Industry Associations
The Animation world network has a page listing various animation associations:
http://www.awn.com/village/associations.php3 .Two of these associations are:
Toon Institute: http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonplan/resume.htm#top
This is Larry Lauria website which showcases several animation tutorials, his background in animation which was at Disney Institute as a program manager for animation.
What I consider important about this association is the many tutorials on important aspects of animation that does answer the question on the animation process as it covers important information on key aspects and fundamentals. It might only cover 2D works but this can also be applied to 3D, which is the main reason learning the 2D fundamentals is important to know before diving into 3D animation. I know this all too well from my first of studies where we started with 2D then went on to 3D animation. In regards to the questions, this association contains information on the creative process in mainly the key principles of characters animation, examples of Larry's creative works which can found on this pages: http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/sketchbook/shtml/char1.htm#top for his sketches and http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/sketchbook/shtml/anim1.htm#top for his animations. Each done in as earlier sketch style and the animations re from his "2KJ" project and is on the stage of ruff animation which may change before the film is complete.
Larry's lessons include the following:
Bouncing Ball, this employes the "squash and stretch techniques". This a vital animation fundamental that is applied in a lot of animations and was one of the first lessons we were given during animation at university.
Further adventures from the bouncing ball is a more intermediate lesson on the squash and stretch from the previous lesson.
Character construction lessons on anatomy, which focus on the head and basic figure. This is applied to early character development where having correct anatomy makes all the difference especially for hyper realism you see in current films like Avatar. Having knowledge of anatomy both biped and quadruped based characters is a of the up most importance in not only character design but animating where you need to know how a characters body would move or bend without looking out of place and unsettling to viewers.
Timing, an aspect that will always be applied to any animation and as mentioned at the beginning of the lesson, " the essence of everything we do in animation". (http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonplan/timing.htm) It is to define how fast or slow a character will move like for example a large character like an elephant will be slow. Frame rate is mentioned here which is 24fps but for the PAL region including Australia, it's 25fps. To achieve really fluid animation, 12 to 24 or 25 frames per second is required.
Anticipation lesson covers an animation principle used in animation. it is also a device derived from theater. An example is " Paranorman", which is mentioned at the top of the lesson page.(http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/lessonplan/anticipation.htm) The definition on the page is,
"Anticipation pertains to movements by humans, animals, objects, effects and Graphics."
The remaining lessons are on how to thumbnail a scene, time to animate, posing, character model sheets, overlapping action, character walk and pencil test. Each of these like the previous lessons, covers important principles, aspects and fundamentals that should always be applied to any animation production process wither it's 2D, 3D or Stop motion.
Another page covers information on income and Taxes: http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/toonnews/korkus.htm
This is some of the information Larry imparts in regards to the animation process and the tools are most likely hand drawn with pencil and paper.
(http://www.awn.com/tooninstitute/toonnews/project.htm ).
This page tells background story on how tax come about which all because of Walt Disney efforts. it is quite in depth and interesting to read on how Walt Disney has affected the world in different ways and not with just their many animated films.
The Society for Animation Studies: http://ww2.animationstudies.org/
This society is an international organization dedicated to studying animation history and theory.
It was founded in 1987 by Dr. Harvey Deneroff and each year they hold a conference much like Siggraph does, which is annual world wide. At these conferences they demonstrate and present their research. In regards to contents they have a blog with several entries about animation projects and will answer some of the questions listed. One such entry goes into detail on some of the process of Motion Capture which is becoming pretty big in Realistic 3D animation projects and films like "The Lord of the Rings Trilogy', which requires some actors to wear the motion capture suits.
"Motion Capture the Inner Life of the Marionette" blog entry found on this page: http://ww2.animationstudies.org/, discusses about the 12 minute film, "Actor" 2013. This film is where the performer wanders around the stage citing the final chapter of "A Clockwork Orange" by Anthony Burgess. His film was not recorded by a camera but with a motion capture suit with a loose fitted leotard with attached gyroscopes on every joint and transmitted the information wireless. This filming process also had no camera, lighting and armatures and ended up getting lots of speculating on the relationship between the actor moving around and the computer generated knight character.
This shows part of the process behind this film and just how flexible the creative process can be which is quite expansive if your freelance or self-employed.
The actor was asked to move in a exaggerated manor by the one directing him and by his own contribution. Motion capture is an area being explored and not just for animation purposes but performance art which this film could fall under.
The skills required was knowledge on motion capture, acting skills despite the over exaggeration and film making skills.
The article also mentions motion capture predating film itself where Étienne-Jules Marey, a french physiologist work was a pointer in the direction of Motion picture camera. He did earlier experiments with subjects wearing black suits with metal stripes and passed through a black back drop and this hints to earlier use of a gyroscopic suit used in motion capture.
On the associations news page (http://ww2.animationstudies.org/ ), a couple of articles mention submission and a call for applications so they do actually some employment and education advertising for the film industry including animation.
This association ethics are quite broad so the cover a wide range of issues especially since they study animation of all kinds through history. I consider this organization unique and amazing in how expansive they are and are located worldwide including in Australia as one photo of a conference was at Melbourne on the June 2012. Through their various articles on different animation projects and historical information, there is a lot of reference material and content to goes into more depth in covering the animation industry that dates back to older times when animation was still all sketches on paper.
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