Animation comes in many different forms. Whether it’s for a tv identity, a logo or a lyric video, they all have different aspects that are visible in the same types of animation. Whether it’s kinetic typography, stop frame or motion graphics.
Kinetic Typography is when there are words that move and often the animated word signifies the verbal meaning of the word. Kinetic typography refers to the creation of moving words. It is an animation technique that is used to make lettering expand, shrink, fly, move in slow motion, grow and change in numerous ways for the user. The effect can be simple and short with only small changes or quite elaborate and lengthy. This is mainly used for lyric music videos, but can be used for other things such as advertisements.
An example of a kinetic typography video is the music video for “Nevermore” by Alesana.
The words on the screen seem to flip up into view from behind the previous word, in time with when they are said in the song. This band uses singing and screaming in their songs. I can see that when the screaming parts can be heard, the video appears to shake a lot more than when there are clean vocals. I also noticed that during the screaming parts, significant words have some aspect changed about them, such as the colour.
Another example of a Kinetic Typography video is an animated monologue from the main character of the TV show “Breaking Bad”. The animation features simple movements that signify main words in the monologue, while also having a simple font showing every word that is said by the two characters that can be heard in this video.
This technique of animation helps convey emotion in the words and helps get the animators/artists point across.
Another type of animation is motion graphics. This type often uses live action video footage combined with digital graphics. However it doesn’t always do this, it is also often fully animated, used for moving tv identities and sometimes film credits.
An example of a video that uses motion graphics is the music video for “wildfire” by Crossfaith.
This video uses footage from their live performances as well as small parts that are animated. These parts are small enough to not over power the live action footage, but large enough to be noticeable throughout the video. The animations appear to be mostly visible when the song is at it’s heaviest and when significant things appear in the video.
Another example of motion graphics animation are the educational science videos by “Kurzgesagt” (German for “In a nutshell”)
These videos are fully animated, featuring a man talking over the video explaining the science. Quite often in educational videos, the speaker explains what is happening on the screen, but in these videos the animations complement what the narrator is saying and make it simpler and easier to understand what he is talking about. It is also visually pleasing, using flat colours and simple animations that aren’t too overpowering of what can be heard through the ears.
A fully animated motion graphics animation that is more complicated than the previous two, is the animated internet show, RWBY created by Rooster Teeth. The characters in the show are created using motion capture of real people, apart from the very intricate scenes. These captured motions are then animated into the characters and given voices etc.
The last example of animation that I will be covering is Stop Frame. This is when an animation is created via taking a photo of the subject, moving it a very small amount, taking another photo and repeating the process until the intended animation is produced.
This Stop Frame animation called “shiny” features a short adventure of a man that helps a woman get her diamond that everyone is after. The animation just uses clothes and sound effects to convey what is happening during the story, there are no real life people shown in the entire video. It is easy to see how long it must have taken to create this animation, having to move each piece of clothing a very small amount and taking a photo of it every time they are moved.
Stop Frame animation can use a large range of materials, clay, clothes, people, paper and many more.
This short animation uses paper and a small amount of computer graphics. Every motion that the dog makes has been drawn out, which means that it must’ve been drawn hundreds of times.
kcimgd-Zachary Creer 