Getting a good background in animation
One of the best ways to learn animation is to study it from its beginning so that you can see for yourself how people learned about animation and improved what they could do. This was a lesson that was learned and then relearned when computer animation was introduced. So let's go back to the roots of animation and watch them grow, and then go back to the roots of computer animation and watch it get started.
Going back to the year 1922 on an animation field trip
We are going to go into the past, back to when animation was young. We are going there because there are general issues that everyone encounters when trying to put graphics into motion. Early animations were simple, so it is easiest to see the fundamental animation techniques done and also see examples of where it wasn't done so you can tell the difference.
Back then, like now, animators were under pressure; they had a short time to turn out a completed animation. They ran into issues such as what was required to tell a story believably, what kind of look to give it, how to make it easy to do, and how to complete it before their deadline. They also had to answer questions such as how to tell the story, how to get all the art work done, and how to photograph it with a camera. A lot of the answers they came up with are now universal.
First, we are going to look at a Felix the Cat animation called Felix Turns the Tide that was made a few years after World War I. It was one of the seventeen different Felix the Cat films made that year (which equates to approximately one animation every three weeks). It was a silent animation and cutting edge for its time but pretty primitive by modern standards, as you can see in the following screenshot:
From the thought balloon, borrowed from newspaper comics, you can see that animation hadn't come too far from its roots.
It's a good place to start because they had figured out the mechanics of making an animation, but they were just beginning to learn the language of animation. In this book, you will learn both the mechanics of a Blender animation and how to do it well. It's a learning experience we will share with these pioneers—so we're in good company!
