The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is based on the stories from "Arabian Nights." The evil magician enters the courts of The Great Caliph, impresses them with a magical horse, and tricks Prince Achmed into riding the flying horse. Prince Achmed is taken on adventures were he meets and falls for the Pari Banu. The entire film is animated using the silhouette technique - paper cutouts - against a tonal background.

The Adventures of Prince Achmed is one of the earliest animated films, and truly a pioneer for present animation. Currently, I am unable to make this or any animation similar to this one. The use of the limited palleted animation helps simplify the project, from my perspective, because it minimizes the detail needed to illustrate what is going on - decreases the signifcance of a background, and limits the actions of the characters to a handful.

The most recognized and contemporary animation, that comes to mind, similar to The Adventures of Prince Achmed is the iPod commericals with silhouetted characters dancing to the music. Another piece from this animation that I always see in cartoons today is the use of perspective. Even though the atmospheric perspective in the film was an artisitc decision, it is always seen in cartoons today.

Stairs Bounce

I tried to make it as realistic as possible, but this was the end result. I played with a little easing to make it appear as if the ball was picking up speed as it went down the stairs.

I did pretty well with the stairs illustration - I' more of a two-dimensional fan.

Flash vs. Photoshop vs. Illustrator

The first week of school came ended moderately quick for me: the week began with IDD 301 - Animation and Motion Graphics and ended with Sci 101 on Thursday. Complete opposites.

The first assignment for IDD was to draw a beach ball in three programs, Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator, easy enough? And then to animate all three in Flash. When the assignment was proposed I didn't really see any major difficulties to keep me from doing the assignment, but little did I know illustration in Flash is completely different from illustrating in Photoshop or Illustrator.

From completely illustrating with platforms I know, Flash came to me as a surprise. In Flash, the pen tool acts completely different from that of Photoshop or Illustrator. As I am trying to illustrate the beach ball as best as I could I pen tool just wouldn't curve as directed. And with my meticulous nature, I could'nt get over this hump until I firgured out how to make it rounded.

Again, illustrating in Photoshop and Illustrator is completely different from Flash. Photoshop being a universal designing program, I use it for nearly everything I do. I felt so much more comfortable illustrating this beach ball in Photoshop, and it shows in the performance of my work. As for Illustrator, I feel I don't know the program good enough to top the performance of my work in Photoshop.