Animation: Basic Camera Techniques

As the old Pong game is to Sonic Adventure on the new Sega Dreamcast machine, so are the basic animations presented in this introductory guide when compared to the sophisticated, multi-layered, computer-enhanced animation found in Tarzan, The Prince of Egypt and South Park (OK, maybe not the last one). However, just as babies learn to bawl before they talk, budding animators need to build a repertoire of basic skills in character development and movement, working with backgrounds, and low-cost methods for transferring images to tape before they head for Burbank looking for a job with The Mouse. Here, Keith Opstad and Paul Messerle offer a crash course in using basic 2D and 3D shapes, the fine art of "squashing" and "stretching" (those are the technical terms) characters to exaggerate features and motion, creating a running action figure, and using a time-lapse VCR to animate a short. Although I felt that more time could have been spent on explaining the technical aspects of the time-lapse VCR, I think that budding animators will be inspired by the end of the tape, when they're shown various sections of shorts, including the fairly complex "Moosion Impossible" (starring a moose), made with a relatively small and economical range of tools. Recommended. Aud: I, J, H, C, P. (R. Pitman)