Introduction

Alongside my Advertising module, I chose Advanced Animation. The reason I chose this was because I would like to develop my skills with animation as having that skill can lead to lots of different jobs. Even without the knowledge of any 3D software, 2D animation can be a good skill to have.

In this module I will look at how a story is made, and eventually make my own story using Adobe Animate, or other means of animation be it stop motion, or After Effects.

As a class, we looked at different examples of animation, both good and bad.

What is animation?

“Anything that is not live action which is actuality, but is drawn, is animation and the thing about it is that there are no rules with it. People in animation don’t have to walk, they don’t even have to have legs, they can just float. There is no gravity in animation, it is free, it can fly.”

Those are the most important words in this video to me because it says that anyone can animate. Judging by the looks of the characters in the video as well it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to have the ability to draw either.

You can tell a story with any kind of animation, and Disney is a great example of this. Disney & Pixar movies work because of the story and they attract an audience because it is something not of the norm. They give characteristics to things that shouldn’t be able to talk or walk or even move by themselves. Good examples of these are The Lion King, Aristocats, Shark Tale, Toy Story, and many many more.

Another good example of telling a story with anything is the animation called “A Dot and a Line”. It features a dot, who is happy and bouncy, and a line who is in love with the dot, but because they are so different from each other they cannot be together, so he is depicted as sad at the beginning of the story. By using hand-drawn stop motion, the story has been captured well with the use of colour, and making the line and the dot move in certain ways.