Lighting in Animation

Life without lighting would not make sense at all. It would be impossible to imagine life without lights. In animation, lights are what brings things to life to a character or a room or an object. Lighting is essential in animation because it really helps make a scene real, it helps create real characters and gives something life from something static. Lighting is one of the key aspects of animation, it plays a vital role in defining how a scene will look. It helps create depth and complexity and the overall mood of the scene.

Within 3D lighting there are 2 main purposes. First is lights produce shadows which help ground the 3D models and make them appear clear; the second is it helps add depth and complexity to the models through use of several techniques such as shading and texturing.

In 3D animation a scene cannot work without any lights. When a scene is rendered, the whole appearance of the scene can only be visible through lighting. The textures and models need lights or they will appear dark in the scene. Therefore lighting can make or break a scene. Lighting can be a difficult aspect to deal with as it can cause unwanted scenes - a scene being too bright or too dull. Thus it is up to the animator to work and experiment and research with the lighting. The same scene can look very different with different or even the same lighting, therefore lots of experimenting helps to understand what works and what does not work.

Effective lighting can help a scene tremendously. It can create the mood and atmosphere of a scene. The use of colour plays a critical part for setting the tone of the scene. Colours evoke different moods. Colours like red can create warm or happy scenes while green or blue can create some calm scenes. Shadows also help to enhance the mood of the scene. Crisp shadows can be created by hard, distant lights -  it helps set the mood of really hot environments or dark, mysterious scenes. Therefore lighting has multiple approaches to it and requires experimenting. Here is an interesting page that may help with lighting: http://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2015/04/24-things-you-need-to-know-about-lighting/

Animation and Music

Animation and Music are both different fields of entertainment but they both have a very close relationship with one another. Music is very important for animation and animation works extremely well with music. Both create emotional associations through our most influential senses. A certain tune or melody can remind us of a place or an event. And for people who grew up watching animation can sometime instantly associate the animation with the music. Animation is very similar to music in terms of timing/texture and rhythm.

A film like Walt Disney's Fantasia is a very good example of how the music in the film injects character and personality to its characters. The sounds and music of Dukas' Sorcerer's Apprentice, which created a feeling of a mischievous mouse and an army of broomsticks - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHEMkbyXFxs.

More examples that have shown a lot of integration with animation and music are Tarzan, The Jungle Book and Nightmare Before Christmas. If you mute some parts of the animation there is a massive difference in how you read the animation, and thus it shows how important musicality is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIVaUcE4kAM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ogQ0uge06o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpvdAJYvofI

Carlos Baena (Pixar / Paramount Pictures / Animation Mentor Co-founder) said "As I learned more about musical terms I found their equivalent in animation terms. Things like tempo, beats, accents, phrase, rhythm, legato, staccato, adagio, presto, finale, monotone to name a few all have things that you can apply to animation in some way or another."

Game Animation and Feature Animation

Most people often believe that animation from gaming and film are the same because they use the same principles of animation, and the same set of tools. Even though the same tools and principles of animation apply to both mediums, the processes and techniques actually differ greatly between the two. There are many differences and techniques that are required to make a game. In games you need to create animations that respond to the game-play, storytelling, combining them both together and making them work to allow the game to flow, and be successful. In movies, animation is more of looking at what the animator has presented and animated; it is less interactive and less freedom for the view as they are stuck with what the camera displays.

Games Animation

Gaming is made to be interactive with the player. When a player plays a game, he/she has complete control of the character and the camera. The player has the power and in the one who is directing the story forward and making the character move. Therefore the animation needs to look good from all possible angles in relation to the story.

For example, if a game can be set to a new camera angle - in third person, and the player has the option to rotate the camera around during a walk or run cycle; then the new angle should reveal the necessary movements or actions. Examples such as arm movements or knee pops; these actions may not have been visible the normal camera view, therefore it is necessary for the game animators to take into account that their animations function at at any given times of the game to whatever the player may throw at it.

Animations within movies is not as strict as animating in gaming, not to say the one is easier that the other but there is a difference. In movies the animator does not necessarily need to worry about all the angles of a character when it is performing an action, because the animator chooses the angle of the camera, and chooses what will be displayed. But for games most of the angles need to look good as the player has control of the camera view. For instance the arcs of an animation within a game need to be nice smooth arcing motions from any camera angle.

Movie Animation

In movie animations, the animator is responsible for animating what is in the view of the camera shot. In other words, mainly need to worry about one camera angle at time.

For instance, if you are watching a movie, you are not in control of the camera angle and therefore cannot rotate around to look at the whole set. You are basically stuck viewing at whatever the camera is aimed at.

This allows animators to cheat in a way while animating their characters and objects, because they know that the shot will only been seen at a specific angle. So if it looks great from that angle then ultimately that is all that matters.

This does not mean that one is more difficult that the other when it comes to animating, both have a fair share of difficulties and obstacles that are different from one another. In movies the animators need to consider the angle of the camera very delicately as they do not give freedom to the viewer to rotate the camera like in games. Specific camera angles can tell the mood or the atmosphere of the scene and therefore needs to be positioned well to get the message across to the viewer.