// iOS users: all animations @ vimeo album
Project is designed to introduce the 12 rules of animation, as well as parallel motion design principles.
Results published also as animated gifs and vine loops.
The students were given a design & credits template: square canvas, seamless loop – 1st/last frame filled with traditional japanese pattern called SEIGAIHA („blue wave of the sea”).
It’s a motif consisting of concentric circles that have been overlapped to only show the top portion of each. Some say it represents fans, and others waves. It has been used in Japan as a clothing motif for over a thousand years. source
Theoretical background of the project is based on the Disney’s rules of animation, as explained in Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas’s book „The Illusion of Life. Disney Animation”. Those rules are crucial to know for every kind of animator, as they also share common ground with general design, photography, acting, etc. principles.
As future (motion) designers, the students were not only to animate, many of them while learning the software, but first to research, tinker with possible visualizations of the rules using only basic shapes, to check communication of their ideas by storyboarding and to check the clarity of the movements they animated with the audience.
Everyone drew 3 of 12 rules to work with throughout the semester. It was adviced to think of the coherence of one’s animated trio.
All the elements used in animations had to be logically deduced out of the seigaiha pattern.
Maintaining strict color theme (black and white) and sticking to common design elements provides a coherence of all the animations, as well as helps the students to focus on staging and motion direction, leaving the vast possibilities of visual design aside.
The guidelines were designed by Olga Wroniewicz for The Animation Principles. Multimedia course. The course is obligatory for 1st year MA students, and is a part of Multimedia Studio’s programme @ New Media Faculty, PJAIT, Warsaw.
