In our last lecture/seminar before the easter holiday our tutors explained the basics of animation and how it has developed into what it is today. We looked at how animation has developed from simple techniques such as persistance of vision, zeotrope's, and thaumatrobe's... This helped me to understand the basic principles behind animation as well as giving me a much clearer understanding of how I might begin to work on my own animation...

Before this lecture I was thinking of complicated ideas such as a deer running through a forest however It soon dawned on me that I didn't have a clue how to put any of my complicated ideas into practice...
In the lecture the tutor's discussed Iconic abstraction, and how ideas can be reduced down to their simplest form. on the other hand, They also mentioned that it is equally important to control the meaning of the object/animation to prevent it from becoming too abstract/unrecognisable...

During the seminar we discussed ideas for our animations... The tutor put allot of emphasis on how we should keep our animations simple otherwise we might struggle; he suggested that we start with simple abstract shapes which would make it easier on ourselves... obviously a deer running through a forest wouldn't be as simple as I first thought therefore this seminar really helped me to realise what would actually be possible to achieve rather than what I would like to achieve for my first ever attempt at animation...

Rather than thinking about complicated forms/concepts I started to think about simple changes that I could introduce to shapes to create simple animations...

change in:

- shape
- colour
- depth
- transparency
- size/scale
- motion
- rotation
- mood
- speed
- light

(notes during the lecture)