Animation

Animation  

From the history of animation there are many devices that created moving images without film. They were usually toys made for  children.

The flip-book, that was invented in the 19th century, is still popular today. Pages of drawing are stuck or stapled together. Each page has a drawing that is slightly different from the one before so that when the book is flipped with the thumb, the illusion of movement is created.

This link takes you to a site about the history of flip-books with lots of examples. The tutor brought in a few examples including one where the frog egg turns in to a frog. There is only a couple of seconds of animation created. 

Other devices were also popular like the Zoetrope. A cylinder contains images slightly different from one another that are put inside a drum with slits. When the drum spins around the illusion of movement is created. The tutor brought in a battery operated one what contained blue plastic figures bouncing a ball. A man called William Horner invented the Zoetrope in 1834.

The praxinoscope which came a little after the Zoetrope was invented in France in 1877 by Charles Reynaud. It was still a spinning drum of sorts but instead of slits had mirrors on which the movement was viewed.

Since the invention of film there has been many invented technologies that have improved and enhanced animation. One thing that assisted in the production of animation was the improvement of transparent paper. This made it easier to see through the paper to use to create cartoon like work.

Putting sound on film was another great improvement, not just to animation, but film in general. Although Steam Boat Willy by Disney is usually considered the first synchronized sound animation it wasn't. But it was the first commercially successful one.

Animation works by the persistence of vision. This is what Wikipedia says about it.
Persistence of vision refers to the optical illusion that occurs when visual perception of an object does not cease for some time after the rays of light proceeding from it have ceased to enter the eye. The illusion has also been described as "retinal persistence", "persistence of impressions" or simply "persistence" and other variations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persistence_of_vision
Nowadays it is not considered correct.

There have been many people and companies who have influenced animation and developed it further. In this section, we will look at some of the most influential.

Pre and post-Digital

Walt Disney

Walt Disney and the Walt Disney Studios have played a pivotal role in the progression of animation. Walt Disney’s first major creation was Mickey Mouse, the star of animated shorts such as Steamboat Willie from 1928, and still a popular character and cultural icon today. Disney went on from this to make feature-length animated movies, starting withSnow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. The Walt DisneyStudios joined with Pixar in 2006, and the combined studios continue to produce films including WALL-E(2008) and Up (2009).

Walt Disney was a visionary who not only changed the face of animation, but also created Disneyland, a theme park in California based on the creations of his studios. 

Len Lye

Len Lye (1901–80) was another experimental animator, this time from New Zealand. He was interested in sound, motion and kinetic sculpture (art which moves). He created abstract works such as

Free Radicals

(1958–79), which was made by scratching the celluloid film.

His work demonstrated various methods of movement across the

screen, which subsequent animators were able to develop in interesting and different ways.

John Alan Lasseter (born 1957) is an American animator as well as many other things. He was influenced by Disney and saw the potential of 3D animation. He made some early films like the one with the baby called Tin Toy. He is best known for the Toy Story films from the 1990s where he was the first to produce a film completely using computers in 1995.

Where animation is used:

Music videos

Animation is used in many music videos, often in combination with live action. Stop frame animation

examples include:

End Love by OK Go (2010)

Peter Gabriel is famous for his stop motion animation in Sledgehammer (1986).

Advertising

Animation used in adverts can range from the whole thing being entirely animated to just a small part being given a feeling of fantasy or ‘the impossible’ from seamless CGI.
Some of the animated characters used in advertising are especially lovable and have been used to create brand loyalty to products from tea (Tetley) to toilet paper (Charmin).

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Citroën C4 (2004)

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Cadbury’s Crunchie (2010)

Television programmes

Children’s cartoons are a staple of television programming and have existed since the 1950s. They started primarily for Saturday morning shows. Cartoons for adults have also become popular, including South Park and Family Guy. Japanese animation is also very popular with adult audiences too and have a huge market share.

Techniques of Animation
There are many techniques used in animation from the traditional cel animation to rotoscoping and now computer generated, both 2D and 3D with special effects.

Rotoscoping 

This is where live footage is shot and then animation created from it. The process is time consuming and expensive, but the movement can be captured really well. The footage can be projected and hand-drawn on to paper. That again can be filmed and used to create animation. We had experience of rotoscoping by using Photoshop. A piece of film was imported to the software and then using the Timeline and blank frames above the footage we were able to make a drawing of a gorilla. The results of the technique can be excellent, even with very little drawing skills. Kanye West used the technique in his video called Heartless.

Cel animation (drawn on film)

Celluloid is film which is made up of a line of cels. Each cel is clear and the rest of the film is black.

For cel animation, each picture is drawn onto a cel. Each picture is different from the last. When the film is run at speed over a light, the images are projected and give the illusion of movement. The simplest method is to paint the whole image onto the cel. A different method is where several layers are used for each part of the picture (e.g.background, characters) and they are laid on top of each other. This means that the background layer can stay the same over several cels and only the characters have to be moved when painted on to each cel.

Each picture in a cel can be drawn with a great level of detail, but

this method is incredibly time-consuming. This was the main method used for both television cartoons and animated movies until computer animation became popular.