Recently a new animation was released in China – I Am What I Am – and I was intrigued by the opening: ink and water animation, which are quite a lot of animated transitions in just a minute and a half.
So I studied the rules of animation transitions in detail.
I separated these transitions into several categories: transformational push-pull-rotate, connected dynamics, and explosion transitions.
- Transformational push-pull-rotate have the advantage of adding storytelling to the narrative, most often through the eyes of the character into another story, and can be used for things like reminiscence and double identity transitions, which have a propulsive effect on the story.
- Connected dynamics can bring strong dramatic tension to animation, using the dynamics of what the characters are doing to seamlessly segue to the next scene, so smoothly that transitions are overlooked and add a montage effect to the film.
- Explosion transitions are very popular in short films, as the advantage of explosions is that they can quickly cover the entire frame for a switch, whether with flash, smoke or broken objects. For short opening credits or transitions, they can give the audience a quick and powerful sensory stimulus.