Complied by Darlington Tetteh
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although several other forms of presenting animation also exist.
Animation can sometimes refer to a way of activating a community, i.e. 'animating' the users. This means actions which encourages users to interact with a given service and is connected to moderation.
Early examples of attempts to capture the phenomenon of motion into a still drawing can be found in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are depicted with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the perception of motion.
The phenakistoscope, zoetrope and praxinoscope, as well as the common flip book, were early popular animation devices invented during the 1800s. These devices produced movement from sequential drawings using technological means, but animation did not really develop much further until the advent of motion picture film.
There is no single person who can be considered the "creator" of the art of film animation, as there were several people doing several projects which could be considered various types of animation all around the same time.
Georges Méliès was a creator of special-effect films; he was generally one of the first people to use animation with his technique. He discovered a technique by accident which was to stop the camera rolling to change something in the scene, and then continue rolling the film. This idea was later known as stop-motion animation. Méliès discovered this technique accidentally when his camera broke down while shooting a bus driving by. When he had fixed the camera, a horse happened to be passing by just as Méliès restarted rolling the film, his end result was that he had managed to make a bus transform into a horse. This was just one of the great contributors to animation in the early years.
J. Stuart Blackton was possibly the first American filmmaker to use the techniques of stop-motion and hand-drawn animation. Introduced to filmmaking by Edison, he pioneered these concepts at the turn of the 20th century, with his first copyrighted work dated 1900. Several of his films, among them The Enchanted Drawing (1900) and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) were film versions of Blackton's "lightning artist" routine, and utilized modified versions of Méliès' early stop-motion techniques to make a series of blackboard drawings appear to move and reshape themselves. 'Humorous Phases of Funny Faces' is regularly cited as the first true animated film, and Blackton is considered the first true animator.
Another French artist, Émile Cohl, began drawing cartoon strips and created a film in 1908 called Fantasmagorie. The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animator’s hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look. This makes Fantasmagorie the first animated film created using what came to be known as traditional (hand-drawn) animation.
Following the successes of Blackton and Cohl, many other artists began experimenting with animation. One such artist was Winsor McCay, a successful newspaper cartoonist, who created detailed animations that required a team of artists and painstaking attention for detail. Each frame was drawn on paper; which invariably required backgrounds and characters to be redrawn and animated. Among McCay's most noted films are Little Nemo (1911), Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) and The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918).
The production of animated short films, typically referred to as "cartoons", became an industry of its own during the 1910s, and cartoon shorts were produced to be shown in movie theaters. The most successful early animation producer was John Randolph Bray, who, along with animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation process which dominated the animation industry for the rest of the decade.
Techniques
Traditional animation
An example of traditional animation, a horse animated by rotoscoping from Edward Muybridge's 19th century photos.
Main article: Traditional animation
(Also called cel animation) Traditional animation was the process used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, which are first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one onto motion picture film against a painted background by a rostrum camera.
The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects. The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery mediums, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media such as digital video. The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators' work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" to describe cel animation which makes extensive use of computer technology.
Examples of traditionally animated feature films include Pinocchio (United States, 1940), Animal Farm (United Kingdom, 1954), and Akira (Japan, 1988). Traditional animated films which were produced with the aid of computer technology include The Lion King (US, 1994) Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (Japan, 2001), and Les Triplettes de Belleville (2003).
Stop motion
Stop-motion animation, used to describe animation created by physically manipulating real-world objects and photographing them one frame of film at a time to create the illusion of movement. There are many different types of stop-motion animation, usually named after the type of media used to create the animation.
A clay animation scene from a TV commercial.
Clay animation, often abbreviated as claymation, uses figures made of clay or a similar malleable material to create stop-motion animation. The figures may have an armature or wire frame inside of them, similar to the related puppet animation (below), that can be manipulated in order to pose the figures. Alternatively, the figures may be made entirely of clay, such as in the films of Bruce Bickford, where clay creatures morph into a variety of different shapes. Examples of clay-animated works include The Gumby Show (US, 1957-1967) Morph shorts (UK, 1977-2000), Wallace and Gromit shorts (UK, 1989-1995 and 2000 - ?), Jan Švankmajer's Dimensions of Dialogue (Czechoslovakia, 1982), The Amazing Mr. Bickford (US, 1987), and The Trap Door (UK, 1984).
Cutout animation is a type of stop-motion animation produced by moving 2-dimensional pieces of material such as paper or cloth. Examples include Terry Gilliam's animated sequences from Monty Python's Flying Circus (UK, 1969-1974); La Planète sauvage (Fantastic Planet) (France/Czechoslovakia, 1973) ; Skazka skazok (Tale of Tales) (Russia, 1979), and the pilot episode of the TV series South Park (US, 1997).
Silhouette animation is a monochrome variant of cutout animation in which the characters are only visible as black silhouettes. Examples include The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Weimar Republic, 1926) and Princes et princesses (France, 2000).
Graphic animation uses non-drawn flat visual graphic material (photographs, newspaper clippings, magazines, etc.) which are sometimes manipulated frame-by-frame to create movement. At other times, the graphics remain stationary, while the stop-motion camera is moved to create on-screen action.
Model animation refers to stop-motion animation created to interact with and exist as a part of a live-action world. Intercutting, matte effects, and split screens are often employed to blend stop-motion characters or objects with live actors and settings. Examples include the work of Ray Harryhausen, as seen in films such Jason and the Argonauts (1961), and the work of Willis O'Brien on films such as King Kong (1933 film).
Go motion is a variant of model animation which uses various techniques to create motion blur between frames of film, which is not present in traditional stop-motion. The technique was invented by Industrial Light and Magic and Phil Tippett to create special effects scenes for the film The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
Object animation refers to the use of regular inanimate objects in stop-motion animation, as opposed to specially created items. One example of object animation is the brickfilm, which incorporates the use of plastic toy construction blocks such as LEGOs.
Pixilation involves the use of live humans as stop motion characters. This allows for a number of surreal effects, including disappearances and reappearances, allowing people to appear to slide across the ground, and other such effects. Examples of pixilation include Norman McLaren's Neighbours (Canada, 1952).
Puppet animation typically involves stop-motion puppet figures interacting with each other in a constructed environment, in contrast to the real-world interaction in model animation. The puppets generally have an armature inside of them to keep them still and steady as well as constraining them to move at particular joints. Examples include Le Roman de Renard (The Tale of the Fox) (France, 1937), the films of Jiří Trnka, The Nightmare Before Christmas (US, 1993), and the TV series Robot Chicken (US, 2005-present).
Puppetoon, created using techniques developed by George Pál, are puppet-animated films which typically use a different version of a puppet for different frames, rather than simply manipulating one existing puppet.
Computer animation
Like stop motion, computer animation encompasses a variety of techniques, the unifying idea being that the animation is created digitally on a computer.
2D animation
Figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics. This includes automated computerized versions of traditional animation techniques such as of tweening, morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping.
Examples: Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Jib Jab, Mickey the Squirrel
3D animation
Digital models manipulated by an animator. In order to manipulate a mesh, it is given a digital armature (sculpture). This process is called rigging. Various other techniques can be applied, such as mathematical functions (ex. gravity, particle simulations), simulated fur or hair, effects such as fire and water and the use of Motion capture to name but a few. Many 3D animations are very believable and are commonly used as special effects for recent movies.
Examples: The Incredibles, Shrek, Finding Nemo, Flatland
Types of Animation
If an animator is basing the animation project on drawings, one of the most common animation techniques, he or she will first create a series of rough sketches that often will be filmed in a pencil test (simple line drawings of the animated images done in pencil) to determine whether the desired motion has been achieved. If the pencil test is satisfactory, images are refined (“cleaned up”) by removing excess lines. Beginning in the mid-1910s, animation was often completed using acetate cels (sheets of celluloid), although this technique is now being overtaken by computerized methods. Using the traditional cel process, cleaned-up drawn images are traced onto a cel by a person known as an inker, using special acetate-adhering inks. Later, a painter applies vinyl paint colors onto the back of the cel. Starting in the 1960s, to save time and money many large studios used a photocopy process, rather than hand inking, to transfer lines from the drawn original to the acetate cel.
Puppet animation uses three-dimensional figures that are moved incrementally for each frame of film. Well-known puppet animation directors include Hungarian artist George Pal, Czech artist Jiří Trnka, and Russian artist Ladislas Starewicz. Animation using wooden puppets has been associated principally with Eastern Europe, which has a strong tradition of toy making. Since the 1980s latex figures—rubber-like puppets usually supported by a flexible internal skeleton called an armature—have become popular in animation. This type of puppet was used in the animated film The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993).
Clay animation employs figures made of Plasticine, a material that has an oil base to keep it flexible. Like latex puppets, clay figures are typically supported by some kind of armature, ranging from a complex “ball-and-socket” skeleton to simple twisted wire (which provided the armature for the popular Gumby character). Clay animation is often associated with the Will Vinton Studio, located in Portland, Oregon, which in 1986 created the famous California Raisins television commercials using its special Claymation technique. More recently, Aardman Animations—based in Bristol, England—has emerged as a leader in clay animation with the Wallace & Gromit series of short films and the full-length feature Chicken Run (2000).
The animation technique known as pixilation uses humans or other live subjects filmed incrementally in various fixed poses; when the movements are played back, the subjects move in an unnatural or somewhat surreal way. One famous example of this type of animation is the short film Neighbors (1952), made by the Scottish animator Norman McLaren at the National Film Board of Canada. Pinscreen animation, a relatively unusual method, was developed in France by Russian-born Alexandre Alexeieff and American Claire Parker. The pinscreen (also known as a pinboard, or by its French name, l'écran d'épingles) is composed of a large upright frame containing a white board that is perforated by millions of pins, or nails. Using rollers of different sizes, these pins are pushed inward or outward. Lit from the side with a single spotlight, the pattern of pins creates shadows. Dark shadows appear black, light shadows appear in variations of gray, and brightly lit areas appear to be white. This technique was used in Une nuit sur le Mont Chauve (Night on Bald Mountain, 1933) and a few other films.
Computers can be used to automate many animation processes, such as shading and coloring (see Computer animation). Although computers were once shunned by studios and animators who prided themselves on handmade craftsmanship, recent projects, such as the motion picture Toy Story (1995), demonstrate that new technologies have gained greater acceptance in the industry. Computer animators are generally expected to have the same drawing skills and understanding of incremental movement and timing that are necessary to create more traditional techniques. Many computer animators work on projects intended for video games and the Internet, and they also find employment creating special effects for feature films.
Studios employ an extensive range of technologies in the creation of computer animation. Many studios take widely available off-the-shelf software programs and make proprietary (studio-owned) modifications to enhance the capabilities of the programs. Some digital animation, particularly that which is created for games or for special effects in live-action films, use a technology called motion capture. Motion capture entails the use of live performers who wear suits containing a number of “data points” that transmit data through a variety of wired or wireless technology and cameras situated around the performance area. Using the data collected during the performance, computers can be used to construct relatively lifelike animated imagery, either in real time (immediately) or through postproduction methods.
Motion capture often is compared to rotoscoping, a technique where individual frames of an actor’s filmed performance are projected onto sheets of paper and traced to create a series of drawings. When filmed, these drawings can create an animated sequence that is very lifelike in its appearance and movement. Austrian-born animator Max Fleischer patented the rotoscoping process in 1917.
Principles of Traditional Animation
The following principles were developed and named:
Squash and Stretch - defining the rigidity and mass of an object by distorting its shape during an action
Timing and Motion - spacing actions to define the weight and size of objects and the personality of characters
Anticipation - the preparation for an action
Staging - presenting an idea so that it is unmistakably clear
Follow Through and Overlapping Action - the termination of an action and establishing its relationship to the next action
Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action - The two contrasting approaches to the creation of movement
Slow In and Out - the spacing of the in-between frames to achieve subtlety of timing and movement
Arcs - the visual path of action for natural movement
Exaggeration - Accentuating the essence of an idea via the design and the action
. Secondary Action - the action of an object resulting from another action
. Appeal - creating a design or an action that the audience enjoys watching
Squash and Stretch
When real objects move only totally rigid ones, e.g., a chair, remain rigid in motion. Living creatures always deform in shape in some manner. For example, if you bend your arm, your bicep muscles contract and bulge out. They then lengthen and disappear when your arm straightens out. The squashed position shows the form flattened out and the stretched position shows the form extended. An important rule is that the volume of the object should remain constant at rest, squashed, or stretched. If this rule is not obeyed, then the object appears to shrink when squashed and to grow when stretched.
A classic example is a bouncing ball, that squashes when it hits the ground and stretches just before and after. The stretching, while not realistic, makes the ball appear to be moving faster right before and after it hits the ground.
When an object squashes or stretches, it appears to be made of a pliable material, if it doesn't then it appears rigid. Objects that are partially pliable and partially rigid should have only the pliable parts deform.
Timing and Motion
The speed of an action, i.e., timing, gives meaning to movement, both physical and emotional meaning. The animator must spend the appropriate amount of time on the anticipation of an action, on the action, and on the reaction to the action. If too much time is spent, then the viewer may lose attention, if too little, then the viewer may not notice or understand the action.
Timing can also affect the perception of mass of an object. A heavier object takes a greater force and a longer time to accelerate and decelerate. For example, if a character picks up a heavy object, e.g., a bowlng ball, they should do it much slower than picking up a light object such as a basketball. Similarly, timing affects the perception of object size. A larger object moves more slowly than a smaller object and has greater inertia. These effects are done not by changing the poses, but by varying the spaces or time (number of frames) between poses.
Motion also can give the illusion of weight. For example, consider a ball hitting a box.
Timing can also indicate an emotional state. Consider a scenario with a head looking first over the right shoulder and then over the left shoulder. By varying the number of inbetween frames the following meanings can be implied:
No in-betweens - the character has been hit by a strong force and its head almost snappedd off
One in-betweens - the character has been hit by something substantial, .e.g., frying pan
Two in-betweens - the character has a nervous twitch
Three in-betweens - the character is dodging a flying object
Four in-betweens - the character is giving a crisp order
Six in-betweens - the character sees something inviting
Nine in-betweens - the character is thinking about something
Ten in-betweens - the character is stretching a sore muscle
Anticipation
An action occurs in three parts:
the preparation for the action - this is anticipation
the action
the termination of the action
Anticipation can be the anatomical preparation for the action, e.g., retracting a foot before kicking a ball. It can also be a device to attract the viewer's attention to the proper screen area and to prepare them for the action, e.g., raising the arms and staring at something before picking it up, or staring off-screen at something and then reacting to it before the action moves on-screen. An example of this is the opening scene of Luxo, jr.. The father is looking off-screen and then reacts to something. This sets up the viewers to look at that part of the screen so they are prepared when Luxo, jr. hops in from off-screen.
A properly timed anticipation can enable the viewer to better understand a rapid action, e.g., preparing to run and then dashing off-screen.
Anticipation can also create the perception of weight or mass, e.g., a heavy person might put their arms on a chair before they rise, whereas a smaller person might just stand up.
Staging
Staging is the presentation of an idea so that it is clear. This idea can be an action, a personality, an expression, or a mood. The key idea is that the idea is made clear to the viewer.
An important objective of staging is to lead the viewers eye to where the action will occur so that they do not miss anything. This means that only one idea at a time occur, or else the viewers may be looking at the wrong thing. So, the main object should be contrasted in some way with the rest of the scene. A good example is motion, since the eye is drawn to motion in an otherwise still scene. In a scene with everything moving, the eye is drawn to a still object.
The animator must use different techniques to ensure that the viewer is looking at the correct object at the correct time. For example, in Luxo, jr. The Father appears first, and so is the center of attention. Then the son bounds in, moving rapidly, so the center of attention shifts to him. At a certain point the son stops and looks up at the father, refocusing the attention on the father.
In the early days at Disney all characters were black and white, with no gray. All action was shown in silhouette (to the side), because if a character moved its black arm in front of its black body it would disappear, so the action had to be against the white background. The Disney animators realized that even without this technological limitation action was more clearly visible in silhouette.
Even with modern color 3D graphics, silhouette actions are more clearly delineated and thus to be preferred. over frontal action. An example would be a character waking up and scratching its side, it is easier to understand what it is doing than if it scratched its stomach.
Follow Through and Overlapping Action
Follow through is the termination part of an action. An example is in throwing a ball - the hand continues to move after the ball is released. In the movement of a complex object different parts of the object move at different times and different rates. For example, in walking, the hip leads, followed by the leg and then the foot. As the lead part stops, the lagging parts continue in motion.
Heavier parts lag farther and stop slower. An example is in the antennae of an insect - they will lag behind and them move quickly to indicate the lighter mass.
Overlapping means to start a second action before the first action has completely finished. This keeps the interest of the viewer, since there is no dead time between actions.
Here is a quote about overlapping from Walt Disney:
"It is not necessary for an animator to take a character to one point, complete that action completely, and then turn to the following action as if he had never given it a thought until after completing the first action. When a character knows what he is going to do he doesn't have to stop before each individual action and think to do it. He has it planned in advance in his mind."
Straight Ahead Action and Pose-to-Pose Action
Straight Ahead Action in hand drawn animation is when the animator starts at the first drawing in a scene and then draws all of the subsequent frames until he reaches the end of the scene. This creates very spontaneous and zany looking animation and is used for wild, scrambling action.
Pose-to-Pose Action is when the animator carefully plans out the animation, draws a sequence of poses, i.e., the initial, some in-between, and the final poses and then draws all the in-between frames (or another artist or the computer draws the inbetween frames). This is used when the scene requires more thought and the poses and timing are important.
This is similar to keyframing with computer graphics but it must be modified slightly since the inbetweens may be too unpredictable. For example, objects or parts of objects may intersect one another. Computer keyframing can take advantage of the hierarchical model structure of a complex object. Different parts of the hierarchy can be transformed at different keyframes. For example, in a jump, translation keyframes can be set for the entire model in the X and Z directions. Then other rotation or translation keyframes can be set for portions of the model, e.g., the legs and arms.
Slow In and Out
This refers to the spacing of the inbetween frames at maximum positions. It is the second and third order continuity of motion of the object. Rather than having a uniform velocity for an object, it is more appealing, and sometimes more realistic, to have the velocity vary at the extremes. For example, a bouncing ball moves faster as it approaches or leaves the ground and slower as it approaches leaves its maximum position. The name comes from having the object or character "slow out" of one pose and "slow in" to the next pose.
This is usually achieved by using splines to control the path of an object. The various spline parameters can be adjusted to give the required effect. In 3D Studio this is controlled by the parameters Ease To and Ease From in the Key info window (from the Track info window). When these are zero, there is a constant velocity in either direction, i.e., to/from the keyframe. When Ease To is set to a higher value, the motion is faster as it leaves the previous keyframe and slows as it approaches the current keyframe. When Ease From is set to a higher value the motion is slower leaving the current keyframe and speeds up as it approaches the next keyframe. The tick mark spacing shows the velocity with closer tick marks indicating a slower rate and spaced out ones indicating a faster rate.
Examples:
Ease To/From both set to 0 (bounce0.flc)
Ease To/From both set to 50 (max value)(bounce1.flc)
There are other potential problems with spline controlled movements. Because of the nature of splines, there may be an overshoot effect, For example, look at box1.flc. The upper box was keyframed to just touch the top of the bottom box, but because of the properties of the spline curve, it overshoots and goes into the lower box. There are three other parameters that control the approach to/from keyframes. These are discussed below.
Reference: Doris Kuchanek and Richard Bartels, "Interpolating Splines with Local Tension, Continuity, and Bias Control", Computer Graphics 18:3, pp. 33-41, July 1984 (SIGGRAPH 84)
Tension
Tension controls the overall shape of the spline curve.
Continuity equally affects the angles at which the spline enters and leaves the keyframe.
Exaggeration
Exaggeration does not mean just distorting the actions or objects arbitrarily, but the animator must carefully choose which properties to exaggerate. If only one thing is exaggerated then it may stand out too much. If everything is exaggerated, then the entire scene may appear too unrealistic.
Secondary Action
This is an action that directly results from another action. It can be used to increase the complexity and interest in a scene. It should always be subordinate to and not compete with the primary action in the scene. An example might be the facial expression on a character. The body would be expressing the primary action while the expression adds to it. Another example would be the trailing electrical cord of Luxo, jr. |
