
Exercise: Experimental Animation. Create a 20 second frame by frame animation in twos.