Making a TED-Ed Lesson: Animation

110,189 views ・ 2013-05-27

TED-Ed


Please double-click on the English subtitles below to play the video.

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Transcriber: Andrea McDonough Reviewer: Jessica Ruby
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Enough mutations can bypass these fail-safes,
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driving these cells to divide recklessly.
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That one rogue cell becomes two,
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then four,
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then eight.
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"How do you animate real materials,
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like brains and nerves and stuff like that?
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How do you take something that doesn't move
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and then make it move?"
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"So, that's actually, we used a method
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called stop-motion animation,
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in which you are moving the objects
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underneath the camera,
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each frame, one at a time,
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and you take a picture
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for each picture that you've created.
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So, for this, we were watching a lot of videos
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on how cell division works,
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and from that, I created a line-drawn animation
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that was my reference animation.
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And, using the software that we use for stop-motion,
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I was actually able to look
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at that reference material while shooting
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so I could kind of arrange underneath the camera
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in order to match my animation
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as I would follow along.
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And we actually shot all of this on a green screen,
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and the purpose of using the green screen was,
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for example, in the scene where you see
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many cells dividing at one time,
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for me to have actually have to animate each of those cells
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unanimously dividing at the same time
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would have been a lot of work
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that we wouldn't have had time for.
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So, the green screen allowed me to do
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a couple of cell divisions
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that I could then duplicate
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in order to show cell division:
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two, then four, then eight."
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"So, you only have to basically actually record it once
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and then you can just duplicate it on the computer."
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"Exactly."
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"So, it sounds really painstaking.
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How long did it take to, like, record one cell division?"
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"I think I did in a day, I did a couple of cell divisions.
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So, sort of a full work day,
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so, probably a couple of hours for one.
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I think, actually, the stuff that took longer was the text.
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We were animating the word, 'growth'.
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We were animating it getting smaller and taller and wider.
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And for this, I was literally adding one single seed at a time
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in order to create that animation."
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"So, how did you animate the word cancer?"
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"I actually started with the word cancer written
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and moved backwards
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and was surgically removing one seed at a time,
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and then we played that photage backwards
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to make it look like it was appearing.
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We use that trick a lot of times in stop-motion
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because if you want things to really conform,
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any time that you're having things come together
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or fall apart,
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it usually makes more sense
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to start with that together frame
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and work from there,
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and do the scatter from there,
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and then, just play that in reverse.
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It's a little too painstaking.
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Stop-motion is painstaking,
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it's a labor of love,
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but you have to also be practical
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when you have a deadline."
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"So, there's this technique that you guys use
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to make the cells look like they're alive
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so they're not just sitting there.
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That's called shimmering.
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How does that work exactly?"
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"So, in animation, shimmering is usually when you are,
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if you're doing drawn animation,
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you're drawing that same drawing multiple times
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but with slight variations
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so that way, you don't have a stagnant, still frame
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under the camera.
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With the cells, using the seeds and the Nerds,
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we had the opportunity to really have a look,
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like they were kind of vibrating and pulsating in a way.
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And so, those are actually, depending on the cell,
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three to five pictures.
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With the candy Nerds,
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I would rearrange their position each time
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so there's actually removing all the colorful Nerds,
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leaving the purple ones in the center
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and moving the colorful ones back in
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into a different position.
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But with the seeds,
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when the seeds were shimmering,
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for that, I would actually
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just very, very, very lightly, like,
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roll my hand over it very slightly
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and then make sure none of them
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fell out of the constraints of the cell,
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fix the edges,
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and take that picture,
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and just slightly do that again.
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So, it just slightly changes their position
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or rustles them up a little bit
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so that would cycle over and over.
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And those would play on what animators call threes.
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And threes means that each picture
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is on screen for three frames
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at twenty-four frames per second.
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So, for the shimmers, you were seeing
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eight different pictures each second of footage."
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"How much of your sweat and tears
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are on these Nerds?"
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"I think, actually, to be honest,
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the part that was the most perspirational
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of using the Nerds for animation
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was the place where we had to separate them into colors
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in order to use them to animate.
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Every time I would put them on the screen to animate,
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on the tabletop to animate,
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I would have to separate them out
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at the end of the day again.
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And that was the most frustrating part.
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And, honestly, up until, like, three weeks ago,
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I dropped my purse on the ground
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and, like, lentils came out of my purse and onto the floor.
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Like, there's, this video will stay with me forever."
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"In your bag."
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"In my bag.
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It goes wherever I go."
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