Saturday, November 6, 2010

I Can't See No Reason To Put Up A Fight

We posted Ed Smith's animation from The Buddha's "Fire Sermon" a little while back.

I wanted to look at the simple way he achieved a fairly rich elemental animation with just a few drawings.

Three cel levels of 8 drawings a piece.  That's probably why I like this cycle so much.  I love things to  happen in 8 drawings.

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If you look at  Joseph Gilland's book -and you should it's easily one of the best technical animation books written -you'll see how he says many animators gravitate towards "effects" animation like fire or water where others excel in  character.  Often the greatest at one, struggles with the other.

I won't claim this is great effects animation on the level of what Joe does, but for an economic, small screen presentation, this fire is nearly perfect.

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The animation here works with the design which featured textured fields of color in an graphic depiction of flame.

That's really the key to great animation -appropriate approach to the style illustration or character.  How something moves is dictated by what it looks like and what it sounds like.

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Above is the top layer.  Click the link at the top of this post to see it in motion.

2 comments:

Michael Sporn said...

This is an excellent piece. I might have varied the timing of the three levels - sometimes on ones, othertimes on twos or threes. Just to keep them all "burning" animating to a more complicated, less predictable rhythm.

The overlay animation drives it all home.

Excellent work.

roconnor said...

The exposure sheets are packed up, but I recall having cycles within the cycles to vary.

Pretty sure, they are exposed on twos throughout though.