¶ … 3D Animation Model: Parkour Performance
This paper describes a three dimensional (3D) animation movie of a parkour performer. Parkour training is defined as the art of the movement and needs a lot of skills to overcome obstacles within the range of one's path. The latter allows the animator to exhibit his/her skills demonstrating the rapid changes and randomly appearing obstacles. As the animation will last only 2 min, a simple design would be suitable to emphasize details of animation from different camera angles.
3D animations are modeled by manipulating polygon meshes, embedding them into objects, characters, and scenes and eventually moving them. Recently, 3D animations have become a part of daily life routine from the advertisements on the billboards to web pages, television, video games, simulations and medical technologies. The high demand for the 3D animation attracts a lot of young people's attention; however, the skills such as being patient, being detail oriented, being open to the critics and being able to work hard help separate the successful 3D animation artists from the others. In this aspect, an animated movie with rapidly moving objects and details along with intelligent camera planning would be the preference for an artist to exhibit the skill sets developed over time. Animating the spider man, skateboard performer or a new generation sports activity, parkour can be listed as the examples of rapid moving, real time animation.
Creating a real time environment requires long processes such as hours of rendering, different camera perspectives, and camera shots. The human visual perception is constructed by the shadows to provide depth, object, movement, and light [2, 6]. The fundamental principles of 3D animation were defined by Thomas and Johnston, two of Disney's animators. These six principles can be summarized as follows [5, 3].
(1) Squash and stretch define the rigidity and volume of an object by using distortion effects.
(2) Timing spaces actions to define the weight and size of objects and the personality of characters.
(3) Anticipation is the preparation for an action.
(4) Staging is preparation of the idea so that it is unmistakably clear.
(5) Follow through and overlapping action are the termination of an action and establishing its relationship to the next action.
(6) Straight ahead action and pose-to-pose action are the two contrasting approaches to the creation of movement.
In the traditional 3D animation shadows were drawn by hand. Fortunately, the rapid developments in digital image technologies allowed the animators to use computer tools and programs. Another important aspect of animation is the contact between moving characters and the animation environment or background. It does not matter how much weight animated into the characters' movements, the characters look like aimlessly wandering around, walking on air.
Taking all together, timing, preparation of the characters and background, objects chosen, contacts between characters and background and the color of characters, background and objects along with the camera angles define the credibility of an animation as well as the animator.
In this paper, parkour sport is chosen to highlight the contact between a young parkour performer and background objects along with his facial expressions during a particular movement and different camera perspectives of the same movement. The sport of parkour requires a set of skills that the performer acrobatically moves from a start point A to the finish point B. on/around the objects appearing in the urban environment. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNvJy0zoXOY of Damian Walters illustrates his movements, particularly, acrobatically running thought a car, jumping on the car and being able to reach on the ground after tumbling on the car. It demonstrates the importance of distortions, timing as well as the contact between the performer and objects (Figure 1). The performer looks like he did not pay attention what he wears; however, the shoes and clothes are very important for making quick and acrobatic moves. In the living corner of Seattle Times Adam Tschorn, a Corner Writer of Los Angeles Times, explains the look of performer as sport of parkour is being very popular within young generation and candidate to be as big as skateboarding. Adam Dunlap, who started a parkour-inspired clothing line based in Beaverton, Ore., called Take Flight Apparel, is more nuanced: "Can this be as big as skateboarding? The simple answer is yes. But the people in the parkour community have been saying that this is going to be the next big action sport for years. But it's taking a lot longer than I thought." Parkour as a launchpad for soon-to-be popular lifestyle brands is far from a universal opinion, especially since no specialized equipment or clothing is actually needed. While many consider sturdy, lightweight running shoes a basic necessity...
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