Mandar Apte

UI/UX Designer from Mumbai, Maharashtra, India.

Category: Animation Film Design

Animation is the process of creating the illusion of motion and shape change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon. Animators are artists who specialise in the creation of animation.

  • Animation Film Making Notes

    Here is the collection of ‘Animation Film Making Notes’, Notes are collected from Wikipedia, Wikibooks & SIGGRAPH. I found it helpful so sharing it with you all…

    SIGGRAPH Notes on Animation Film Making by John Lasseter & Ollie Johnston

    Tricks to Animating Characters with a Computer
    Reference: These notes come from Course 1 at SIGGRAPH 94, “Animation Tricks”.
    This are the Notes by Disney & Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter, he is the first animator to work on 3D computer animation, “The Aventures of André and Wally B.,” He is Exucutive Producer & Director of Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Cars, and Cars 2.

    Animation Notes from Ollie Johnston
    Reference: These notes come from Course 1 at SIGGRAPH 94, “Animation Tricks”.
    Ollie Johnston is Animator from Disney, He is one of famous Disney’s Nine Old Men. He Co-Authored with Frank Thomas the Book ‘Disney Animation –  Illusion of Life’. He has documented 12 principles of Animation in the same book.

    Wikipedia Notes on Animation Film Making

    Animation Techniques
    This documents differant Animation Techniques under one page It has great documentation by WiKi

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  • Design Tools Comparison

    Today I decided to compare different design tools or computer applications available in market to just to differentiate them with each other

    Before even talking about Computer Design Applications you can guess what big companies are involved in to developing them, examples are Adobe, Autodesk, Apple, Microsoft

    Sometimes as Graphic Designer, Web Designer, Animator is really hard to understand what tools to choose before even starting a design process but you have to keep in mind that tool are just tools not an design solution that will dictate your design process but it will just help you to do your job done.

    Comparison of Design Tools can be made on following basis:

    1. Price
    2. Ease of Use
    3. Popularity
    4. Type (Raster or Vector or Voxel)
    5. Apps’ Availability over particular Computer Operating Systems
    6. Compatibility with other file format & tools
    7. Features

    Price
    Price of paid apps like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator are around $ 1,000. Paid apps may cost too much to your pocket if you are starting a fresh as a freelancer. But there are other opensource apps may just cost nothing to you pocket & save lot of investment in digital assets like apps

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  • What is right PC or Mac for Design i.e. Choosing Your Dream Machine to do Designing & less Computing

    Let me help you to buy your personal computer to do design…!!!

    As Apple’s Boilerplate suggest, ‘Apple ignited the personal computer revolution with the Apple II, then reinvented the personal computer with the Macintosh. Apple continues to lead the industry with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system, and iLife, iWork and professional applications. Apple leads the digital music revolution with its iPods and iTunes online store, has reinvented the mobile phone with its revolutionary iPhone and App Store, and has recently introduced its magical iPad which is defining the future of mobile media and computing devices.’

    It all started with Macintosh & Mac Paint…

    But in decade of 90’s Microsoft’s Windows system dominated the User Interface Driven & icon & folder driven computing.

    But When you want to buy a personal computer to do design tasks in your work routine you will want to buy a better computer with great processing power, a large display to occupy big images than to just minimizing & maximizing images, with good internet & networking support, big amount of RAM, Larger capacity hard drive.

    If you go by cost factor attached to buying a personal computer then assembled computer will win the race as computer hardware will cost around $500 & installing a linux operating system will add no cost to the bill. but you have to keep in mind the Adobe doesn’t support Linux operating system so most Adobe Apps like Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Flash will not work & support Linux.

    Then you will say what about Dell, HP & Sony computers…??? Well don’t they just are another type of Branded Assembled Computer who are using Windows 7 Operating system???

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  • Creating & Choosing Your First Design Portfolio Format & updating it over the years

    Being in field of ‘Design’ where person identified by his work… So documenting your own work in some kind of portfolio or just collection of well designed Artworks will work for Artist & his career.

    In today’s world of digital art having portfolio in tradition form like printed artworks on fine paper sticked inside leather jacket & having own domain name & website dedicated to showcase portfolio online will build credibility to artist’s professional career

    First I will describe what details that portfolio should describe on his portfolio

    1. First Page with Introduction to Artist & his Background
    2. Title of Artwork
    3. Brief Given
    4. Method of Approaching to Work & some details
    5. Nice High Quality Screen Shots of work
    6. Nice Layout & Arrangement of Artworks
    7. Year of Design
    8. Copyright Notice
    9. Artist’s Contact Details
    10. Credits
    11. A Thank You Note

    Here we look in to two ways of building portfolio, Digitally & in Traditional printed form.

    Digital Portfolio
    A Digital Portfolio may contains of two platforms PDF (Portable Document Format) PDF is Open Standard of Document Exchange, (I will not recommend PPT – Power Point Presentation as it needs Microsoft Powerpoint installer on display machine) & HTML (Website)

    Portfolio in PDF File
    You can design portfolio in Raster Format through Photoshop & then export it to PDF or Design Portfolio in CorelDRAW, Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign & then export it in to multipage PDF. Having consistent user experience will definitely work to identify you with your artwork.

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  • Meet the Filmmaker: John Lasseter Interview

    I came around this Podcast by Apple Inc. about Meet The Filmmaker – John Lasseter.

    This Podcast is film & host by Apple Inside their own Apple Store… They even have many more listed inside iTunes Store to view & download.

    I totally liked this podcast as John Lasseter talks about his passion behind making Pixar film & how Pixar Functions & operates… He even talk about early day of Pixar as an Science Lab… He talk about how computer animation is originated through Science…

    So really It’s Interesting to watch by all Computer Animators & even by Traditional Animators as originally John Lasseter is from Traditional Disney Animation Background & alumni of Disney’s own Animation School

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  • Want to attend a design interview? What will you carry in to showcase your design portfolio, and what will cost less to your pocket? MacBook? MacBook Air? or Just An iPad

    For almost the last year or two, I have been surrounded by this question….

    You want to attend an interview with a big company for a post related to the design industry…

    Then what will you carry with your MacBook? or MacBook Air? or iPad…

    Carrying your whole work portfolio on a CD or Flash Drive is risky as a recruiter may copy your work to their computer without asking you to do so. So there is the possibility of theft of your intellectual property… So, the right way to carry out your work would be on your Mac.

    What would be your next portable machine if you owned a desktop, like an iMac or Mac Pro? A MacBook or MacBook Air or iPad.

    It will be the right way to compare these Apple Products would be through their Price, Display Resolution Size, User Interaction and experience.

    Practically thinking all are Portables or Tablet & they all have Multi-Touch Gesture Support.

    All are costly: MacBook is $1,000, MacBook Air is $1,500, and iPad is $829.

    MacBook & MacBook have Mechanical keyboards, but the iPad has a Modern Multi-Touch UI that is groundbreaking in the Industry that even competitors are not catching up with,

    iPad 2 is with the duel processing in Tablet Form,

    MacBook Air & iPad have no optical media support, but all have WiFi inbuilt… But Adobe Flash Player is not supported on iPad.

    iPad Display Resolution is 1024px by 768px, MacBook’s Display Resolution is 1280px by 800px, MacBook Air’s Display Resolution is 1440px by 900px.

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  • Types of Private Animation Institutes or Schools in India

    Because of vary few government schools teaching animation in India, Private sector has took over the lead of teaching animation by large margin in India. Situation of Private Animation Teaching Institutes is vary bad… Here are few points I observed while learning animation from few of this institutes by myself…

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  • Types of Animation Students in India

    I found myself surrounded by few of this aspiring animation brats while I am learning animation…!!!

    Type 01
    “Clay Animation? How Cute!!!” An Aspiring Animation Brat
    One day I was seating in a animation class & I came across this exclamation thought…
    “tell me about Animation!”, “Who Does Animation”, “How He does it?”, “Where it Happens?”, It reminds me of Hindi Film ‘Dil To Pagal Hai…’
    And It was the same day I came across this thought, “Animation? How Sweet? How Cute?”, I never did & never will understand what is cute in doing in animation, It is a day’s of work…!!!

    Type 02
    “Tell me About 3D…!!!”
    I was explaining the one person the process of animation & how it is done & recommending some books to him, he said, “I am more interested in 3D Animation, I don’t want to learn from books or basics of animation, I just want to learn 3D… because 3D is the future because Pixar & even Disney is doing it… & Why I should waste my time in learning 2D or that matter other types of animation.”

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  • Designed on Mac & Designing on Something Else

    Few points that I recognize that are important while experiencing design process on Mac & Something else called PC… Those are as follows

    Designed on Mac

    1. Mac has factory Calibrated display
    2. Square looks Square & Rectangle looks Rectangle & not other way around
    3. 15% black has identity on display & which is recognizable
    4. It has world class Industrial Design working for you
    5. It’s a style statement while using it
    6. No compatibility problem while working in group
    7. You know your design will look exactly as it is on every mac
    8. ‘Designed on Mac’ is kind of branding itself for your work for quality
    9. You have full control on your machine not other way round
    10. Has kind of hardware insurance as an ‘Apple Care’ program
    11. Almost clean workspace
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  • One Designer’s Problems Having MBA person as his Project Manager

    1. MBA Person thinks he own all work & credit of the same work as his own not the artist… because he thinks by giving suggestions & corrections he owns the artwork as his intellectual property…
    2. Because of the earlier point MBA person thinks he owns the salary increment & not the artist for work done by the artist.
    3. Manager thinks he should get at least 7 options for design problem & Designer thinks what the F
    4. When Designer say to MBA guy we need specialist in development but MBA person thinks otherwise & ask’s then “What’s Your Use?”
    5. Designer thinks about himself as he is designer… & he has to learn a lot about design
    6. MBA persona thinks about himself as he is BOSS… & he knows everything about design
    7. Designer is Designer but MBA person is Boss + Designer
    8. MBA person thinks Photoshop can do anything I mean almost everything… but designer says I need Illustrator or CorelDRAW
    9. One fine day MBA guy learns about GIMP & he thinks our designer should adopt GIMP than investing lot money on Photoshop
    10. MBA degree earns the respect & Designer degree has do lot of work…