7-11-2024: anime (draft)
Anime
For the purpose of helping the topic, the reader-encounter of digital art might refer to the following link.
From the search engine perspective, we can start to feed the idea with some AI search Labs about Blender and Maya:
References related to the present post.
anime:
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=5275
Resources:
pencil2d : a simple animation software
https://www.animaker.com/ : sign up preferred, animation based on predefined templates of characters, situations, environments
https://www.capcut.com/ : capcut, a video making software with an AI tool
VLC Media Player Portable
Pixelorama: https://portableapps.com/news/2024-05-30--pixelorama-portable-0.11.4-released
A simple animation software for arcade style cartoons
Synfig: an animation software (pixels or SVG)
Additional resources:
More additional resources:
The important resource to the amateur hobbyist:
Anime
Foreword
This post aims to talk about anime or animation, even animated stories, and also animated images, as the GIF format is mostly addressing the concept (of animated image), other frame by frame traditional techniques are deployed and programmed into animation softwares. The GIF format has something majestic in some way because it is, or can be considered as an (one) image, and can be treated as an image accepting effects, filtering and transformations like a single image.
Nevertheless, sophisticated and advanced image editors have the ability to decompose GIF images, which for an observer looks like an animation, a video, into static frames.
Example 1
As a starting point, several layers play a role of frames, and, in the example below, what is in each layer has been presented as a film strip.
At the design step, a frame by frame mindset allows decomposing motion into a set of pictures. If the making starts from scratch, it is always possible to draw the easiest, or more pleasant, whatever, and then reorder the frames.
Of course, the image editor can have the functionality to make layers transparent and to see and draw according to the previous or next frames.
Once the design is completed (6 frames above), a simple export as a GIF image lets usually create the animated image.
As a result of the film strip above, I show, below, the generated GIF image in the middle. Left and right pictures illustrate the application of a filter effect to the GIF image (no need to apply the filter or the effect to each frame).
It is simply a ready-to-use filter that can be found in a slide or word processor, like MS word or Google Doc.
Example 2
An example of traditional animation (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation) is copied/pasted in the present document.
This example says about the simple GIF file opening or loading in an image editor, that is going to be decomposed in layers (a layer for each frame).
After opening the GIF image above (the gallop), and the automatic decomposition in frames, the software used by the blog writer let him make a film strip (Combine>Film Strip in GIMP).
(8 frames)
Example 3
The same film strip decomposition, applied to the GIF inserted below, shows a hundred of frames.
(100 frames)
Animated Mandala
I made a creative mandala, issued as a GIF image using a blending effect. It is not only an export, but there is an additional blending of frames and colors according to an algorithm, proprietary of the software publishers.
(Animation>Blend) of GIMP makes a mixing of colors on a timeline defined by the number of interpolated frames and delay between them.
The sledge (feasibility)
I put down on a pre-dev cartoon image ideas of the story of a sledge going down a hill and crashing at some point.
Below presented, the left animation uses a blending effect of some image editor software, and a direct GIF issue from another software on the right.
For both, it is only a feasibility about the storytelling and possible issues. The bigger part of the effort is to design a character that can be scaled with all the features (details, shapes and colors) along the motion.This prototype, how things are made at this step, demonstrates the need of a minimal input once the character is designed. Simple transformation operations can be used, scaling, flipping. An important point is to make the character and the sledge separately, on different drawings -layers- to anticipate the separation after the crash.
It is not said that the number of frames and delay is optimal, yet.
The idea of flipping the background upside-down adds to the dramatic and the tragic of the crash with a sense of funny (or a reference to a traditional cartoon “pratfall [such] as falls, collisions, and explosions that would be lethal in real life” wikipedia/animation).
Perhaps this pre-dev deserves more effort and could be a good entertaining animation.
(a) Blend Effect on the composite animated image; (b) W/o effect, frame by frame composition in Pencil2D
GIMP animation effects
What is not experimented here, is how the animation effects shown below can be composed, or made up with other elements (just think that you have generated a set of frames that are now available as a basis for a motion effect).
On a picture composed with a Flame render effect of GIMP, animation filters have been applied. From left to right, (a) a blend effect, (b) a burn-in effect; (c) a rippling effect; (d) spinning globe; (e) waves.
1928 Disney’s steamboat Willie
This paragraph is just about a cultural insight, which has its own article on wikipedia (link), related to the “golden age of American animation”. I have been presenting below the title frame with the Google Doc ready to use filters. I wanted to compose several effects but it was not feasible (unlike sophisticated Image editors).
Also, wikipedia has a link to the movie, but, I found the movie as an archive in the Internet Archive (Internet Archive is a non-profit library of millions of free books, movies, software, music, websites, and more). link
Finally, I wondered how to insert the movie to this post ??
Just to let informed people following this blog that most of the imparting documents are done with Google tools, although there is no sponsorship nor special agreement, it is just like that (maybe you can call me pigeon, but, as it is of all of us), and Google Docs cannot insert mp4 videos.
By the way, the problem has had to be fixed and I wanted to put an anime to link or represent this important milestone of the animation industry.
This time, I figured out that I had to convert the file to a GIF image, because this format is just an image format, and can be inserted in my document (the present one that the reader is currently reading).
So, I found an excellent converter online: https://cloudconvert.com/mp4-to-gif
However, I had other hustles on the way of my desire, besides the fact that this will was only elaborated in my own mind without specific need, except to have the best post of the world, this time.
Thus, I had to overthrow Google, which limited me to a 50MBytes (the French say MegaOctets) AND 1000 frames -in fact, the movie has 11105 frames-. cloudconverter helped me to drastically downsize the historical movie below the 50MB.
But, I needed a sophisticated image editor (in fact, GIMP) to investigate frames (This is how I found out that the movie had 11105 frames).
The sophisticated image editor had no problem with loading 11105 frames of the original resolution of 585x480 pixels (417MB). So, the frame #2796 is somewhere close to 1:49 sec of the movie when the sailor sets spitting (as shown by a snip of the movie at 1:49sec of 7min 46sec in total).
The image editor thinks there is some blending, as shown. This is the real frame with blending of before and after images, with, artgraphic-db guesses a black background, of the full movie converted to GIF image format.
Finally, I figured out that making 50MB of movie (as required by Google Doc) would need to trim the movie to about 30 seconds (at the same resolution of 585x480 pixels), to get about 1000 frames. Thus, I had to use a video editor to handle the mp4 format (I used MS Photos&TV, but alternatives exist).
The trim version, the spitting scene, is finally inserted after conversion to GIF format (cloudconvert).
Computer animations
In this paragraph, I refer to computer animations more than “animations” to speak about SVG capabilities (additional to Vector Graphics Editing) to animate vector graphics objects, and resulting in a motion illusion, which would be part of an artist amateur portfolio involved in animation or animated image.
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