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Computer Animation Techniques in Movie Characters

Have you ever wondered how computer animated characters in movies are made? There’s more to the process than you would think, and more than one way to do it to. What are some movies that you can think of that have characters that are animated? The first full-length animated movie was Disney’s Toy Story. The first real life animated character is Gollum from Lord of the Rings. He was also the first animated character to receive an award for best-animated character. That said, do you think computer animated characters should receive such awards, and who should be the ones to actually receive it? Do you foresee any problems with this technology? The ability to fully animate human movies is moving closer and closer to the present. How would society react to movies that humans were completely animated? Would the sense of false reality in these movies, create a distaste in people minds for this new genre? This new technology would allow characters to do their own stunts without the possibility of getting hurt. But is this what society is looking for? Super humans that never age, die, or have a life for the paparazzi to snap photos of. Would the use of famous voices and faces be the key to the success of these movies? This idea would also give people that don’t fit the part (looks or acting abilities) the opportunity to be in a movie by using their voice with an animated human character. Techniques There are many different animating techniques that are used today, and almost all of them require the use or assistance of computers. CGI or computer generated images –uses several different types of computer software to animate characters, and other things such as landscapes. Wire frame model- is a 3D “wire” looking model with no color. It’s purely made up of straight lines and vertices. 3D animation vector graphics- is mainly used as the backbone of landscape animation, but could also be used to create simple forms of characters. Motion Capture- is a technique used to digitally record movements using sensors. It can capture position, acceleration, velocities, impulse, and angles. Tweening or Morphing- is the cutting and splicing the space between two frames to make them better flow, and to not have a motion gap. Skeletal animation- is a two-part animation that is separated by surface movements, and skeletal movements. The method bases movements off of bone movements, instead of vertex-to-vertex making this method less time consuming. Morph target animation or per-vertex animation- is sometimes used instead of skeletal animation because the ability to control movements more precisely, and going beyond the movements of skeletal animation. But this method is a lot more time consuming. There are also some unique camera angles used to create reality within these digital movies. When the viewer’s movie screen is limited to the restricted view by a cameraman, the perspective is drastically changed.

Examples: I have included some pictures of recent digitally animated movies to give you an idea of the techniques I have mentioned above. From these examples you can see how characters are transformed, and created into real life. In the example of “Final Fantasy” the human characters look very life like. A little sample of what we can expect them to build off of in the future.

Gollum

[1] Picture finished

[2] process Antz [3]

 Dory
[4]
 Shrek

[5] Final Fantasy

[6]

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