Elective : Animation, Techniques

"Boiling" this is the shimmering effect in hand drawn animation where lines are copied over and over in a sequence of drawings. Originally due just to the mechanics of trying and failing to copy lines exactly by hand, it is sometimes introduced deliberately as a stylistic feature in computer generated animation - random fluctuations in line quality may make the animation look hand drawn

"Rotoscoping" is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frameby frame, for use in animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computer in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

"Green screen" technology is the basis of the effects seen in everything from the latest Hollywood blockbusters to the weather forecast. The idea is simple. If you shoot a video with a single coloured backdrop (blue or green is often used) Pinnacle Studio allows you to make that colour transparent - replacing it with any other video clip, graphic or still image.

"Time-lapse" photography is a cinematography technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured (the frame rate) is much lower than that which will be used to play the sequence back. When replayed at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing. For example, an image of a scene may be captured once every second, and then played back at 30 frames per second; the result would be an apparent increase of speed by 30 times. Time-lapse photography can be considered to be the opposite of high speed photography.

Processes that would normally appear subtle to the human eye, such as the motion of the sun and stars in the sky, become very pronounced. Time-lapse is the extreme version of the cinematography technique of undercranking, and can be confused with stop motion animation.

"Stop motion" (also known as stop action) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Motion animation using clay is called clay animation or clay-mation.

The term "stop motion", related to the animation technique, is often spelled with a hyphen (stop-motion). Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has, in addition, a second meaning, not related to animation or cinema. Stop-motion: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong" (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993 edition).

Stop motion is often confused with the Time Lapes technique, where still photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals, and combined into a continuous film.

I want to keep my options, after watching loads of examples from 2nd and 3rd years, my brain is on an overload, with a limitation of Topography (meaning mapping) (to be honest not really sure, how to take it, weather i should make it simple and incorporate the map (normal every day maps and signs into it, which might add another twist to it, or think of mapping as a though, a ways of getting every little bit of information down...... either way i do it, fingers cross it will be good