stages of animation

The production of traditional animation typically follows the production cycle below:.

• First, a preliminary story is decided on and a story board is developed which lays out the action scenes by sketching representative frames and writing down an explanation of what is taking place. This is used to review and critique the action.

• Then the detailed story is worked out which identifies the actions involved in more detail.

• Key frames are then identified and produced by master animators to aid in confirmation of character development and image quality.

• test shot is a short sequence rendered in full color to further test the rendering and motion techniques. To completely check the motion, a pencil test may be shot which is a shot of full-motion but low quality images such as pencil sketches.

Associate and assistant animators are responsible for producing the frames between the key; this is called in-betweening.

Inking refers to the process of transferring the penciled frames to cels.

• Finally, coloring is applied to these cels.

Computer animation

Computer animation production has borrowed most of the ideas from conventional animation production including the use of a story board, test shots, and pencil testing. The use of key frames and in-betweening have also been adopted in certain computer animation systems. Story boards have pretty much translated directly over to computer animation production although they may be kept on a computer. They still hold the same functional place in the animation process. In computer animation there is usually a strict distinction between the creation of the models, the specification of their motion, and the rendering process which is applied to those models. In conventional animation, the model building, motion specification, and rendering are really all the same thing.

In computer animation, speed-quality tradeoffs can be made in each of the three stages during the trial and error process that characterizes much of animation. A test shot in computer animation is usually a high quality rendering of a highly detailed model to see a single frame of the final product. Pencil testing can be performed either by simplifying the sophistication of the models used, or by using low quality and/or low resolution renderings, or by using simple motion control algorithms. Place-holder cubes can be rendered in wire frame to present the gross motion of rigid bodies in space and to see spacial and temporal relationships among objects. This may also provide real-time calculation and playback of the animation. Similarly, high-quality rendering of low complexity models or low-quality renderings of highly detailed models, or some intermediate levels of both the model and the renderer can be used to give the animator clues to the finished product's quality without committing to the final computation. For example, a hardware z-buffer display can provide good turn-around time with decent quality images before going to a ray traced image. Solids of revolution objects lend themselves quite well to allowing for three, four or five levels of detail for a given model. Also, smooth shading, texture mapping, specular reflection and solid texturing can all be options presented to the animator for a given run. To simplify motion control, for example, simple interpolation between poses may be used instead of inverse dynamics.

1• storyboard

The story board is a sequence of drawings on paper that show the key parts of the animation and should be completed before any work starts on the animation. The storyboard allows an animator to see how the animation will flow, gives a clear idea of what the animation is about, and what it should look like when it is completed.

2• modelling

The storyboard and modelling are very similar, just as modelling and the final animation are closely related. The modelling of an object in most cases cannot happen without knowing how the animation is going to look.

3• movement control

The movement control of an object is the essential part of the animation process. There are many steps in the process of movement control

• Paths The path is the movement of an object from one spot to another; for example, a man walking. The path of the object is the man moving from one spot to another. The animators have to realise that a real person walking has many movements, such as arms swaying and legs moving. This shows the specified parts in the different paths of an object.
• Kinematics This method deals with a model of human characteristics. This is a very hard method because the animator has to make sure that every step the model does is the same as every step of human characteristics.

  4• rendering

Rendering brings a 3-D model to life by adding and positioning the light to the object. Not only can light make an object look real but also, shading the object will bring out the fakeness of the object. Therefore, the object is no longer planes.