Animation basics: Homemade special effects - TED-Ed

View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/animation-basics-homemade-special-effects-ted-ed

Animation is used everywhere to communicate big ideas--in movies, television, and media. Do you ever stop and wonder about the magic of it all? And have you ever wanted to create your own special effects? TED-Ed animators show just how easy (and fun) homemade special effects can be.

Lesson and animation by TED-Ed.

How do you get from point A to point B?

Why not spice it up with homemade special effects?

A film is simply a series of images

played in sequence to create the illusion of motion.

If you manipulate those images,

crazy things can happen.

We used a tablet and one of the many stop motion apps out there.

How do you get from point A to point B?

We started off by taking a bunch of pictures of Celeste in place.

Then, just like stop motion animation,

the character is moved just a bit

before the next picture is taken,

which, in this case, creates a sliding effect.

Here we use the oldest trick in the book.

By alternating between photos

of Celeste on-screen and off-screen,

we've made her childhood dream of teleportation a reality.

With a little creativity, there are a million ways

you can used homemade special effects

to make something as simple as

getting from point A to point B much more fun.

If you're at a loss for ideas,

try finding inspiration in your surroundings,

like the refrigerator

and your coat rack.

You can even try incorporating

everyday objects from around your house,

like, say, umbrellas

or binder clips.

Wherever there is an object,

there is an opportunity to make it come to life.

When humans are used in stop motion animation,

that's called pixilation,

a term coined in the mid-twentieth century,

well before the word pixel was a part of our vocabulary.

But these sorts of special effects

are as old as the art of film making,

and thanks to today's technologies,

can be reproduced in your very own kitchen.

Moving an object from point A to point B

is a fundamental principle of animation.

To learn more about the process

and the tools we used,

visit the "Dig Deeper" section on ed.ted.com.