Popular Flash Animations

The animation that I enjoyed watching the most was "Dancing Animals in Love."  The story was about all of these creatures dancing, laughing, and happily singing about falling in love.  I enjoyed watching the animation because the story was cute and the song that went along with it was also very catchy.  The characters were very childish and unrealistic looking because they did not look like real characters that would exist in our reality.  They were made up of all different colors, shapes, and sizes.  The style of graphics looked like a cartoon type of graphic that could be seen in scenes from a children's book or movie.  I say this because not only were there childish-looking characters throughout the animation, but there were also a lot of flowers, grassy plains and trees, butterflies, rainbows, bright and happy colors, and all of the animals had a big smile across their faces the entire time.  However, there were a few scenes that were a bit inappropriate for a children's theme, such as when the animals were licking and mating, and especially what surprised me the most was at the very end of the video when suddenly several enormous buildings shoot out of the ground killing all of the animals....  It was definitely unexpected and contradicted the children's book theme that they had going on throughout the entire rest of the video, which made the animation very ironic.  The characters were also very simple animations, though, as there were very few and limited movements.  For example, during the part where all of the animals were clapping, there was a still image of the animal's face while only it's body (the arms) of the animal moved together in a clapping movement to make a simple animation of the animals clapping.  The transitions in this animation would for the most part just immediately flash to another scene in the video, either in the same location or to a scene with a completely different background.  Sometimes the transition would show the previous scene but either zoomed in or zoomed out, and several times it would pan horizontally across showing the rest of the characters and scenes.  All of these factors about this animation, the characters, the story, style of graphics, and transitions, are what made the animation work and flow together, and what made it successful.

Some things that I could carry over to my animation efforts are following similar transition effects that were used in the animation "Dancing Animals in Love," as it gave me many ideas that were clear and very possible for me to do in my animations as well.  Also, the characters in this animation inspired me to try to use some in my future animations that are of similar type of graphics.  These type of characters would be those where they can be very simple and unrealistic looking characters that do not need to have a lot of movement to them in order to get the point of what action they are performing across to the viewer.

http://www.shortoftheweek.com/2009/02/19/dancing-animals-in-love/

Character Flash Animations

I found 3 different styles of characters in the different Flash animations, "This Is the Best Burrito I've Ever Eaten," the "Yu-Gi-Oh Theme Song," and the "Powerpuff Girls Theme Song."

"This Is the Best Burrito I've Ever Eaten"
I chose this flash animation because it showed how some characters can be made really simple and not have many motions to it, yet is still able to get the point across that the character is walking, for example, by only moving the legs while the rest of the body and head stays still.

"Yu-Gi-Oh Theme Song"

I chose this flash animation because it shows more detailed character designs and graphics and also because it shows the characters performing more complex movements rather than just the movement of one part of the body at a time, like the simpler animations' characters do.

"Powerpuff Girls Theme Song"

I chose this flash animation because the Powerpuff Girls are a good example of another simple character that can easily be made basically with a circle and a few other shapes.  In this example of a flash animation the backgrounds do a lot of the work to make it seem like the characters are moving.  For example, when the girls are "flying" they are actually not moving at all (except for their bows blowing in the wind) but the background is moving sideways to make it appear as if they were moving.

Hansel & Gretel Animation Blog

This animation is a short "silhouette film" designed and animated by Lotte Reiniger, and is about the classic story of "Hansel and Gretel."  It is a very simple animation as the characters are just the simple silhouettes of the two children and not much detail is put into the shapes.  The entire animation is made is black and white as well, optimizing different shades of black, white, and grey to make different shapes throughout the scenes.  The story starts off with the children leaving their mom at their home to go play in the woods.  It shows several scenes of them traveling through the woods until they end up at the witch's house made of candy where they end up getting lured in and stuck doing manual labor for the witch because she will not let them leave.  Eventually, with the help of animals, Gretel gets rid of the witch and she and Hansel escape with the animals.  The story ends with the children walking back through the same woods as they were in in the beginning of the animation and ending up back at their house with their parents.
This animation also used many different perspectives and angles, such as a far away shot on a character sitting in a field of flowers to zooming in on her making a headband out of the flowers and putting it on her head.  Another example is that it would show the house made of candy zoomed out, then just one side of it, then another scene where just the right side of it would be showing.  There were many different viewpoints and positions that the viewer experienced the story through in this animation.
Every transition in this animation goes from one scene directly to another just by having the screen go black for what seems like only a millisecond and then showing the new scene by having it appear next.  It works well in this animation, though, because it would portray Hansel and Gretel in one scene, for example, the woods, then flash to another scene of them still in woods but in a different location where it looks just a bit different.  Sometimes it would flash from a zoomed out scene to a zoomed in one and back to a zoomed out one, or it would show a different angle of that same scene.  For the scenes where it went from one setting to a completely different one, the screen would go black for a longer period of time but no more than a few seconds.

After looking at these animations, this animation will definitely help me with creating my moodboard and storyboard for my first city animation.  I know I have to create a story and I also am using silhouettes in my animation so I got several ideas from watching this film by seeing how they created and moved their simple silhouettes and how they had them interact with each other.  I also have thought of several more ideas about the different uses of perspective that I am going to incorporate into my animation, such as zoomed out scenes, zoomed in scenes, panning across or up different scenes or objects, and using different angles.  Finally, watching the transitions in this animation really helped me think of ideas of how to do transitions in my animation, such as using the simple screen flashing black then having the new scene instantly appear.  I also want to make the screen go black for a little longer than a quick millisecond when the scene is changing to a completely different setting.  Also, I am going to use the technique I saw in this animation of changing from one scene in a certain setting to another scene in the same setting but I am going to try to make it obvious the scenes are still in the same setting but use different angles or perspectives of zooming in or out of that setting.

Revised City Animation Moodboard

Modified City Storyboard

First Draft City Storyboard

Washington D.C. Moodboard

Here is my moodboard for the city animation: