Animation Process & Display Project

[ PART 01 ] :: DOCUMENT YOUR PROCESS 📝🎨 ▶

Describe your process in making an animation. Don't focus on animations made for class, think about animations that you make on your own.* 💭

* If you have never made an animation that is not for class or it has been a very long time, jot that down, that is good information. What is stopping you? You can make something move in 2 frames. Why don't you do this for fun? What do you do for fun instead? Take away 30 minutes of those activities and replace them with making animation. If you still don't want to make animation, what are your plans now that you know?

Draw out your step-by-step process:

🚀 THE BEGINNING

Why do you begin? 🤔
What is the initial prompt? 💡
How do you think of what you're going to do?
How long do you spend thinking? ⏰

🔧 PREPARATION

Do you sketch first? ✏️
Do you look for resources online? 🌐
References - do you make your own?
Where do you find them? 🔍
How do you set them up?

💻 WORKSPACE SETUP

Are references in the file?
Are they near your computer? 🖥️
How many computers?
How do you decide on the look? 🎭
Colors? Sound or not? 🎵

Display Methods: 📺

How do you display your animations? How are they seen by other people when they are done? 👁️ If they are seen in multiple ways, write down all the different ways. Ask yourself why you choose to show them the way you do. Explain in writing the reason behind your choice of displaying them that way.

IMPORTANT: Write down and draw everything that you do to create an animation. ⚡ Do not add anything that you "should" do or that you want to do in the future, what do you actually do.

UPLOAD YOUR DOCUMENTATION: Take all of these drawings and writing and upload them to the internet and provide a link to them via your website. 🌈 You can password protect this link or you can hide this link. 🔐 Think of how you can do this. When in doubt, brainstorm with AI. 🤖

[ PART 02 ] :: PEER FEEDBACK SESSION 👥💬 ▶

Open up your materials on your computer so that the group can see all of them. 📂 Also open a word document on the computer. 📄

Each person will sit at each other's computers and look through the materials you have shared. They will use the word document to answer the following questions: ❓

How can this artist change their process of getting an idea for an animation? 💡
How can this artist change their process of preparing for the animation? 📋
How can this artist change their process of gathering materials to help them with the animation? 🧩
How can this artist change their process of starting the animation? 🎬
How can this artist change their process of animation? You can suggest different types of animation, like rotoscope, claymation, 3D animation, 2D animation, collage, physical, etc. 🎞️
How can this artist change their process of finishing the animation? ✅
How can this artist radically change their process of displaying an animation? 🚀🌟

▶ CLICK HERE TO VIEW ALL DISPLAY METHODS 🎪

🏛️ Ancient & Pre-Cinema Era

Shadow Puppetry, Magic Lanterns, Thaumatropes, Phenakistoscopes, Zoetropes, Praxinoscopes, Flip Books

💾 Digital Display Surfaces

Computer monitors, TV screens (LED/OLED/plasma), E-ink displays, Digital billboards, LED walls, Cinema screens, VR headset displays

🎥 Projection Surfaces

Architectural: Building walls, facades, monuments 🏢
Natural: Trees, rocks, mountains, water features 🌳
Fabric: Curtains, scrims, fabric screens, clothing 🧵
Materials: Wood, metal, glass, concrete, sand 🪨
Geometric shapes: Spheres, cubes, irregular 3D objects 📐
Atmospheric: Fog, mist, smoke, water spray ☁️

👓 Augmented Reality Surfaces

Physical environments through AR glasses/phones, Tabletops and floors (interactive projections), Real-world objects with AR overlays, Spatial surfaces in mixed reality ✨

👆 Interactive/Responsive Surfaces

Touch-sensitive walls and tables, Motion-responsive floors, Interactive kiosks and exhibits, Holographic displays, Flexible/bendable screens 🔮

🎭 Unconventional Surfaces

Ice sculptures 🧊, Human skin (projection mapping) 👤, Vehicle surfaces (cars, trains, planes) 🚗, Water screens and fountains 💦, Mirror surfaces 🪞, Transparent/glass surfaces, Curved and spherical surfaces (planetarium domes) 🌌

🗿 Sculptural & Embedded

Sculptures with embedded screens, Kinetic sculptures with moving screen elements, Mixed-media pieces with integrated displays 🎨

[ PART 03 ] :: CREATE YOUR RADICAL PLAN 🔥⚡ ▶

Now you will read everyone's comments about your process and display methods. 📖 Spend 10 minutes writing down what you will do for this exercise. ⏱️

REQUIREMENTS: 📌

Create a short animation (~10 seconds minimum, no maximum) ⏰
Can be about anything 🎲
Should be good for your portfolio 💼

Write down your EXACT plan: 📝

How are you going to radically change your process? 💥
How will you display your animation? 🖼️
What kind of tools and programs will you use? 🛠️
How do you plan on learning them or procuring the supplies? 📚
Sketch exactly what you will spend the next 2 weeks doing 🗓️

[ RESOURCES ] :: AVAILABLE TOOLS & EQUIPMENT 🎁✨ ▶

💿 SOFTWARE

Artivive (AR - Easy) 👓

Lens Studio (AR - Complex) 🔬

Adobe Creative Cloud ☁️

Photoshop 🖌️

After Effects ⚡

Illustrator 🎨

Premiere Pro 🎬

Blender 🌊

Your choice of software 🎯

📚 Animation and AI software list

📦 EQUIPMENT

iPads (check out from me) 📱

AS Studio Building Equipment: 🏢

Projectors, Touchscreens, Cameras, Screens, etc 📽️

Ask Alex (check out from apantin@fiu.edu) 📧

🧰 MATERIALS

Paper & Drawing Tools ✏️

Surfaces (found/created) 🎪

Physical Structures 🏗️

VR Space (Online Editor) 🌐

Leftover Sculpture Pile 🗿

Abandoned Ceramics 🏺

Sides of buildings 🏢

Be creative! 💡

RESOURCE LINKS: 🔗
→ Artivive Website 👓
→ Lens Studio 📸

WEB ANIMATION TIP: 💻 The internet web page can host gifs, applications you build, images, colors, sounds, scroll over effects, scroll down effects. Don't be intimidated. 😎 You can create these animated websites easily with AI. 🤖

[ ⚠ WARNING ] :: PROHIBITED SURFACES & METHODS 🚫⛔ ▶

BANNED DISPLAY SURFACES: ❌

REQUIREMENT: If you use a banned display, it MUST be radically altered 💥 (broken, glitched, embedded in another object, distorted through material, etc.). These bans push toward invention rather than prohibition! 🔄

Computer/laptop screens 💻
Smartphone/tablet displays 📱
Traditional gallery wall projections 🖼️
Flat projection screens or walls with no textures or interesting surfaces 🧱
NEW: A website with video embeds on it 🌐
NEW: Projection on plain white paper 📄
NEW: Putting a computer (even "old" or "vintage") in a gallery that looks like it was being used, with notes and books, sketchbooks beside it, little figurines, etc. This has become a cliche! 🖥️

BANNED PROCESSES & METHODS: 🚷

These target the most habitual, frictionless processes that animation students fall back on. Build systems from scratch or disrupt defaults! ⚡

🛠️ TOOLS & TEMPLATES

Pre-made templates or presets 📐
Premiere transitions 🎞️
After Effects "text animator" 📝
TikTok filters 📱
Stock rigs or pre-rigged characters 🤖
Mixamo default humans 🧍
Adobe puppet templates 🎭

🎨 CONTENT & STYLE

Trace copyrighted characters 👾
Disney, anime fanart, cliche fantasy themese, well known memes as-is 🏰
Copy-paste stock soundtracks 🎵
Canned sound effects without manipulation 🔊
Generating entire animation using only one AI prompt 🤖
Polished "clean" Disney-style finished animation (unless radically subverted) ✨

Cliches & Trophes of Animation

📋 WORKFLOWS & TECHNIQUES

Storyboard-to-animation pipeline "as taught" 📖
Script → storyboard → animatic → clean-up → final ➡️
Making your first draft your final "cliche"📄
Letting software default settings decide color, timing, or easing ⚙️
Rotoscoping (unless footage is heavily intervened) 🎬
Lip sync to popular songs or memes 👄

🎯 OVERUSED ANIMATION TYPES

Walk cycles (unless distorted) 🚶
Photographic slideshows 📸
"Trailer" style animations 🎬
Animatics 📋

THE GOAL: 🎯 Treat animation less as "software product" and more as material experiment. There must be glitch, erasure, or transformation! ⚡💥

After all this is done.....there is one more thing to tell you█ 👀🌀