Animated Adventures
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

General What is Animated Adventures? Where is Animated Adventures located? Do you have classes for kids? Do you have classes for adults? What is the cost of your classes? Do you have scholarships? Do you visit schools? Do you offer birthday parties? Do you have workshops in places other than Washington State?

Animation What is animation? How do animators make cartoon characters move? Who invented animation? What supplies do you need to make animation? How do cartoons talk? What are the different kinds of animation? What is anime? What kind of computer program can I get to make animation? What kind of camera do I need to make animation movies?

Orders Can I buy products here with a credit card? Why do you use PayPal? Do I need an account to use PayPal? What merchants does Animated Adventures recommend What does "USD" stand for in the shopping cart? Do you ship internationally? Why do some of your camps have different prices at different locations?

General

1. WHAT IS ANIMATED ADVENTURES? (return to top)

Animated Adventures is a company that helps people of all ages express themselves with the art of animation. Check out our about page to read articles about the company and see a list of our workshop partners.
2. WHERE IS ANIMATED ADVENTURES LOCATED? (return to top)

We are based on Bainbridge Island, near Seattle. Our classes are mostly held on Bainbridge Island and in Seattle, but we also organize classes around the country. If you would like Animated Adventures to come to your town, please contact us.
3. DO YOU HAVE CLASSES FOR KIDS? (return to top)

Yes. We have several workshops in the Seattle, Washington area, including Bainbridge Island. Please see our schedule or workshops pages for more information.
4. DO YOU HAVE CLASSES FOR ADULTS? (return to top)

Yes. Check our schedule or workshops pages to check for upcoming adult offerings.
5. WHAT IS THE COST OF YOUR CLASSES? (return to top)

Prices vary according to where our workshops take place, because of the variables of space rentals and workshop partner fees. If the registration is not yet open for your class, contact us for pricing information.
6. DO YOU HAVE SCHOLARSHIPS? (return to top)

Yes. Every summer we have at least one scholarship spot in each of our camps on Bainbridge Island (For information, apply to Helpline House.) Our workshop partners such as the Seattle Children's Museum also have scholarship programs for our workshops.
7. DO YOU VISIT SCHOOLS? (return to top)

Yes, Animated Adventures offers many different school programs. Visit the schools page for more information, or contact us to bring us to your school.
8. DO YOU OFFER BIRTHDAY PARTIES? (return to top)

Yes, when our schedule allows it, we offer Animated Adventures animation-making parties "to go" in Kitsap and King counties. They include favors and DVDs for all party guests. For more information, please contact us with your event information (date and location).
9. DO YOU HAVE WORKSHOPS IN PLACES OTHER THAN WASHINGTON STATE? (return to top)

Yes, sometimes we travel to other states, and other countries to teach people how to make animated movies. If you would like Animated Adventures to come to your area, please contact us.

Animation

1. WHAT IS ANIMATION? (return to top)

Animation is the art of change, a form of art and filmmaking that combines movement and time
2. HOW DO ANIMATORS MAKE CARTOON CHARACTERS MOVE? (return to top)

Animators make animation one frame at a time. A frame is a small part of a second in a video or film movie. There are 30 frames in every second of video, for instance. Animators usually make a new picture for every 2 or 3 frames of animation. Now a question for you: If an animator shoots animation "on threes," meaning the animator changes the picture every three frames of video, then how many changes does the animator need to make to the picture to make one second of animation? (Answer: 10)
3. WHO INVENTED ANIMATION? (return to top)

It wasn't Walt Disney. By the time he was born people were already making animation. Even before movies or television were invented, people enjoyed animation in Victorian toys like zoetropes, thaumatropes and flipbooks. In fact people have been making animation for a very long time, since the cave-dwelling people drew pictures of running animals on rock walls, like this picture from Lascaux, France circa 1200 B.C. Cool, huh?
4. WHAT SUPPLIES DO YOU NEED TO MAKE ANIMATION? (return to top)

Its as simple as a couple pieces of plain paper and a pencil, to as complex as a 3D set in a computer. For any kind of animator, a stopwatch is a really handy tool for timing movements. For animators who like to draw, a lightbox helps tracing and multi-layered artwork like cels.
5. HOW DO CARTOONS TALK? (return to top)

When cartoons talk, animators call it "lip synch." It takes extra work to break down the soundtrack, listening to it very slowly and measuring the number of frames of video it will take to match each word, each mouth position. This is a job where the animator has to write down a lot of numbers and do a lot of math!
6. WHAT ARE THE DIFFERENT KINDS OF ANIMATION? (return to top)


• Traditional/Drawing Animation: is the most basic form of animation is a series of drawings on paper. It encompasses most tv animation, anime, etc.

• Stop-Motion Animation is the frame-by-frame movement of "real things," like objects, people, clay, clouds. Animators have also come up with terms for different kinds of animation using these subjects.:

  • Pixillation is a way of doing stop-motion animation with people that looks really cool, like special effects shots. For instance, if you take several pictures of a person while they are jumping in the air, played together, they look like the person is flying!

  • Clay Animation is a way of doing stop-motion animation with colorful flexible clay, usually oil-based clay called plasticine. Examples of clay animation are the Wallace and Gromit or the California Raisins. Watch a movie example of clay animation.

  • Time Lapse Animation is a way of filming something over a long period of time so that real time is sped-up extra fast in the finished movie. Time lapse animation is often used to show clouds moving in the sky, cycles of the moon, or traffic on busy streets. To make time lapse animation, just take a picture every so often, or at a certain interval, such as one picture every ten minutes. If you did that, and put those pictures together, how many seconds of animation would you get if you filmed for 24 hours, then sequenced the frames on "twos" and played at 30 fps? This is a good math problem to solve.

  • Cut-Out Animation is the frame-by-frame movement of paper. Yuri Norstein is a Russian animator who has made very nice cut-out animation films on layers of glass called a multi-plane. You can make your own multi-plane stand in the projects section of the web site.

  

• Computer Animation is a broad term meaning any kind of animation made with the use of a computer. 3D Computer Animation is three-dimensional renderings made with the drawing and building tools in the computer. Examples of 3D animation are Shrek, Jimmy Neutron, and Pixar's movies like The Incredibles and Finding Nemo. Computers are one of the most powerful of the many tools animators use, but they don't do the animation for you! The characters in the computer have to be animated by people in order to create appealing animation.

• Motion-Capture or "Performance Animation" is a type of computer animation that uses magnetic or optical imaging technology to record the movements of an actor in a special suit.

• "Green-Screen" or Chroma-Key is a type of computer graphics and digital compositing (layering of images) in which bright blue or green backgrounds are filmed behind actors, so they can be "keyed" out of the scene and layered with a computer-generated background. This is how the weather forecaster on television looks like they are standing in front of an animated map (they are actually standing in front of a blank green or blue wall!). It is also used to make people look like they are next to dinosaurs and other special effects.

• Mixed-Media Animation is a broad term meaning "everything else" that you can animate, like paint-on-glass, magazine collage, foam puppets, pin-screens, sand, scratch-on-film, legos, and whatever else you can think of. Many animators have invented new and interesting ways to animate. Norman McLaren was one of them. He worked at the National Film Board of Canada, where experimentation was strongly encouraged!
7. WHAT IS ANIME? (return to top)

Anime is a style of animation originated in Japan after World War II. It has a characteristic look, based on the designs of manga, or Japanese comic books. Anime is manga brought to life with voices, sophisticated camera movements (pans, zooms) and highly-stylized, economic animation. It's fun to make your own anime characters and art. Check out the Boys & Girls Club's Manga & Anime Art Club for examples and techniques.
8. WHAT KIND OF COMPUTER PROGRAM CAN I GET TO MAKE ANIMATION? (return to top)

Computers don't make animation, people do. But seriously...the best programs are the easiest to learn for young people. Macromedia Flash is the best for making 2D animation, like digital cut-outs. It is also the industry standard. It is the way that many animated television programs are made these days, like "Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi." For 3D animation, you need a special program and a pretty powerful computer. For affordability and user-friendliness, I recommend Animation Master or modeling programs like Bryce and Poser. If you want to make stop-motion or clay animation, you'll need a digital camera and software such as Boinx iStopMotion (Mac only) or StopMotion Pro (PC/Windows only).

If you have a digital camera, and you can get the photographs into your computer, then you can assemble your photographs into animation movie files, like Quicktime (.mov) or AVI using the computer program ImageReady, which comes bundled with Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop is a great program to have on its own for altering, combining and layering images. You can also use programs like iMovie and iPhoto, available in the iLife software package, or the affordable Adobe Premiere Elements for PC, to sequence images. The difficulty however is that loading too many photos (like the hundreds required for animation) can make these programs crash. Video editing programs like iMovie and Adobe Premiere Elements are better for working with video, which is why it is best to first composite your photos into movie files using a program like ImageReady.

9. WHAT KIND OF CAMERA DO I NEED TO MAKE ANIMATION MOVIES? (return to top)

Any digital camera will do, as long as it can take sequential digital still images you can put on your computer. It helps to have a big memory card to hold lots of pictures so you don't have to download them all the time. Be sure to lock your camera down securely and try not to move it when you take the pictures. Use a tripod or ¼" bolt and nut to hold the camera firmly in place.

Orders

1. CAN I BUY PRODUCTS HERE WITH A CREDIT CARD? (return to top)

Yes, you can use a credit card to purchase items from Animated Adventures. We use PayPal to handle credit card transactions for us. In some cases, we offer products for sale through merchants we trust and respect, such as Amazon.com. In return for referring our vistiors to their products, they provide us a very small commission and, hopefully, we've helped someone get closer to realizing their animated masterpiece. Please help support Animated Adventures by clicking on our links and buying from them.
2. WHY DO YOU USE PAYPAL? (return to top)

PayPal, a subsidiary of Ebay, is a completely secure way of handling money over the internet. You don't need a PayPal account to order any of the products or classes on our site, and you will not be charged from PayPal to use their service. We've chosen PayPal to handle credit card transactions for our customers because they are the global leader in online payments.
3. DO I NEED AN ACCOUNT TO USE PAYPAL? (return to top)

No. You do not need a PayPal account to make a purchase on this site. At the end of your transaction, you will be asked if you would like to sign-up for a free account. There's good reason to have a PayPal account, for instance, buying things on Ebay. But even if you choose not to sign-up, your order will go through securely and without additional fees.
4. WHAT MERCHANTS DOES ANIMATED ADVENTURES RECOMMEND? (return to top)

Currently, we recommend Dick Blick for arts supplies and Amazon.com for just about everything else.
5. WHAT DOES "USD" STAND FOR IN THE SHOPPING CART? (return to top)

"USD" in the shopping cart stands for U.S. Dollars, the currency in which all of our transactions are based.
6. DO YOU SHIP INTERNATIONALLY? (return to top)

We do not ship to international addresses at this time. If you would like one of our products sent to you outside the U.S., please e-mail us.
7. WHY DO SOME OF YOUR CAMPS HAVE DIFFERENT PRICES AT DIFFERENT LOCATIONS? (return to top)

Animated Adventures uses an array of different methods to bring its camps to the public. Some are hosted by an organization, like the Childrens Museum in Seattle, and others are hosted by Animated Adventures--which means we rent the location and handle the registration paperwork. Basically, when another organization is hosting one of our camps, they usually have the final decision on pricing and other elements of the class. We take great care to make sure our camps offer a fun, rewarding, and valued experience for all of our students.