The definition of 3D animation is, “Animating objects that appear in a three-dimensional space. They can be rotated and moved like real objects. 3D animation is at the heart of games and virtual reality, but it may also be used in presentation graphics to add flair to the visuals.” How did 3D animation come to be?

William Fetter, an American computer graphics art director, is often attributed to being the founder and creator of 3D animation. In 1960, while working for Boeing Aircraft in Wichita Kansas, he coined the term “computer graphics” after creating the first computer model of the human body. This first 3D model is known as “The Boeing Man.” Fetter was the Supervisor of Advanced Design Graphics at Boeing Aircraft. He and his team explored new techniques, using computer graphics, to assist in the design of airplanes.

Being that 3D animation was founded on the grounds of an engineering company, it makes sense that much of the 3D videos that are created are for the engineering industry. 3D animation can show the inner workings of machine or what has not yet been built, the exact thing William Fetter and his team were working on when 3D animation was created.

Besides engineering, there are many other industries that use 3D animation visualizations. Such as, medical, architectural and retail. In the retail industry, many products are hard or confusing to describe, so companies use 3D modeling to explain the functions of the product. This can be extremely helpful for things that cannot be photographed. Such as, microscopic elements or multiple dimensions and angles.

Anything you can imagine, an animator can create. Other industries that commonly use 3D animation include mining, gaming and construction. Fluid simulations are one 3D animation technique that can be used in the previously mentioned industries and many more. 3D fluid simulations can show how the lubrication of a piston aircraft works, or blood flowing through veins or water flowing through the pipes of a building that hasn’t been built yet.

3D animation is a great way to bring to life a product or design that is still on the drawing board. It is also great to use for something that is difficult to explain verbally. 3D animation can make things visible that are normally invisible or hard to understand. Although there are a few industries who commonly use 3D animation, it is now used for much more. 3D animation can be used to describe or show the details of any product, service or function.

At the heart of successful animation lie 12 principles. One of these is exaggeration, which refers to the act of taking certain elements and stretching them beyond the realm of normal. All animation requires some sort of exaggeration, even animation that strives to be realistic, because it is exaggeration that makes animation come alive, appeal to audiences, and add comedic relief to otherwise intense scenes. Poorly executed exaggeration, however, can detract rather than add to the appeal and impact of an animated work. As a result, effective exaggeration requires careful work by the traditional animation studio. Following are a few tips for successfully using exaggeration in any animated production.

Exaggerate The Most Important Elements.

The first step in creating effective exaggeration is to choose which elements to exaggerate. The key when making this decision is to remember that exaggerated elements will get the most attention from viewers. Therefore, the element you choose will change the way the viewer understands the scene. As a result, you need to choose the elements that are most important for understanding the scene.

For instance, if you are animating a scene in which a character is sailing, you may decide that the waves’ movements are most important and exaggerate those. On the other hand, you may decide that the character’s reaction is most vital, and, therefore, focus on their facial features. In the first instance, the viewer learns about the environment in which the character is sailing, while in the latter, the viewer learns about the personality of the character. Making the right choice will allow you to create exaggeration that contributes to rather than detracts from your work.

Know What Your Goals Are.

Once you decide which elements to exaggerate, you will need to decide how much exaggeration to use. In order to make this decision, you must have a clear idea of what you hope to achieve with the exaggeration. Exaggeration can be used in a number of different ways. For instance, you can use it to add fluid motions that make the animation look more realistic. On the other hand, you can use it to create caricatured movements that add comedy, or that add personality and appeal.

Each of these goals, however, requires a slightly different use of exaggeration. Take, for instance, the sailor discussed above. If you desire a realistic look, you may choose to slightly exaggerate his facial expressions. However, if you wish to interject humor, you may use extreme exaggeration to give him comedic facial expressions. The right choice will be the one that best contributes to your overall goals for the scene.

Retain The Essence of The Exaggerated Elements.

As soon as you decide to exaggerate an element, you are no longer bound by the strict parameters of reality. However, in order for your exaggeration to retain its appeal, it must still have some connection to reality. If it does not, the object or character being exaggerated will become confusing to viewers, who will no longer be able to mesh what they see on the screen with the basic rules of reality to which they are accustomed.

For instance, say you choose to exaggerate the facial features of the character sailing on the boat. If you remove all identifying elements from the face in order to twist it into a complete caricature of fear or surprise, or delight, you will lose the essence of the character design. The viewer will no longer be able to identify or connect with them. As a result, when exaggerating any animated element, a good rule of thumb is to take what is already there as far as expressions, physical features, or emotions, and exaggerate those elements. By doing so, you increase the appeal of the scene for viewers instead of detracting from it.

Create Balance.

Even though viewers of animation expect to see exaggeration and fantasy, they also want to keep one foot in reality. As a result, another key to effective exaggeration is to create balance within the scene. You can do so by only selecting a few elements in each scene to exaggerate. The rest of the elements must remain more natural and realistic. Doing so will avoid an absurd or disturbing look that will leave viewers confused or dismayed with your work.

For instance, if you exaggerate your sailing character’s facial features, you should refrain from exaggerating their other physical features. If you choose to exaggerate the movement of the waves, you may need to refrain from exaggerating the character’s facial features too. With a balanced scene, you draw the viewer’s attention to the elements they need to see, and keep them grounded enough in reality to enjoy the exaggerated elements.

Keep Your Project Appealing.

Finally, when using exaggeration in your animated production, you will need to maintain appeal. Appeal is a fairly subjective, yet crucial, element to animation. It is what makes even a villain a character the viewers will enjoy watching. Making mistakes in the steps discussed above can result in a loss of appeal. For instance, if you use too much exaggeration, viewers will be less likely to enjoy the animated production.

As a result, the last question you must ask yourself is how the exaggeration contributes to the scene’s overall appeal. It may fit all the criteria above, yet detract from the overall entertainment value. On the other hand, you may find that pushing the boundaries a bit yields a bolder look and greater appeal. As a result, exaggeration, as with any element of animation, requires careful crafting in order to achieve the most powerful and appealing work of art possible.

Exaggeration is an effective way to bring your animation to life, whether you are doing video game animation, advertising animation, or a feature length film. By exaggerating the most important elements, knowing what you want to achieve, retaining the essence of the exaggerated elements, creating balance, and keeping your project appealing can help you to create truly effective exaggeration in your animated art.

Inside Out is a Disney-Pixar animated film which successfully uses graphics and humour to show what is going on inside someone’s head. This promises to be an entertaining way to teach emotional intelligence.

General scenario of Inside Out

Growing up can be a difficult time. This is true for 11-year-old Riley. Her father starts a new job on the West Coast and so she is uprooted from her life in Minnesota when the family moves to San Francisco.

Riley’s mind is portrayed by five small characters called Joy, Fear, Disgust, Sadness and Anger. These are personified in the film as human-like creatures who live in Headquarters. This is the headquarters of Riley’s head where executive decisions take place. She responds to events according to which little figure is taking charge.

The emotional characters in Inside Out

• Joy is a light-hearted optimist trying to ensure Riley is happy.
• Fear is awake to any hazards and is concerned to keep Riley safe.
• Disgust wants to show Riley what physically and socially poisons her.
• Sadness dwells on the unhappy side of things.
• Anger cares a lot about protesting when things are unfair.

As Riley’s emotions struggle to adjust to her new life, chaos ensues in Headquarters.

Portrayal of core memories in Inside Out

Riley’s past experiences are stacked as core memory balls in long-term storage. Each of these can be called on but sometimes they get dumped and lost. The memories are coloured and distorted if touched by one of the emotion characters. For example, an experience is remembered differently by being turned blue if touched by Sadness.

The view of Inside Out regarding the causes of behaviour

Inside Out suggests that the emotional figures can make Riley feel what they want according to which of them is in charge of the controls and which can touch a core memory. Children need to learn to recognise how emotions affect the way we all behave and learn to put names to them. In addition, there is the useful point that we can misremember the past according to our current feelings.

Riley is shown to be a victim of her emotions. She appears to have no choices. According to Inside Out, it is the specific situation one finds oneself in that determines one’s emotional response. What emotional attitude we adopt comes from experiences in life or rather the way these are remembered. In line with the story of Inside Out, core memories can be coloured by which emotion currently in charge touches them.

An alternative view to that conveyed by Inside Out

In my opinion the film omits the important dimension of personal choice. Perhaps this was necessary because of the simple nature of the plot. Is Riley to be thought of as a mere robot just responding to which emotion is the strongest at any one particular moment? A different view is that we ourselves are in charge of which emotion rules us. According to this standpoint, each person has volition (free-will). In other words, we can make personal choices which can go beyond what might be expected from experience and current adversity.

Did Riley have to snap back at her parents when they tried to talk to her after her unhappy day at the new school? Did anger have to be in charge?

Was there no other response available to her other than to abruptly end the phone call from the old friend? She had been told there is a new girl on her old team who played really well with Meg. Did social disgust have to rule her mind at that point?

Had she no choice other than to roll over and face the wall after Dad tries to cheer her up by acting goofy? Did sadness really make her do this?

Rational thoughts

Just as our core memories can be coloured by our emotions, so can our thoughts. I feel afraid so I am likely to think about dangers around me. However, it also works the other way around. My thoughts can affect my feelings. So if I reflect on my situation and think about it from a wider perspective, I may feel differently. For this reason, I believe our natural passions need not dominate us.

Riley is only a child, and her responses to what happened to her are perhaps only what we might expect from a child. As an adult she might look back and think that when her parents tried to talk with her perhaps she could have discussed the reasons for the house move instead of snapping at them thus ending the conversation.

When Meg spoke about a new friend, perhaps Riley could have thought about the new friends she might expect to make in her new school and talked with Meg about their keeping contact instead of rudely ending the call.

In addition, when her father tried to make up with her by acting goofy perhaps she might have thought about making the best of her new circumstances and get his help to do this instead of turning away from him.

Who is a Visual Effects Animator?

A visual effects animator is a professional that’s responsible for special effects in films. Now interestingly, they focus on the special effects that cannot be added during the live action shoot. For example, a lot of times, the green screen is used when shooting actors in the studio.

The actual, exciting background we see in the movie however is inserted later. Similarly, these professionals are also responsible for actually creating entire characters. As such all they use is computer software programs to create these entities and integrate them in the film. These characters can be so lively that they can also interact with live action characters.

Remember the dinosaurs and the Anaconda in those blockbuster movies? Well that’s what the visual effects animators can do! Thus the TV shows, commercials, films and other such projects actually become more realistic and exciting.

Background Education / Training

Though it may be safely said that you do not require a formal study to be a visual animator, they certainly train themselves hard and create a strong background in multimedia art and animation. Most of them actually work a other artists and work on their story telling and aesthetic skills for long before they actually realize their dream of being a visual effects animators.

It is usually recommended that professionals interested in this career study arts, fine arts, photography or similar art related fields. Some of them actually go for higher specializations in visual media and visual effects eventually. The ability and training to use computer software with speed is highly valued as a skill.

Work Environment

Most of these professionals spend a lot of time in an office using their computers and animation software. However, those that work with larger media agencies and film studios may actually travel to document, understand and watch the actual filming happen, for research and development.

Their hours are often long and they can be commonly seen working in tight deadlines, on weekends and nights. A lot of them are self-employed and freelance or consult.

The industries that conventionally used to employ them were motion pictures, film industry and video game companies, but of late media agencies, larger YouTube channels, companies that create content for schools, companies that create DIY projects for school and even digital marketing agencies employ them. A lot of content development companies employ animators to create ad videos or films for their clients.

Salary

If it wasn’t exciting enough to transport people to a fantasy / realistic world using art and technology, the salary is lucrative. While disregarding the top-notch in the industry who earn in millions, even the junior animators earn good amounts as they freelance and / or get employed full-time. The more credentials and portfolio you have, the better your earning potential is.

Vector Art is a technique, which means art created with vector-based programs. Vector art basically uses dots, lines, and curves. Vector programs take note of the relationship between these elements. This allows images created to vary their scale without losing quality or pixelating. In comparison, pixels lose quality when they are raised above 100% of their size.

Popular vector programs are Illustrator, Freehand, Corel Draw, and Flash. Almost everything created with these programs is considered as vector work. I say “almost” because there are exceptions to each rule. If your vector work combines vector images with raster images, I’m afraid that it is no longer a vectorial work (and consequently does not belong to the Vector Gallery).

For example: to finish your vectorial work, you think that your work is missing something, and you put it in Photoshop to give it a small texture, trying to complete it more. At that moment it is no longer a vector work, and you should upload it to “Digital art> Mixed Media”. In the same way, if you take the rasterized texture and put it in Illustrator by applying a layer style, nor would it be a vector work.

As this texture cannot be increased by over 100%, it makes your vector technically useless after raster images in original size. Do not even think that you cannot add textures to your vector work. Many of these programs come equipped with samples of detailed patterns, textured brushes, even with “Live Trace”, which as its name indicates, traces raster images and converts them into vector graphics.

Reiterating and ensuring there is no confusion, here is a list with programs generally considered as raster-based: Photoshop, Painter, MS Paint and a great free alternative, Gimp. Basically, everything created with this program is considered rasterized image. A few of these programs are able to create images with points, lines, and curves, just as a vector program would do.

The same Photoshop can make images based on vectors, however, they are usually considered “vexel” because vexel artists usually include brush strokes on their images (for hair, etc.).

Speaking of brushes. Just because you have downloaded and installed a set of brushes for Photoshop (or any other raster image program) that has the word “vector” in its title, it does NOT mean that your work is vectorial. These brushes come in various sizes, and no matter what resolution you apply them, they can never be increased above 100% of their size without losing quality.

3D modeling services can do such much for an inventor who is going through the patent process. Invention designers have the ability to execute so many aspects of the patent with the use of invention design software known as CAD. Not only is CAD a staple within invention designing, but also in every other type of manufacturing whether it’s architecture, mechanical, civil, electrical, or structural. CAD design services normally only specialize in one of these design fields, and very few actually will design inventions for Inventors. You may ask yourself why, but there’s actually a real good reason for this. So what is it? It’s the fact that most CAD designers aren’t skilled enough to design the complex curvature, and other aspects of an Inventions design.

Concept Invention Designers

So what is a concept invention design? A concept design, also known as a conceptual design is the starting point for any Invention, and is more or less just an idea that may be proposed by simple sketches on paper. Going from concept to completion is another story though, and takes a lot more than just ideas to make happen. Once the concept design is established, engineering, design, and a large amount of skill go into actually having a prototype made. It’s a lot more than most people might think of before they take the challenge of becoming an Inventor.

Prototype Designers

So once a design is established where exactly does the Prototype come from? Well, it’s simple. The prototype comes from the same CAD design used for patent blueprints, or the conceptual design. CAD files are composed up of information to help communicate the visual appearance on a computer, and the necessary information to guide machines that manufacture injection molds, CNC, plastics, mechanical parts, or any material within manufacturing imaginable. These CAD files are what makes manufacturing today available. Without CAD we would be set back so far that it would seem like the stone age. Personally, I don’t know how we would get a long without assembly lines & robotic manufacturing.

3D CAD Services

3D CAD services can be an Inventors worst nightmare, or their best friend depending on how everything’s managed. Really one Invention Design Service should have the ability to perform every aspect an Inventor needs throughout the patents process. Inventors should go online and research Invention designers until they find the one who can assist them with all their invention needs at a reduced price for purchasing more than one of the companies professional services. Don’t settle for the first numbers thrown your way from one of these services. Instead diligently study, and compare pricing until you find that service who isn’t out to just rip you off.

A background artist is involved in the process of animation. He is the one who establishes the style, colour and mood of scene, as characterised by the writer, artistic director, or client in the story. The work of artists is very creative and this creativity can be seen in motion pictures, television, video games and other forms of media.

In animation, the line drawing of the background for a scene is a background layout. It is not the finished background painted in color but just a sketch.

Background layouts are drawn from storyboards which define the action and perspective in the scene. The difference between a storyboard artist and a background artist is that a storyboard artist draws backgrounds in a rough, simplified style, but on the other hand background layout artists take them to the next level by defining the detail and perspective. The line work is just a part of the finished background.

A background designer has to visualize new locations when they are called for in a script and has to consider the action of the characters as well as the mood of the scene. These design drawings are given to the storyboard artists to show them what a place looks like. A lot of creativity is involved into making places that are made believable to the people in the world of the characters.

Backgrounds must support the narrative of the story, most importantly. Designers take into account things like the personal style of characters or the imaginary neighborhoods. Artists draw places that have history, like showing what has happened previously in a location, even if it never happened they design it to make it look like some event happened in that particular place. The artists can also show the history of a place long before the characters even existed.

A background designer has to do two things:

to design backgrounds for new scenery, and

to draw/paint those backgrounds for the final animation.

Some studios hire background artists who entirely paint the final backgrounds. And sometimes background painters also fill the role of a designer where they create new locations with some help from the art director. All background painters & designers follow a unique style based on the animation.

Each cartoon has its own unique style and the background designer needs to create places that can be real and that mixes into the cartoon’s artistic style.

There isn’t much of a difference between jobs for background painters, background artists, and background designers.

Background Artist Job

Many background artists use traditional methods such as painting or drawing to create backgrounds.

Artists may use digital media such as Adobe Photoshop to produce desired backgrounds for the story.

A background artist needs details and in order to do that he communicates with the artistic director, director, editor or writers from time to time in order to establish idea of what the desired background should be like.

They may involve painting primarily background keys or the establishing shot for more definition.