Thursday, February 8, 2018

The Art of Animation

by Colleen Caudill

Animation is the illusion of movement when capturing a series of drawings or photographs of objects and turning them into a video or production. I have always been a fan of animation ever since I could properly watch television, from Saturday morning cartoons and claymation movies, to Japanese anime and Disney films. There were all kinds of animation surrounding me growing up, but I didn't come to realize how great an art it was until just recently.

Studying animation in my free time came as a surprise, as I have my fair share of experience in many mediums of  art, but I never thought of animation as being something I could do myself. It comes off as overwhelming at first, thinking of the large-scale movies, but the matter of fact is it's merely a cluster of small gestures, moving little by little. The beautiful thing about animation is that not only is there something out there for everyone's taste, they stretch from long films made from hundreds of people to shorter videos hand-drawn and perfected in many hours and weeks by one person. I myself -- after falling in love with the craft and doing days of research -- got the materials and wisdom needed to make a small one minute video just by quickly drawing a character with audio behind it, nothing colored in and no elaborate background. I drew over two hundred individual frames in over six hours. Before this point, I had only an idea of what kind of long repetitive process went into animation.


I am still learning about said process and every new rock turned over leads me back to awe in respect toward animators of all kinds. Because of all of the work and effort put into something as short and small as a one minute video of me introducing myself, there are few things I am prouder of. 




That is why I have come to love the art of animation.

3 comments:

  1. odd1isout is amazing! Great animation I love the art style.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I think that is an amazing post. I hope you continue to pursue your goals in Animation and choose an amazing topic. I believe you will do amazing in Animation. Congratulations on pursuing your goals.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Colleen, thank you for sharing with us. I am not a big fan of animation and I have never gave much thought to it either. I have after reading your article now realized there is a lot of work and time involved in making these productions. I may still not watch or enjoy animations, but I now can appreciate the hard work others have put into the programs. I think you did a good job with your video and I am glad that you shared it with us. Your blog was well written and explained the process of animation clearly to me. Thank you. -Vicki

    ReplyDelete