Element of Design - Direction (motion)
You can influence how a viewer’s eyes moves through a composition by the arrangement of lines and forms within the composition. Direction can help to create a flow of how the information being conveyed in the composition is processed by the viewer. Movement can be broken down into either literal or compositional movement.
Literal movement creates a sense of movement in a video, movie or animation is done by physically changing the location of one or more objects in the picture frames and then viewing a sequence of frames quickly. The result is that our brain interprets the differences in each frame as movement.
For other artists and designers who work with a static medium such as a painting or a single image, we need to imply that there is movement in the image. Movement, the way that the viewer’s eyes travel around the visual composition, can greatly influence the effectiveness of the message being conveyed. The viewer’s eyes can be lead to certain locations in an image by the use of lines, edges, shapes, asymmetrical balance, colour gradients, etc.
Using a drawing program, a sketch pad or a photographic camera, create a series of 5 to 10 images. In each image, change the position of one or more objects in the image and save each changed image as a .gif file with a slightly different filename. There are many freely available programs to download or websites that can create animated gifs from images that you upload. Some of the image editing programs on your computer such as Adobe Photoshop or Fireworks can also make animated gifs. If using a website such as www.picasion.com, you simply upload your series of images to the website and click the button or link to save the animation to your computer.
[Discuss]
When you are done creating your animation, share your results with your classmates or teacher.
