Animation Final exam study guide
Armature
(1) A metal framework on which a sculpture is molded with clay or similar material (2) the kinematic chains used in computer animation to simulate the motions of virtual human or animal characters
Aspect Ratio
(Field ratio) - The relationship of the horizontal dimension to the vertical dimension for any given film or tape format. For example, the aspect ratio for TV is 4:3; that is, a TV screen is 4 units wide by 3 units high.
Abstract Animation
Animation that is abstract rather than figurative in appearance, usually dispensing with a conventional narrative
Frame-By-Frame
Animation using a series of keyframes with no tweening that creates a flipbook
Extreme Close-up
Any extremely close shot of an actor or an object
Direct Film
Any kind of filmmaking that dispenses with the camera and involves the artist making images directly onto the frame of the film stock. Generally this means drawing, painting, or scratching straight onto the film. This can also include using found footage or other materials pressed directly onto the film (Stan Brakhage's insect wings) - Also known as Drawn-on-Film Animation or Cameraless Animation
Forward Kinematics
A character animation technique for controlling the motion of the bones in a chain - for example, a limb) in which rotations propagate from bone to bone towards the free end of the chain (in the case of a limb, towards the hand or foot)
Insert
A close shot of some article or minute action that is edited into the scene and that supports the main action. For example: There is an alert at an army base and guards are trying desperately to maintain control. During all of the commotion there may be cutaways of flashing lights or of a finger flipping a switch
Anthology
A collection of shorter subject films packaged together as one longer film.
Camera Shake
A jerking or shaking of the camera to simulate an earthquake, rumbling, turbulence, or impact
Copyright
A legal concept, enacted by most governments, giving the creator of an original work exclusive rights, usually for a limited time. Generally, it is "the right to copy", but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights. It is a form of intellectual property (like the patent, the trademark, and the trade secret) applicable to any expressible form of an idea or information that is substantive and discrete.
Fair Dealing
A limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. Fair dealing is an enumerated set of possible defenses against an action for infringement of an exclusive right of copyright. Unlike the related US doctrine of fair use, fair dealing cannot apply to any act, which does not fall within one of these categories.
Fair Use
A limitation and exception to the exclusive right granted by copyright law to the author of a creative work. In United States copyright law, fair use is a doctrine that permits limited use of copyrighted material without acquiring permission from the rights holders. Examples of fair use include commentary, search engines, criticism, news reporting, research, teaching, library archiving and scholarship. It provides for the legal, unlicensed citation or incorporation of copyrighted material in another author's work under a four-‐factor balancing test.
Dots Per Inch
A measure of output resolution in relationship to printers, imagesetters and monitors.
Animation
A medium that creates the illusion of movement through the projection of a series of still images or frames
Claymation
A method of animation in which clay forms or figures are filmed using stop motion photography. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable" and made out of a malleable substance, usually plasticine clay
Beats Per Minute(BPM)
A particular note value (for example, a quarter note or crotchet) is specified as the beat, and the marking indicates that a certain number of these beats must be played per minute. The greater the tempo, the larger the number of beats that must be played in a minute is, and, therefore, the faster a piece must be played.
Font
A particular size, weight and style of a typeface
Grayscale
A range of gray shades from white to black, as used in a monochrome display or printout
Animatic
A rough animation that is used by animators to give some idea about the timing of a sequence, used as a kind of animated storyboard. This gives an early impression of the flow of the story and serves as a precise guide for the length of the animated scenes.
Dialogue
A script calling for two people talking to each other.
Blinn
A shading choice (in Maya) and is a softly shiny material type that yields a smooth look with specular highlights. This shading option will make a softly shiny object with bright but not hard-‐edged highlights.
Ad Lib
A spontaneous spoken addition or alteration to a written script.
Bounding Box
A square or rectangle around an image that allows it to be resized or distorted.
Frame
A still two-‐dimensional image. In computer animation, the term 'frames per second' (fps) is a measurement of the number of still frames displayed in one second to give the impression of a moving image.
Cel Shading
A technique whereby three-‐dimensional computer imagery is output using flat colors and black outlines to resemble traditional cel animation
Foley
A term that describes the process of live recording of sound effects that are created by a Foley artist, which are added in post production to enhance the quality of audio for films, television, video, video games and radio
Avant-Garde
A term used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to the arts, literature and politics
Gradient
A transition of color, creating a blended change between screen percentages of a single color or between two different colors.
Follow Shot
A truck pan or zoom that follows a moving subject
Establishing Shot
A wide shot at the beginning of a scene to inform viewers of a new location and to orient them to the relative placement of characters and objects
Continued
Action or dialogue continues from one panel or scene to the next
Background
Actions or items behind the subject on which the camera is focusing
Headroom
Amount of space between the top of an actors head and the top of the frame
Composition
An arrangement and/or structure of all elements on a two-‐ dimensional surface, according to the principles or organization, to achieve a unified whole
Booth (Sound Booth)
An enclosed, soundproofed room where voice talent usually works.
Computer Generated Imagery
An image or images created or manipulated with the aid of a computer. The term is often used to refer specifically to 3D computer animation
2D Digitial Animation
Animation that has the same look and feel of a traditional two-dimensional animation, but was created using ditigal mediums
Countering
Camera moving in the opposite direction to that of the subject
Cool Colors
Colors have a relative temperature: green, blue, and violet
Expression
Conveying a thought, emotion, or meaning in an artwork, sometimes synonymous with content
Breakdown
Drawn or written shot descriptions based on a script
EFX
Effects, also called SFX
Flash Cut
Extremely brief shot, sometimes only one frame. Used as an effect, such as a white frame, for a gunshot or lightning effect
Aerial
Extremely high-‐angle shot, usually taken from a plane or helicopter
Fade Out
Fade from a scene to black; used in scripts to "end"
Fade in
Fade from black to a scene; used in scripts to "begin"
Cel
Familiar term for 'celluloid' the transparent sheet on which characters are inked (on the back) and painted (on the back)
Doubles
Filming animated images over two frames instead of one, thereby effectively reducing the frame rate in half in order to halve the number of drawings needed
Cleanups
Finished pencil or ink over initial rough storyboards
Cut
Hard edit from one shot to the next
Full Shot
Head-‐to-‐toe framing of a subject
Diagonal
In animation, a tilted pan. In live action, a camera move up and to the side
CMYK
In graphic design, a color system in which successive printings of cyan, magenta, yellow, and black (Black is referred to as key) visually mix to produce a wide gamut of colors; also called four-‐color printing or full-‐color printing
Foreground
Items or actors closer to the camera than other elements in the frame
Deep Focus
Keeping the extreme foreground and background in focus at the same time
Chronophotography
Multiple exposures on glass plates or strips of film
Dissolve
One scene on the screen dissolves or fades into the next as a soft transition; used to slow the pace of a scene or show transition in time
Cross Dissolve
One scene on the screen dissolves or fades into the next as a soft transition; used to slow the pace of a scene or show a transition in time
Crossing The Line
Placement of the camera in relation to the action and an invisible line, which when crossed causes the action to look like its direction has reversed. Action has crossed the line when the subject appears to go into the opposite direction in successive cuts. This happens frequently when shot A shows the subject from left to right on the screen and shot B shows the subject going from right to left
Focus Pull
Refocusing the lens to follow a character or object
Down Shot
Same as high angle or Bird's Eye View
Crosscutting
Showing parallel action by alternating between shots of two or more scenes
Bitmap
Strictly speaking, a bitmap is a 1-‐bit black and white image. However, the term is often loosely applied to any two-‐dimensional image, regardless of bit depth.
Genre
Subject matter concerned with everyday domestic life
Character Animation
The art of animating characters using acquired knowledge of and/or reference to the movement of real life figures combined with levels of stylization, exaggeration, and artistic license, with the ultimate intention of delivering a "performance" much like that of an actor and bringing the characters to life. The character's dialogue is usually prerecorded and used as a guide for the animation
Bird's Eye View
The camera is up high looking down
High Angle(HA)
The camera is up high looking down
Boom Down
The camera moves down in a vertical motion
Boom Up
The camera moves up in a vertical motion
Hue
The common name of a color and its position in the spectrum determined by the wavelength of the ray of light
Afterimage
The complementary color seen after staring at an area of intense color for a certain amount of time and then quickly looking away towards a white surface
Cast Shadow
The dark area projected from an illuminated form onto other objects or the background
Depth of Field
The distance from the camera lens that is in focus
Dubbing
is the process of dialogue replacement in a foreign film, as in dubbing a French voice into English.
File Format
The format in which the data making up a particular project is stored (.jpg / .mov / .lwo etc)
Canted Frame
The frame of the horizon is not parallel to horizontal. This is used to disorient the viewer or show that a character is out of sorts
Ground Plane
The ground we stand on, rather than the ground or canvas of the painting or drawing - or a more abstracted plane
Horizon
The horizontal line in the distance where the sky meets the ground
Anthropomorphization
The humanizing of animal or object characters through the addition of human body parts, human thinking processes and therefore human behaviors.
Dolly
The movement of the camera along a horizontal line. If the camera is to be mounted to a dolly, then the term dolly is most appropriate
Bit Depth
The number of bits used to define the shade or color of each pixel in an image, a bit being the smallest unit of memory or storage on a computer. A 1-‐bit image is black and white. An 8-‐bit image provides a 256-‐color palette. A 24-‐bit image provides 16.7 million possible colors and is sometimes known as True Color. A 32-‐bit image provides the same palette, plus an 8-‐bit grayscale alpha channel.
Hex Value
The number-‐letter combination used to identify colors used on the Internet (web safe colors). Each number-‐letter combination will have six digits (ex. FF0000 is red)
Color
The perceptual response to the wavelengths of visible light and having the attributes of hue, saturation, and brightness
Design
The planned arrangement of visual elements on which artists and designers base their work.
Anti-Alias
The process of smoothing edges around a selection. It differs from feathering in that it does not blur the edges but instead softens them by blending the colors of the outer pixels with the background pixels. This results in no loss of detail. You must choose anti-‐aliasing before selecting; it cannot be added after a selection has been made.
Brightness
The relative lightness or darkness of a color. Zero brightness is black and 100% is white; intermediate values are light and dark colors, also called luminance or value
Cutout
The technique of cutting out drawings on cardstock, often into various sections that are put on a background and then moved and photographed frame by frame
Aesthetics
The theory of what is considered artistic or beautiful. Traditionally a branch of philosophy, now a concern with the artistic qualities of form, as opposed to mere description of what we see
HSB (HSL)
The three attributes of color: hue, saturation, and brightness (lightness)
Alpha Channel
The top byte of a 32-‐bit pixel that is used for data other than color. The alpha channel commonly holds mask data, enabling an image to be separated from its background for use in compositing.
Art Direction
The visual look and feel of a creative product
Close-Up
This shot should include the tops of an actor's head with little headroom
3D
Three-‐Dimensional. Descriptive of a region of space that has width, height, and depth
Field In
To zoom the camera closer to the animation
Audio
Transmission, reception or reproduction of sound.
2D
Two Dimensional. Descriptive of a region of space that has width and height
Effects Animation
Usually done by a specialist, this term encompasses most non-‐ character animation: wind, rain, fire, explosions, and the like
Bullet-time effect
Visual Effects concepts adapted from Muybridge's multi-‐ camera system. The cameras are arranged around the subject and are fired simultaneously. When viewed in rapid succession it gives the impression of being frozen in time (used frequently throughout the Matrix films)
Exaggeration
the act of making something more noticeable than usual