From: ereidell@media.mit.edu (Evan A. Reidell)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.animation
Subject: Homemade claymation, cel animation, and computer animation on Amigas
Summary: I'm bored and want to talk about making animation
Date: 23 Jul 92 18:06:10 GMT
Distribution: usa
Organization: MIT Media Laboratory

1. Homemade claymation.
   Using my Amiga 2000HD, a NewTek Digi-View video digitizer and a cheap
Panasonic security camera, I have had lots of fun making stop motion
animation and doing claymation.  With DigiView 4.0, you could use a
keystroke to digitize the video still, and another keystroke to save it.
Then page-flip all the frames.  Looks great.

I wanted to digitize all frames at maximum NTSC overscan (704x480?
752x480!)  but that "feature" kept crashing both when recording the
frames with DigiView, and with playback via pageflipping in DPaint.
I ended up compromising with 640x400, 4 bits of greyshades.  I grow
frustrated when a feature that is included in a software package does
not work.  DigiView's overscan mode seemed to crash too often, also
creating Anims in Dpaint III overscan crashed all the time.  And the
752x480x4bit frames went by at a sluggish 4 or 6 frames per second.  I
wonder how to get them to go by at 30 (well, 29.97) frames per second.
Maybe you need a 486 for that.

/* What is the minimum NTSC RS-170A resoltion, and what is the maximum?
How many 'lines' per vertical scan line, min and max?  How much color
must you have, can you have (it's probably a lum/chrom freq.limit) */

The security camera (a Panasonic WV-1500) has some "auto-iris" feature,
which is neatokeen for a real security camera that shouldn't be defeated
by THUGS with FLASHLIGHTS, but it made the contrast and brightness of
the claymation vary and flicker in a non-ideal way.  Oh well.  So try to
get cameras with adjustable, fixable iris!

This time-delayed smiley is for the 486 'joke' back there. :-)

2. Cel Animation
   I was pretty disappointed with Disney's Animation Studio, but had fun
with it anyway.  And what did I expect?!  Well, I was actually expecting
some combination of Adobe Illustrator, Dpaint III's anim / perspective
stuff and animbrushes, along with the main feature of AnimStudio:
onion-skin layering.  Maybe next year's upgrade.  Still a lot of
potential for 'cel' animation yet to be realized, even if all you have
is a 1-bitplane 320x200 screen to draw on.  We still need better 2D
graphics editing tools, not to mention 'editing' the third dimension of
time...  animbrushes is the right idea, but still needs improving.
Think about better tools for doing 2D raster animations.

3. Computer animation
   I created a lot of wireframe animations of homemade 3D objects with
IMAGINE 1.1.  I didn't do much rendering of color images (took too much
time), but I loved to see sweeping, moving camera shots of the virtual
World filled with the homemade wireframe objects doing funky things.
Imagine is a good fun program, I understand Imagine 2.0 is even more
amazing.  Check it out, along with Steve Worley's UNDERSTANDING IMAGINE
2.0, and you won't need a Silicon Graphics workstation after all.

I suppose I could mix cel, 3D-algorithmic and clay/time-lapse animations
in one hybrid animation.  Wow.  I should do that - just to see it.  I
think it's interesting, that armed with an Amiga, a video camera & video
digitizer, a few programs, and a mouse to draw with, you can do your own
animation experiments, create Things Never Seen, generate Artificial Life,
make your own Aeon Flux.  It's 1992, and the software is still buggy and
frustrating, but we have come a long way if your can do all this sitting
at your desk in your room with your little electronic toolbox.

Flames directly to me.  I hope this inspires more people than it frustrates.
Newsgroups: rec.arts.animation