The February 2012 Tutorial Discussion

[wizard509]

I think the rocking horse is great Gare, might be a little fast but nonetheless very nice. I am looking forward to doing the bouncing ball tutorial, but so far I've had not time to do it. I will continue to follow this thread with interest. Handrawn brings up an interesting point and I am looking forward to seeing if there is an answer, but as far as I know it isn't possible at least not without much additional work and frames.

[Gare]

I think the rocking horse is great Gare, might be a little fast but nonetheless very nice. I am looking forward to doing the bouncing ball tutorial, but so far I've had not time to do it. I will continue to follow this thread with interest. Handrawn brings up an interesting point and I am looking forward to seeing if there is an answer, but as far as I know it isn't possible at least not without much additional work and frames.

Ah! Here's something I failed to touch upon: when you do an animation these days, you have to consider your target output. There was a time when a cartoon was 24 frames per second, but no anymore. The rocking horse is probably too fast because you have a good internet connection, wizard, and that's something a content creator cannot anticipate or really cope with, except for using something other than Flash.

AVI, QuickTime, Mpeg-4 are all frame-dependent so what you film is what you get. I think I had the rocking horse set up to .1 seconds per frame, because at the time I created it, much of the audience for it had a 1 or 1.5 transfer speed, compared to an easy 2 today.

I guess that's why it's important to always keep your resource files for animation, for when technology changes.

-g

[handrawn]

zeb makes all his drawings in xara and animates them in ToonBoom AFAIK - I like toonboom; I like TVPaint too [which is non-vector] but can't afford it

anyways - thanks for the info Gary, I just thought I'd throw in the example 'cos timing makes or breaks animation.... hopefully it will give others ideas....

[Gare]

Yes, indeed. Timing can make or break 2D, 3D animation, comedy, plays, and other forms of entertainment.

It's good to come to the party with a concept, too. We had a phrase in advertising called "Dancing Bologna (baloney)" and it connotes stuff that gets your attention, but has no real substance. Sizzle without the steak, in other words.

A bouncing ball was a good tutorial example, because it's "creatively neutral." It's not entertainment per se, but the cartoon physics of squash and stretch are used all the time in cartoons.

And it shouldn't go without saying that Xara artwork (Xartwork?) is highly compatible with just about every other graphics product on the market.



My Best,

Gary

[wizard509]

Back to handrawn's example. I think he is talking about animations showing the effect of gravity. The ball goes up and gets progressively slower until it reaches apogee at which time it gains speed again on the way down. I'm not saying it's not possible with Xara but I am saying it would be difficult and requiring many extra steps to simulate the gravity effect. I'll have to try that and see, cause I might be wrong.

[Gare]

As long as you have both Handrawn's picture and the tutorial as a reference, I don't see why anyone can't—with a little trial and error—come up with a faithful animated representation of a bouncing ball with Earth gravity.

That wasn't the point of the tutorial—I wanted to get people interested in a verifiably underused Xara feature, and cartoonish exaggeration—which has been used in animation studios for 70 years (squash and stretch cartoon physics)—felt like a good entry point for me to use.

When I suggested viewers perform variations on what I showed—a bouncing chair or something bouncing while changing colors—well, an accurate representation of a ball bouncing and losing energy ultimately, is a good variation, too!

My Best,
—Gary

[wizard509]

Yes I understand that wasn't the point, I just thought it interesting and something to consider.

[handrawn]

Back to handrawn's example. I think he is talking about animations showing the effect of gravity

Hi Larry

yes

the apogee [point furthest away from centre in orbital path] is an example of an 'inertia point', that is an instant in the motion of an object when it is actually very fleetingly at rest [ie not moving]

traditionally animators 'slow out' when motion picks up and 'slow in' when motion slows down - what those terms mean is that you 'bunch up' your drawings and thereby slow down the uniformity of motion, but you do it in such a way as to make the increase in speed visible in the 'slow out' and the decrease in speed visible in the 'slow in'

the attached shows a pendulum with the [slow out slow in] chart that represents the frames, and you can see the bunching [its a simplified set of course] - doesn't take a lot of imagination to turn that pendulum chart into a ball bouncing from floor to ceiling [hopefully]

in cell animation all these frames would be drawn [both the keys and the 'inbetweens']

that covers the timing - I guess you can use tweening in xara to change the shape by generating the inbetweens, rather than having to draw all of them yourself

[note 'slowing out' is often called 'easing out' and 'slowing in' 'easing in']

[Gare]

A very nice aside, Handrawn; this is great stuff for anyone who wants to get beyond the act of animating and immerse themselves in the art of animation.

And I think there's a certain point (of ambition) where Xara's native animation tools cannot carry you to, for example, a 10 minute animation. It's not the right tool, however, Xara can make quick work of animated titles. Boris wants $$$ for an After Effects plug-in that essentially does what you can do by hand with titling in Xara and export with an alpha.

__________________________________________________ _

Ease in and Ease out are natural phenomena, they exist both in the cartoon realm and in the real world. The beginning of an action has built-in acceleration, while when a body loses energy or transfers it, there is a natural ease out of the motion, a de-acceleration. The best example I can think of is a baseball player as they swing the bat and connect with the ball. Of interest in this analogy is that the baseball bat will slow for two reasons: the transfer of energy to the ball, and the baseball player's inclination to slow down after a sufficient amount of swing has been completed.

In traditional animation, and digital when the folks know what they're doing, this Ease In and Ease out motion non-linear phenomenon is exaggerated, and that's perhaps what makes Porkie Pig, and Buzz Lightyear, et al, seem fantastic and real at the same time. The way in which they move is hyper-real, natural physics are bent, and occasionally broken, but respect is always paid to what goes on in the Real World.

-g-

[wizard509]

Thanks you guys. Very interesting information.