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