Breakdacing Animation

This little figure on the cross course crit poster is one frame of the breakdancing animation which is my new animation project. I started this project because I can work on my computer, not like the Break-Light project could be prevented by so many reasons as I have to engage people, find places and buy lights. Furthermore, I was activated to do this by an animation, Cut (2009) by Kristian de la Riva from Liverpool Biennial 2010. The animation, Cut is of a man how to mutilate himself. It is funny and interesting but very gory. I like the way (I guess) the artist drew the movement of the figure with a video under because the figure’s moves are so smooth and realistic. Therefore, I wanted to try this way to make an animation.

My first is this animation of 8 steps basic toprock in a rhythm and it is 12 frames per second. Since Photoshop CS3, Photoshop started to support videos. That means people can add effect on videos with Photoshop. I used a dancing video of Bboy Focus as the bottom layer, drew the moves as layer by layer and when I finished the frames I needed, I used Ulead Gif Animator which is a software like iStop Motion to combine the frames to an animation. The music was added with Adobe Premiere Pro.

Another try is the animation of a kind of powermoves, flare. This animation supposes to be 15 frames per second but it has been slow down after exported by Ulead Gif Animator. However, the speed is easy to be changed. I will change it when I need to change it.

In this one, I simplified the figure and switched the frequency to 6 frames per second. It looks Okay if the figure moves like this.

I always use Adobe Premiere Pro for video editing but I always have the same problem which is videos lose quality after exporting. This time, I had kept trying to export to different format files but I still couldn't get the quality as good as the videos before edited by Premiere Pro. The version I use is CS3, I am considering to get a newer version.