Before The Presentations...

Wow! I actually managed to find time in order to finish this, despite the presentation looming overhead. I didn't add much, because again, time constraints, but it was nice to finish an animation for once.

What's the Principle for Today?

Sorry to disappoint, but because of the looming presentation, I didn't have the time to put huge amounts of effort into this. The main point of this post will be to mostly talk about the animation process as a whole and talk about my mindset going into the presentations.

Animation itself sounds complicated, but the programs used to make it have simplified it in many ways, compared to how it used to be years ago. Things such as tweening didn't exist when animation was first conceived, and with them today it makes the process a whole lot easier for a single person to do. For non-animators, Tweening is essentially moving an object from one place to another without having to animate every frame individually; this is a huge time saver if you need to do something simple, like have a car move across the screen.

Animation is created through images called frames, which are given a split-second amount of time on screen before another frame is shown. This creates the illusion of movement, as the slight movement between each image is filled in by our brain. Mostly, you'd just draw in whatever you are animating, create a new frame, and repeat. However, some animators have different styles of animation, such as using tweening. This is done by drawing each limb of a figure out individually, then putting the limbs together and tweening them to make smooth movements while still retaining the form of the character.

Another important feature of modern animation is called layers, which determines which images are shown over others. The most obvious form of this would be putting the background of a scene on a layer underneath the figure, so the animated character would be shown with the background in, well, the background. If the background were to be placed over the layer with the character, then you would only see the background since it would be prioritized over the figure.

This might not seem exciting, but it's the bread and butter of animation, and absolutely essential in creating good flicks. 

My Mindset

I've never been a very good presenter. Most of the time, I have to practice for hours in order to get a hang of a script, then spend some more time making sure I don't randomly blank out during a recital. I'm hopeful that I can pad out a little bit of time with animation, since I've been working pretty hard on a longer film, but my main struggle is with the script itself. I've barely got an idea of what I want to do, and it's been crawling at the back of my mind like a maggot. I've been told that procrastination is basically waiting until something becomes more worthwhile to finish than put off., but I've honestly been clueless on what my presentation's greater purpose should be. 

I guess I'll have to go about it like I always do, which is just praying that practice pays off.