Cut And Paste.

In the digital age, computers have changed the way people live and think. In digital data, 'cut and paste' is known as the most common used and also the most simple command performed in a computer. How can this simple command perform itself?

Like montage, 'cut and paste' is also a way of how one can use to manipulate time and space. In this piece, I choose the internet as my main theme, which I believe is also the most normal place where people use the command 'cut and paste'.

When one browses the internet, information present themselves in different manners according to how the user operates the computer. these information have different meanings of there own, however, by changing the time and place of those information through the 'cut and paste' command, they could turn into something different and meaningful. In this piece, pictures of different people walking in different time and spaces become one animated walking figure via the command 'cut and paste'.

Bouncing ball #3

Next week will be the last week for our first animation Assignment: the bouncing ball. So by this week we should be 90% finish on the piece, that means we should have a realistic bouncing ball, some other objects to interact with the ball, a sound or music and set up camera cuts.

After we learned the squash tool last week, I decided to give animating a cartoon bouncing ball a try. Hopefully, this will give the piece a narrative feeling to create a more interesting scene.

Bouncing ball #2.

For the next step, I placed another ball into the scene, a ball which seems lighter and bouncier. In order to distinguish its motion from the previous two balls, I played with how the ball changes the way it bounces when hit a elevated stair.

The creative act

The creative act / Marcel Duchamp

http://www.iaaa.nl/cursusAA&AI/duchamp.html

The essay refers to the two poles of the creation of art: the artist and the spectator. On one hand the artist create, on the other hand the spectator make their contribution to the creation by deciphering and interpreting the piece in-order to bring it in contact with the external world, furthermore, they complete the creative act.

If only the artist create but without the spectator, there will be no legendary artists such as Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh. In my viewpoint, this process of how everything - the artist, the spectator and the art piece - come to a agreement, can be refer to a variety of places. For example, designers design products and consumer agree with the product by purchasing it, therefor announce a successful designer. When the audience watch a film from a director, they decide whether the like it or not.

People who create are not only artist in now days, but are creators from different professions and fields. The essay draws our attention back to the spectator, who the creator can choose not to care when they create, but their works can never avoid to face the spectator, who fulfill the creative act.

Bouncing ball.

Our first animation assignment is as simple as it is: to create a realistic bouncing ball. This means we have to observe a ball when it bounces and recreate it in Maya without any stretch or squash animation methods.

I have already done this before a couple times, however the method and approach I learned here was a lot more clear and efficient. We played with dope sheet and graph editor, the two basic animation editor in Maya during class. After create a realistic ball, we can start to add different elements in the scene to create a 10 to 15 seconds short animation.

I put a bigger ball in the scene after I animated the first bouncing ball, and animated it with a different bouncing motion to define its heavier weight, and how it effects the lighter ball. Still a number of details need to be adjust in this scene, I'll be keep working on them.

animation and "moving object".

After reading the text "Principles of traditional animation", it reminds me a lecture about animation I heard from Mohammed Allababidi six years ago when motion capture was presented in lots of games and filmmaking. It is a way to capture realistic motion, however, this is only a result of how people are trying to keep up their esthetic work with the rapidly involving technology.

It is not animation. Mr. Allababidi gave an example that when he asked an intern student in his studio to animate a dragon, the student simply couldn’t do it, because all he knew was how to use motion capture. Than where can he find a real dragon to capture?

In the digital age, creating animation has become easier than ever before, for instance, 3D animation soft wares such as Maya generates all the in-between frames, and of course the motion capture. Certainly, these advantages are not bad, but some how they mislead people or students to understand what really is animation about. Regardless of what dose it take to make good and fluent animation, most people spent time on realistic texture, lightning and visual effects, because it’s too easy to make things to “move” in a computer. These traditional animation principles such as starch and squash, secondary animation, anticipation and overlapping are what really distinguish real animation from “moving object”.

To me the question is: what do you want to make as an animator? A ball that bounces as if it's alive, or a realistic human that walk like a robot?

start!

hope I can make the best use out of this blog.