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Video Game Design Composition
This type of animation requires only one character pose. For example, an airplane
flying across the sky requires only a single pose of the craft. The animation of
the airplane is static because it requires only translation to move across the sky.
An
active animation
is the combination of translation and articulation. A human
character walking across the screen requires translation to move the character
and articulation to move the arms and legs.
Cel Animation
Cel animation
is a technique
where each frame of the
animation is drawn by hand
on a
cel
and photographed.
The individual photographs are
quickly played back in sequence
to display the animation. A
single frame of animation may
contain multiple cels, such as static background, moving background, main
characters, and so on, as shown in Figure 11-13. Cel animation is the type of
animation most people associate with animated films and cartoons.
To create a cel animation, the lead artist identifies certain points where
key actions must take place. These frames are called the keyframes, and
they are drawn by the lead artist. A
keyframe
is any frame on which a
specific action must take place. For example, the specific action may be a
window must be completely open. The frame on which the window must be
completely open is the keyframe for that action. Even a short animation may
have hundreds of keyframes. A feature-length animation will have thousands
of keyframes.
After the lead artist creates the keyframes, the assistant artists draw each
frame or cel between the keyframes. The frames between keyframes are known
as tweens. These artists are known as tweeners, and the process is known as
tweening. The lead artist and the tweeners create the ink lines of the images on
the front side of the cel. Colorists follow the lead artist and tweeners and paint
color on the reverse side of the cel.
While many artists and studios have produced cel animations, the works of
Walt Disney and his studio are perhaps the most famous. Today, hand-drawn
cel animations are rarely created because of the time and expense to do so.
Keyframe Computer Animation
Keyframe animation
is an approximation of traditional cel animation using
a computer. The artist identifies the keyframes and the computer draws the
tweens. While cel animation is also keyframe animation, and vice versa, most
computer animation software uses the term keyframe animation. Creating a
computer-generated (CG) keyframe animation requires much less time over
creating a hand-drawn cel animation.
The basic theory for creating a CG keyframe animation using software
such as Flash, Blender, 3ds Max, or Maya is similar to that of a cel animation.
The designer specifies keyframes and defines the action to be completed on
those frames. The tweens are created by the computer when the animation is
rendered.
CHEAT CODE: CEL
The term cel refers to cellulose
acetate, which is a transparent
plastic on which the animation
frames are drawn.