Build your Own 3D Glasses

Materials

• Oaktag (sturdy poster board)
• Scissors
• Clear tape
• Basic pattern for glasses (Download PDF (72KB)
• Sheets of red and blue acetate (available at art supply stores)

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Steps

1. Cut out the sample pattern (including eyeholes) for your 3D glasses and tape the sides to the center section. You now have your stencil for the actual glasses.
2. Trace the stencil on the oaktag or sturdy poster board. Cut the glasses out making sure to also cut out the eyeholes.
3. Tape the red (left) and blue (right) acetate pieces to cover the eyeholes. Make sure to cut the acetate pieces a little larger than the opening for the eyes. DO NOT get tape on parts of the acetate visible through the eyehole.

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Hints

• You can decorate the glasses using any materials on hand. Encourage students to be as creative as possible!
• The pattern provided is just one possible style. Vary the outer shape of the glasses to make them unique.
• Take a picture of the whole class wearing their glasses. Or, even better, Use the class wearing their glasses as the subject of your 3D photo!

(PDF Format)

Appeal

Where the live action actor has charisma, the animated character has appeal.
Quality
Audiences like to see a quality of charm, pleasing design, simplicity, communication, or magnetism. A weak drawing or design lacks appeal. A design that is complicated or hard to read lacks appeal. Clumsy shapes and awkward moves all have low appeal.

Posing

In creating an appealing pose for a character, one thing to avoid is called "twins", where both arms and both legs are in the same position, doing the same thing. This creates a stiff pose that is unappealing. Vary the parts of the body a bit, including the facial features, makes a character more appealing.

Exaggeration

Exaggeration can be used in animation with great results.

Essence

However the key to proper use of exaggeration lies in exploring the essence of the action or idea, understanding the reason for it, so that the audience will also understand it. If a character is sad, make him sadder; if he is bright, make him shine; worried, make him fret

Balance

A scene has many components to it including design, action, objects and emotion. Exaggeration of every element in a scene creates a feeling of uneasiness in your audience. Everything is distorted and unrealistic. Find a balance in your scene. Allow your audience a grounds for comparison of the exaggeration and by so doing, the whole scene will remain very realistic to them.

Timing

Timing, or the speed of an action, is an important principle because it gives meaning to movement. The speed of an action defines how well the idea will be read to the audience.

Weight

Timing can also defines the weight of an object. Two similar objects can appear to be vastly different weights by manipulating timing alone.

For example, if you were to hit a croquet ball and a balloon with a mallet, the result would be two different actions. The croquet ball would require more force to place it into motion, would go farther, and need more force to stop it. On the other hand, the balloon would require far less force to send it flying, and because of it's low mass and weight, it wouldn't travel as far, and would require less force to stop it.

Scaling

PropertiesTiming can also contribute to size and scale of an object or character. A larger character has more mass, more weight and more inertia than a tiny character, therefore it moves slower. In contrast, a tiny character has less mass, weight, and inertia, therefore its movements are quicker.

Determining

EmotionTiming plays an essential role in illustrating the emotional state of an object or character. It is the varying speed of the characters movements that indicate whether a character is lethargic, excited, nervous, or relaxed.

Secondary Action

A secondary action is an action that results directly from another action. Secondary actions are important in heightening interest and adding a realistic complexity to the animation.

Conflict

If a secondary action conflicts with, becomes more interesting, or dominates in any way, it is either the wrong choice or is staged improperly.

Facial Animation Danders

Generally, in facial animation, the movement is a secondary action, subordinate to the bodies movement. The danger with facial animation isn't that it will dominate the scene, but that it will not be seen. The change in expression should happen before or after a move, changes in the middle of a major move will mostly likely go unnoticed.

Arcs

Expressive Motion

The visual path of action from one extreme to another is always described by an arc. In nature, arcs are the most economical routes by which a form can move from one position to another.

Such arcs are used extensively in animation, since they create motion that is more expressive and less stiff than action along a straight path.

Relevance in CGI

In Computer Animation, motion is usually represented in a timeline view using splines(arcs). The arcs represent the values of an objects parameters at a specific moment in time. The method used for calculating interpolated keyframe values determines the characteristic of the arc(motion).

A linear interpolation creates motion that is rather dull and stiff. While a spline interpolation creates motion that is more expressive.

Slow In and Out or Eases

Slow in and out

deals with the spacing of the inbetween drawings between the extreme poses

Interpolation

By default, interpolation of an objects inbetween positions between extreme poses are evenly spaced, and graphed as a straight line from one value to another. "Slowing out"(ease out) of one pose, then "slowing in" to the next pose generate inbetweens clustered on either end of the distance between the extremes, with less inbetweens toward the center. When graphed, an ease in and out is graphed as a spline from one pose to the next.

Speed

Eases can be used to create acceleration and deceleration. As a ball bounces, it accelerates and decelerates. When you drop the ball, it gains speed as it approaches the ground. After the impact on the ground it bounces and begins to loose speed as it reaches the apex of its bounce. The graph of the balls acceleration would show an increasing distance between the balls positions as it came closer to the ground. Similarly, the graph of the balls bounce off the ground would indicate a decreasing distance between the balls positions as it reaches the apex.

Tangency

With this type of spline interpolation, it is common to have spline overshooting at extreme poses when there is a large change in value between them over a small number of frames. Tangency handles can be used to manipulate the tension of the spline, reducing the overshooting and achieving the desired inbetween.