Animation 101

I've been ignoring this for too long. I've had my eyes set on animation and film making since I hid under my blankets to protect me from monsters at night. I was making animation shorts in my head walking to and from school everyday. I was directing music videos for every other song I heard. This is where I want to be, but I was somehow led astray scared. I guess it had something to do with being poor, but the way I see it now, my computer science skills will land me in McDonald's just the same. I might as well get to it with something that I actually have potential doing to a place that better suits me.

I've set out to do an independent study of 2d animation using Richard Williams' The Animator's Survival Kit as a textbook. Mr. Williams was the Director of Animation for 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' and had studied with the wise men of Disney. The 8 wise men were Disney's 8 leading animators in the 30-40's that made Snow White, Pinocchio, Bambi, and Fantasia. They created a school of thought when they wrote down the idiosyncrasies of moving pictures like people walk at about 12 frames per second and squashing and stretching an image gives weight. The rules they wrote down for themselves and those described in the book are used today in all forms of animation including stop-motion and CG (computer generated animation).

I plan to learn the basics of animation, improve my drawing skills, and make a short 2 minute film from concept art to final edit by December 5th. I'm not sure at all if this is possible, but I will at least have a 50% version with rough animation and a completed story. I've created a syllabus that can be downloaded here that outlines my goals for this project as well as its structure.

My friends, who are also lost doing things like Civil Engineering, C++, and PHP, got in on this with me. Emi, Andy, and Anand will be making films of their own all under the umbrella of 2d animation. We are working closely but on separate projects which allows cooperation as well as a competitive motivation. We hope to have four films by the end of a semester, but more importantly a blog full of stories and work (TONS of work, showing that we're there (we ain't never scared) ).

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