Reflection

Throughout this semester, I’ve learned about: the history of animation, the 7 principles of animation, and several animation rules.

I found the history of animation, especially the different inventions and creation of companies to be interesting. I thought it was amazing that people from different parts of the world made, and improved upon, inventions to create the illusion of movement, like the: thaumatrope, zoetrope, and kineograph. Besides the inventions, I also liked history of the different animation companies. I thought it was interesting that people who started off in Disney left and created their own companies and made films like, Ferngully and The Brave Little Toaster.

I’ve written a lot about the principles of animation in my other write-ups and analysis paper, so I won’t go into detail about them here, but actually learning the principles was helpful. Although I still have a lot of practice to do before I really understand and know how to achieve all of the principles, I think that learning them in a lecture and seeing live examples in class were more helpful than reading about these (or similar) principles in a book.

Several of the readings throughout the semester gave animation tricks, tips, and rules, but what I found most helpful were the tricks given out in class, then elaborated on in many of the readings. Although some of them, like anticipation, vibrations, and cycles, seem like common knowledge, I don’t know if I’d know how to accomplish the right movements without first knowing these tricks.