Dococom

An animated short originally was that “short” film that was the mini-film between 2 and 10 minutes in length that as used to “warm up” the audience before the feature film was presented on the theatre screen. That niche has generally been taken over by movie previews and trailers not only on the big screen but on every DVD rental. This sounds very basic however, if you ever want to put your animation into competition or the animation distribution markets, depending on the length of the segment, you should fulfill certain parameters. Here are some guidelines for you to consider.

Categories: In a competition there are classifications and rules for length. Logos, special effects and title animation can be anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds. A commercial is 15 to 30 seconds in length. An animated short or vignette can be 1, 15 or even 22 minutes in length. As the animation piece gets longer, you need to achieve more than eye candy to satisfy the judges, the audience and the distributors. Once you get into the commercial or advertising market, you need to grab the target audience and understand theatrical timing to get the message to the people. When you are creating a short or vignette the timing is different. Comedies are known for their punch line, and many times comedy can be achieved very quickly through the sudden obliteration or demise of an animated character. If you want to achieve some suspense in your film, you need to give your audience time to get “comfy” before they get scared by you. An animated feature can be 48, 90 minutes or over 90 minutes. In a feature the story structure is much more complicated and the investment in time and resources is far greater.

Distribution: If you want to distribute your film, you need to have it in a length that a distributor wants, so keep this in mind when you are creating and editing your film. There are different markets for different lengths of film. Distribution in the form of downloads from the internet as well as for iPods and iPhones is different as are the royalty structures. You have to think differently about your viewing market and want to have something short and sweet to capture your following, and the files have to be short enough for quick downloading. If you are looking to the broadcast market (the future of which is changing), there are strict production lengths to allow broadcaster advertising hence, the half hour shows are 22 minutes. You also have to structure your script in accordance with commercial break times. You do not want to have a broadcaster determine to cut into your animation in the middle of a scene. If a distributor is looking to pick up your animation as part of a compilation video, then you don’t have the same structure restrictions, though your market may be limited to a more auteur or niche audience.

Production Decisions: As gut wrenching as it may seem, as an animator, you have to decide where and to whom you wish to show your creation. It sometimes becomes a decision as to what comes first, your creativity or your market. You can have both parameters satisfied but since animation is such a labor intensive discipline, you want to make sure that you really love the piece you are creating. All things considered, you do have the power to make those crucial creative, production and editing decisions to make something really worthwhile. Thus we have the long and the short of the subject.

We know Japan as a country of a rising sun, as a land where people live in picturesque landscapes in a fairy tale environments. Both high technology and legends are tightly associated with this eastern island-based territory. To add some flavor to definition of this faraway nation, let us quote Roland Barthes who called it the Empire of Signs.

Thus everything has its meaning in Japan, from gestures to written hieroglyphs which are plenty in number and form unpredictable meanings based on a combination of simple signs.

Even bodies and clothes signify so many concepts and sociological positions that you as a foreigner can get easily lost. Barthes mentioned that bodies in Japan act and exist according to a pure erotic project.

Consequentially it is no wonder that anime and manga comics originated in Japan and gained incredible popularity. There is no great subtlety and art in these animations and drawings that look like an entertainment for kids. Nevertheless there is a whole bunch of admirers, millions of them to say the least, throughout the world, who identify themselves with their favorite Naruto or Sailor Moon, and pay whatever it costs to get the latest manga, or to go to the largest comic market in Tokyo twice a year.

If we get back to Barnes, we see that erotic connotations in manga are overwhelming. Thus main divisions of manga are strongly associated with specific type of male or female audiences according to their sexual preferences. Let us have a glimpse of what forms of manga are published in Japan: Shojo manga are comics for teenage girls, shojo-ai are romantic comics for teenage girls, shonen are comics for teenage boys, shonen-ai are romantic comics for men, redisu are comics for young adult females, seijin manga are comics for adult males, shojo-ai yuri manga are romantic comics for lesbians, redikomi manga are comics written by women for teen and adult women telling about more realistic, everyday happenings, doujinshi manga are comics written and illustrated by amateurs, etc. There are literally hundreds of varieties of manga, and each one is usually limited by genger and sexual inclinations of readers.

This testifies to incredible and diverse popularity, preferences, interests, and tastes of Japanese comics readers. As time goes by, there is no doubt the genre will shift to include a lot more topics.
Thus manga comics are yet another proof of Japan as the empire of signs.

After Effects is loaded with powerful features, impressive presets, and sexy special effects but when you begin to create your composition, you need a management tool to keep everything organized. Welcome to After Effects Layers!

Layers are just what the name implies, separate entries for separate objects and players in your composition. As you view your timeline that is exactly how layers appear, as bands of separate entries with their layer specific information displayed on the left, and timeline specific information on the timeline on the right.

There are seven types of layers: text, solid, light, camera, null object, shape layer, and adjustment layer. Each of these special layers appears under the layer column with their name and an identifying icon. For example, the text layer appears with a roman letter ‘T’ icon on left, while a light layer appears with a little light bulb icon, a camera layer with a camera icon, shape layer with a little star shape icon.

These layer types all have special properties that belong to their object type but they also have some basic properties in common. For example, they all have a transform category with position attributes. You can place any layer anywhere you like on the stage which means you can animate the position property. Picture a camera dolly rig zooming in on your ‘starlet’ or a stage light following your actor’s motion. The null and adjustment layers are a bit more esoteric with a bit more subtle purpose but for now, let’s stick with the obvious guys.

One of my favorite examples of animation is the special text treatment at the beginning of any movie, television show, or news flash. Typically you will see an associated logo such as ‘Warner Brothers’ or ‘NPR News’ and this will be a combination of text, graphics, and animation. In After Effects this would probably be a single text layer with the many available fonts and special treatments available for text. There would be a backdrop with texture and color and this would be a solid layer. There would also be some accompanying activity, clouds or stellar objects, fireworks or animated shading and color. This simple animation would be presented and adorned using light layers and perhaps camera layers to present different perspectives as it unfolds.

One of After Effects most attractive features is that it offers both complexity and simplicity, getting comfortable with it’s control features will help you make this journey and enjoy the ride ! The layers have several controls and display options, some of which are specific to the type layer it is but there are three display ‘switches’ in the lower left hand corner that are important to know.

As you develop your animation, at different times different views will be helpful. I like to see the complete timeline. There is something about the complete scope that appeals to me but as you begin to use more features and controls such as the layer switches, it will be helpful and flexible to use these display options. The switch on the far left turns off and on the ‘layer switches’.

These include the selections for ‘shyness’, collapsing transformation, quality, function, frame blending, motion blur, adjustment layer, and 3d. We’ll delve more into what these features provide but the ‘switches’ essentially turn them off and on. You could simply compare an animation that you have added a blur effect to, by turning it off and on. You could disable a function you have added to compare it’s effect, ‘off’ and ‘on’. The switch on the lower hand far left, turns this entire set of switches off and on, presenting them with each layer, next to the layer name.

The next layer switch in lower left hand corner turns off and on the transfer controls pane. These columns display the blending mode, if chosen, and the track matte. Blending modes are just that, settings that help you blend different layers together. A track matte is an overlay that blocks out part of the underlying image. Picture a Christmas Card that reveals part of the image with an overlay on the outside, sometimes using verse or a greeting. There are countless uses of matte in our world of animation and presentation including a matte that is itself, part of the meaning such as a cutout of a planet, a character, a flag. Turning this switch off and on presents your mode and track matte columns.

The third default layer switch is the timing switch which displays when each layer enters and leaves the animation, it’s duration and it’s ‘stretch’ factor. The ‘in’ and ‘out’ are pretty intuitive as they identify when a layer enters and leaves your movie. Your movie begins with a title and a blue sky, then your main character appears on the set. As the story plays, different layers may appear and disappear as they contribute to the action.

These four columns that let you view and set the time settings ‘eat up’ quite a bit of your timeline viewing width. I never have them on by default. However, when you are tuning the interactions of different layers, when things appear and disappear and you are synchronizing their duration, these switches are indispensable! You can also key in precise numbers in the ‘In’, ‘Out’ and ‘Duration’ values. This is very important too as you seek to synchronize activity precisely and move on to expressions and meaningful precision in the presentation of your movie. I rarely adjust the ‘stretch’ time setting but if you expanded the time of say, some clouds floating by to match another activity, if you reduced the time of a car driving by, it is when you adjust the default ‘duration’ settings of a layer that you see this ‘stretch’ value change. It is 100% by default.