The Basic Animation Computer

The center of every animator’s workstation is a good, reliable computer. A
lot of people starting out try to skimp on their equipment purchase by using
the same computer to run both the business software (such as accounting
and client contact software) and the animation software. This is possible,
but you should make it a priority to get two computers and keep the two
functions separated.You can certainly network the two computers, and even
back up essential files and programs so that each computer can serve as an
emergency replacement for the other, but several good reasons exist for separating
the business software from the creative side.

The first reason for a separate creative computer is that you may eventually
hire a freelancer to work in your shop on creative assignments, perhaps
whenever you finally go to sleep. You don’t want employees snooping
around in your business software. The second reason is that you can easily
swing back and forth between complex programs.

For instance, you may be working on the creative computer, rendering a
complex ray-traced scene, when the phone rings and a client you don’t
immediately recognize is on the line.You quickly slide to the business computer,
where you have your ACT! database already open, and you quickly
search the name of the contact to find which company she’s from. Try
switching tasks like these on even a beefy central processing unit (CPU)
and you could see both programs bog down to a crawl. And you think this
never happens? Happens to me all the time.

Most people new to the business world don’t have enough money to buy
two computers, but try this. Start with one computer, and within a few
months, this computer will get a bit obsolete if business is good. Make it the
business computer while another bigger one replaces it for creative functions.
Some people buy a Mac to start out and then buy a PC (or the other
way around), thereby covering both popular operating systems (OSs).

By the way, I could care less if you prefer Mac,Windows, or Linux. Of the
three most popular animation software choices, at least one program will
suit your favorite OS . It’s a shame that after nearly 20 years,
which is eons in technology history, the entire creative workforce isn’t working
in one unified OS. The diversity is not good for efficient creativity.
Although competition is good in almost all segments of an economy, I am one
who believes that the OS should be the product of a benevolent monopoly.

Linux probably offers the best future prospect, but for the time being we
remain in a relatively primitive state where a person can spend months creating
files that are useless on many computers. The conversion processes,
dead-end results, and lost time cost us dearly year after year.

Animation Techniques On Android

There are so many ways to make an animation on Android that you might get a
little lost if you don't know where to start. So here is the grand tour! You'll find
out how all the techniques in this book can be used to make your application
stand out from the rest.

Animations are divided loosely into a spectrum. At the top of the spectrum
there are the simplest kinds of animation, and at the bottom there are the most
complex kinds.

1.Animations that just show the same animation every time you play it. Or, if
they do change, then they follow some simple pre-defined pattern. These are
frame animations.

‹‹ 2.Animations that apply to a widget-based application, which take an ordinary input
form and move it around in a way that means something. These are the tweens and
the animators.

3.‹‹ Animations that can show anything calculated on the fly from whatever data they
are given. Games are made like this. These are the surface-based animations.

Android lets you combine these three techniques, but you get to choose them

Animations Business....The Categories

The Animations Business is a good idea, Let me first categorized the animations business.

1,  Hollywood feature films

2,  TV commercials

3,  Televised entertainment

4, Games

5, Home videos

6, Business communications

7,  E-media

Hollywood Feature Films Hollywood feature films need not actually be
produced in Los Angeles, California, but it really helps if you are located
somewhere near this geo-creative nexus. Several excellent animation studios
working on feature films exist as far away as Santa Barbara, Seattle,
and even Massachusetts. Obviously, the benefit of a global Internet marketplace
makes locating your animation business in Bombay, India, practical
(and I would bet that the savvy Hollywood producer will one day
discover the cost benefits of global sourcing). However, feature film production
is still a lunchie, backslapping, meshpuka1 kind of business where
personal contact represents a major part of the deal. It’s a little hard to
schmooze over a T-1 line.

TV Commercials TV commercials are another hard market to crack, but
easier than feature films. As the commercials get higher in budget, the market
gets harder to crack. If you live in a second- or third-tier market (that
is, a city that is not New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles), you can pitch your
reel to advertising agencies and commercial producers. If your reel is a
starter, you should still be able to get some work doing cable commercials,
but if you have a stick of dynamite with a sizzling fuse, head for a top-tier
market, hire a rep, and go for broke.

Televised Entertainment Televised entertainment includes TV shows
that use 3-D animation and composited effects as part of their weekly fare.
Again, this is primarily a Los Angeles market, but nothing is stopping you
from creating your own show in Smalltown, USA, pitching it to a network,
and getting a sale. Mike Judge did that with Beavis and Butt-head,
although he used primitive, 2-D cell animation instead of sophisticated 3-D
computer techniques.

Games Game devices, from arcades to set-top boxes (and computers in
between), continually increase their capabilities to emulate real 3-D, photorealistic
action. The market for 3-D animation in the gaming community
is always growing and highly competitive. Skills that will place you at the
head of the line include character and creature development, achieving photorealistic
playback with minimum memory allocation, understanding moving
camera dynamics, and, of course, good teamwork.

Home Videos Home Videos are another outlet for creative 3-D animation.
If you decide to make your own televised entertainment, you can
extend the selling opportunities of your work by sending it to home video
distributors

Business Communications Business communications is the largest
market for 3-D animation, especially videos and DVDs that are made to
explain the arcane intricacies of medicine and high technology. Here your
market is composed of producers, marketing directors, human resource
managers, venture capital entrepreneurs, and training directors, all of
whom have a constant need to have their communications embellished by
animation and graphics.

E-Media E-media presentations that appear over the Internet represent
another large and growing market, which temporarily offers advantages to
the beginner. Because most e-media is streamed to the viewer at a comparatively
low bandwidth, the complexity of the animation it can play is
severely limited. Beginners, whose work is limited by their level of knowledge,
can exploit a medium whose resolution is limited by its bandwidth if
the beginner is aware of how these two limitations overlap.

Keyword: animations business,animation business, animation busines

Animation... The Passion

What is it like to be an animator? Is it a good and profitable profession, allow you
the time and money to enjoy life while basking in the glow of artistic admiration
from friends and strangers alike? Is it fun to get up and go to work
every morning, to feel hungry for lunch and find that it’s 3 o’clock in the
afternoon, and to regret having to call it a day while others are watching the
clock tick slowly toward five? Is it a possible career and not just some dream
job that one in a million people get to do?

Well, yes. It is all these things—sort of. As I write these words, after more
than 15 years in one small corner of the animation business, only two
things in that first paragraph need to be clarified. The first, and biggest, is
that you really have to want to be an animator for the job to be a good one.
You have to have a passion for the craft and a talent for the art. The second,
a minor point really, is the “time and money” part. You can certainly make
good money. Salaries for full-time, experienced animators can be excellent,
but you may not get the time to enjoy the money. Animation is a consuming
profession. As one Los Angeles veteran says, “It eats you up alive.”

The Passion.......

It gets easier and easier to get hooked on animation. The computer software
you’ll use to create the most sophisticated effects and character scenes gets
easier to learn and cheaper to buy. You might get a chance as early as high
school to play with a “lite” version of a program or even the real, full-blown
release. Or maybe you will get to visit an animation studio during some
vacation tour to Orlando or New York.

Someone may sit you down at a workstation and show you how to bring
a sphere or cube into existence. Simple. You know this stuff from geometry,
only it wasn’t so easy to understand. Then the mentor adds the dimension of
time by placing the object in one place at Frame 1 and another place at
Frame 30. For fun, the mentor asks you to make some change to the object
in Frame 30. Thinking, perhaps, that you can fool the system, you screw
around with the controls and the object ends up like Diana Ross, upside
down, and inside out.

Nonplussed, the mentor smiles and hits a button. In seconds, the computer
creates 28 frames between Frames 1 and 30, adding subtle, successive
changes to the original object in Frame 1. By Frame 28, the computer
has—miracle of miracles—perfectly imitated your outrageous precocity,
just one small increment shy of your Frame 30 results.With another button
press, the mentor shows you how the machine has animated the results of
your demented challenge. It is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.
Is the machine teasing you? Is it like those video games you know so
well, the ones that let you win just enough before causing you to lose so
embarrassingly that you have to keep shoving quarter after quarter into its
hungry maw so that you can rescue your dwindling self-esteem and prove
that brains are better than circuitry? Yes, it is like that, but better. It is free.
No quarters. Better yet, they say if you’re good enough, you can get paid to
do this.

“Once more,” you plead, taking the mouse in your hands, but the mentor
is pressed for time. You have to move on. The tour proceeds, and you are
hooked.

Maybe, if you are lucky, you have a chance to go beyond the first “free hit”
on the animation computer. Maybe you get the summer camp course or the
gifted and talented program elective, or you have a relative in the business
(we all should have one) who gives you some time on the system. There you
delve deeper into the mysteries of plastic space and time. If so, you learn
that you can find no release, no end to the joy of limitless creation. The
addiction is deeply rooted now. For you, no help can be offered, except perhaps
this book, which charts out the path to a successful, full-time, day-job
career. Hello, my name is George Avgerakis and I’m an animaholic.