Animation for Beginners

Animation is an art. No, wait. Animation is a fun art. We can also say that animation is a technique whereby you give life to characters or objects, but the truth is, animation is much more than that... it’s miracle! When we talk about animation, we should start by looking at our eyes. Nothing miraculous there? Of course, there is... and the ability to generate a sense of animation is part of our ability to see or more specifically how we see. Seeing is science!

Imagine you have a mountain of photographs, now imagine that you begin to see them, one by one, as fast as possible. Every time you focus on a photo, your eyes capture the information and send it to your brain. Your brain in turn, converts it into the signal that you see. I see a house, I see a boat, I see my uncle!, and so on. You might think that seeing just means opening your eyes, but each time you “look” at anything it takes a great exchange of information between your eyes and your brain, to turn that into the image that you receive. This process is not easy to perceive because it takes such an extremely small space of time, fractions of a second.

Now, let’s see what happens when you take the mountain of photographs and you begin to quickly view them one by one. For each image that you place before your eyes, your brain begins to make an interpretation of it, however, since you keep replacing each image with a new one, if you do this at the right speed, your brain is unable to interpret the whole picture before it has to start to interpret the next image. When the flow of photos is large enough and passes at high speed, your brain begins to mix the information from an image with the previous and the next, creating the sensation of movement. That’s when the magic happens and we can talk about animation.

It is estimated that the human eye is capable of distinguishing only around 24 images in a second if you try to view them one after another. If the number of images is equal or greater than 24, then the eye begins to see that the elements begin to acquire motion. Wait a minute. Does this mean that a film is nothing but a huge pile of pictures that pass before my eyes at breakneck speed? The short answer is yes! However, we must bear in mind that a movie is something a little more complex, as it is audio-visual content, which means that it also includes sound and a lot of technical details that we’ll leave pending for later.

In the world of animation, each image from which an animation is composed known as a “frame”, so the speed at which a film is projected is measured in frames per second (FPS) . The more frames you have in a second of animation, the better the illusion of movement will be and the fewer you have, the more the sense of flow will erode.

Currently, we have a wide variety of animation techniques with which we can create content like we see in film and video. Here are some techniques:

- 2D Animation: This is a technique based on planes for the creation of frames that will be part of the animation. Hey! wait a moment, what is a plane? When you think of a plane, think of it as an uniform surface, similar to a sheet of paper, a soccer field, the floor of your house or even think of a wall. I know it sounds strange, but a plane is nothing more than a flat surface. Now, in slightly more complicated terms, a plane is a workspace where you have two dimensions to pan, if you wish, you can think of these two dimensions as up-down and left-right. These two dimensions are those from which we get the term 2D (two dimensions) that people use when talking about 2D animation. Incidentally, historically it is one of the first techniques of animation. If you look at the edges of a sheet of paper and focus on the bottom and at the left edge, you’ll notice that they are like two straight lines that meet in the lower left corner. These two straight lines are those that determine the level on which you draw and are technically known as axes (in mathematics, often calling them X axis and Y axis). In short, when you think of 2D animation, think of a flat surface made from the paths created by an artist either on paper or whether from a computer program for 2D animation. Two good examples of this technique are most TV series you can see on Cartoon Network as well as all the classics of the Walt Disney Company ®. Let’s look at another example:

- Fig #1. Animated Short "Cibertito’s Crash". Technique: 2D Animation

- 3D Animation: This technique is a bit like the one above, except that they no longer talk about two dimensions, but three. A simple way of thinking is to think in 3D top-down, left-right and front and rear. Therefore, we speak of three axes, in mathematics, often called the X axis, Y axis and Z axis). Unlike 2D art, animation in three dimensions can only be done through specialized computer programs which are responsible for calculating everything you need to generate each frame that makes up an animation. Under this technique, the creator is not responsible for illustrating figures, but rather to model geometric objects and then articulated structures so that they can move through each frame of the scene under construction. 3D animation is much more complex than 2D because the software focused on the subject must perform the calculations for each point in space, which is part of each image. These estimates include: colour, lighting and texture, among others. All this translates into hundreds of thousands of mathematical calculations (sometimes millions!) so muuuuuuuch work! Fortunately, the computer does it and not the animator. The best examples of 3D animation you can find in movies are "Toy Story", "Finding Nemo" and in shorts such as "Big Buck Bunny", who we see in the following scene:

- Fig #2. Animated Short "Big Buck Bunny". Technique: 3D Animation

- Stop Motion: This technique is based on playing with photographs. If you have a digital camera, it is all you need to get started. The procedure is very simple, basically it involves taking a series of pictures, one after the other, of a scene while between each picture making small changes to the objects in the scene. Complex? No, not at all... consider a simple example! Take a ball or any object you want and place it on a table. Place your camera in a fixed position pointing in the direction of the table and make sure it can not move easily, this point is key for a successful animation effect. Note that all the pictures we take, will be captured from the same position and from the same angle. Now, take a first shot of the ball in its original position, then move it in one direction, but only a little and take another photo. Move it a little further in the same direction you started with and take a picture again. Repeat this procedure several times until the last picture is that of the ball on the edge of the table. Okay, now look at the screen of your camera and begin to review all the photos from first to last stepping to the next photo at the same rate. You’ll notice how they seem to show the ball moving towards the edge by itself. This is Stop Motion! Two very good examples of the technique of stop motion you can find in the movies "Corpse Bride" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas". Now let’s review an image from another simple example:

- Fig #3. Animated Short "El Gran Escape". Technique: Stop Motion

Okay, now that we have a little more clarity on the concept of animation, we’ll see what Tupiis! Well, our definition is pretty basic, it is free software for the design and creation of 2D animation. A project developed by animators for animators, and now in this new stage, once again in active development.
Want to learn how to use it? What are we waiting for? Let’s start!