Procedural Animation Summary

Procedural animation is the generation of motion based on procedure. That procedure, similar to that of generative art, is a process in which a series of statements/ instructions are defined by the artist or programmer to be externally executed.

I can somewhat share the passion Olivier Reullet has for his work. The way in which he told us that the computer itself can be used as a tool and a medium in itself, the creativity being with the instructions or program written. Procedural art and animation blur the lines between science, engineering, mathematics and art. Through trial, error, experimentation and creativity programmers can create a variety of effects that while might be created/ worked out and rendered by the computer, have a human link in the form of the programmer themselves who set the ball rolling and await in anticipation the effect it will create.

It is used in many things from abstract music videos to games, from special effects in film to VJ (visual jockey rather than disk jockey) projections. It can be used to achieve results that would otherwise be impossible (or at the least extremely time consuming) with the use of key framing or frame by frame animation. It can be used in creating animation that responds to events, it can have the audience interact and see the results of that interaction such as what happens in games. It is this area of procedural animation that most interests me, having a program that will show visuals according to user or audience input of various types.

I look forward to experimenting with ‘Processing’ and other script based applications as well as exploring the use of scripts, physics and expressions in programs I’m already familiar with, such as action script, Maya and Flash (actionscript). I will look at code, using existing codes edited and combined to my purposes once I understand what it all means!