THREE.EASY.PIECES

Unit Title: Animation

Unit Number: AF201

Assignment One: Three Easy Pieces

Weighting: 50%

The brief

In this assignment, you will be exploring the key principles of motion design, and you will produce three pieces of animation which illustrate or demonstrate a range of these animation principles.

You will design, storyboard and make 3 pieces of animation which use shapes rather than complex drawings or recognizable objects. Given that the graphic objects are relatively simple drawings, the choice of colour palette is an important design concern. These animations will be between 15 and 20 seconds in length each, and you will vary the number of elements you are animating from one to many across the animation. Each animation must have a music or sound track of your choice.

Principles

Applying principles of motion graphic design to your animation work will make the motion you create more naturalistic, more appealing and more easily understood by the audience.

Motion design principles can be broken down into the following areas:

- timing: spacing actions to define weight and size

- speed of change: spacing of the in-between keyframes to achieve natural movement

- arcs: the visual path of action for natural movement

- motion blur: to enhance appearance of motion

- squash and stretch: defining the rigidity and weight of an object by distorting its shape during an action

- motivation/anticipation: preparation for an action

- follow through: termination of an action

- overlapping action: establishing its relationship to the next action

- staging/exaggeration: presenting an idea so that it is unmistakably clear

What you will do

You will research animation/motion principles, generate ideas for animated sequences which apply to these principles, draw storyboards your three sequences, produce the artwork, sound and animation in line with storyboarding.

Submission – pass criteria

Practical work

Three pieces of animation between 15 and 20 seconds in length, which animate shapes rather than complex objects or characters, and which feature a sound or music track. These animations must be exported from After Effects as full quality QuickTime .movs.

Sketchbook

Your sketchbook must contain project planning, research and development work including:-

· Idea generation through such techniques as brainstorming, sketching, mood boards, photographs etc

· Thumbnails or quick sketches to help you develop and refine your ideas

· Storyboards of your intended pieces that are detailed and timed

Blog

· Research into animation and motion graphics principles by embedding movies and/or linking to examples online with a written commentary or analysis of your chosen examples

· The development of your project, showing your working methods, progress and problem solving

· Periodic reviews of your work in progress

· Embed or link to your finished work and evaluate its qualities

Essay

· Research and write a 1000 word essay of the principles of animation, particularly in relation to motion graphics design. All quotes and ideas must be fully Harvard referenced and all of the research for this piece of writing must be included in a bibliography, which must have a minimum of three information sources.

Enhanced criteria

· Your sketchbook shows thorough a thoughtful response to your research in your creative decision taking

· Your thumbnails develop a wide range of ideas to work with

· Your storyboards are detailed, well thought through and imaginative

· Blog is detailed and outlines clearly the project progress

· Your animations exemplify the identified motion design principles clearly and creatively

Deadline

Monday 18^th October 5.00pm