2D Animation
Flip book anitmation:
Flip book animation is essentially a primitive form of animation. Like motion pictures, they rely on persistence of vision
to create the illusion that continuous motion is being seen. Rather
than "reading" left to right, the viewer simply watches the same
location of the pages in the flip book as the pages turn. I personally find this form of animation a lot more interesting than a digital animation. It feels more creative to me.
Here is a good example of flip book animation:
Zoetrope:
The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inside of the cylinder is a band of images set in a sequence. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.
Here is a good example of a zoetrope:
3D Zoetrope:
A 3D zoetrope works in the same way as a normal zopetrope, but a 3D zopetrope uses 3D figures on a rotating disk and a strobing LED instead of slits. A 3D Zoetrope that makes static 3D sculptures appear to move and come to life. Using strobe LED lights and characters, each in a different pose, on a rotating platform. The 3D Zoetrope recreates the effect of looking through slits of the original zoetropes.
Here is a good example of a 3D zoetrope:
Phenakistascope:
The phenakistoscope uses a spinning disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center are a series of drawings showing phases of the animation, and cut through it were a series of equally spaced slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture.
Here is a good example of a Phenakistascope:
Praxinoscope:
The praxinoscope is similar to the zoetrope because it uses a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appear more or less stationary in position as the wheel turns. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered.
Here is a good example of the praxinoscope:
Rotoscoping:
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.
Here is a good example of rotoscoping:
Cel animation:
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Generally, the characters are drawn on cels and laid over a static background drawing. This reduces the number of times an image has to be redrawn and enables studios to split up the production process to different specialised teams. Using this assembly line way to animate has made it possible to produce films much more cost-effectively.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRKWRMbTvWs
Stop Motion animation:
Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence.
Here is a good example of Stop motion animation:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua5qh40x4KA
Clay animation (claymation):
In clay animation, each object is sculpted in clay or a similarly pliable material such as plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature. As in other forms of object animation, the object is arranged on the set (background), a film frame is exposed, and the object or character is then moved slightly by hand. Another frame is taken, and the object is moved slightly again. This cycle is repeated until the animator has achieved the desired amount of film.
Here is a good example of clay animation:
Early Film:
Eadward Muybridge - The horse 1878
In 1872 the former governor of California Leland Stanford, a businessman and race horse owner, hired Muybridge for some photographic studies. He had taken a position on a popularly debated question of the day "were all four feet of a horse off the ground at the same time while trotting?". The same question had come up about horses during a gallop. The human eye could not decipher between a trot and a gallop.
Early animation:
Emile Cohl - Fantasmagorie 1908
Cohl made "Fantasmagorie" from February to May or June 1908. This is considered the first fully animated film ever made. It was made up of 700 drawings, leading to a running time of almost two minutes. "Fantasmagorie" was released on August 17, 1908. The film was done in a chalk-line style, the stick-figure clown protagonist, and the constant transformations. Cohl made the plot of the film up as he was filming it. He would put a drawing on the lightbox, photograph it, trace onto next sheet with slight changes, photograph that, and so on. This meant that the pictures did not jitter and the plot was spontaneous. Cohl had to calculate the timing in advance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEAObel8yIE&feature=player_detailpage
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Steamboat Willie:
Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney. It was produced in black-and-white by The Walt Disney Studio and released by Celebrity Productions. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey Mouse and his girlfriend Minnie. Steamboat Willie was the third of Mickey's films to be produced, but was the first to be distributed.The film is also notable for being one of the first cartoons with synchronized sound. In fact, it was the first cartoon to feature a fully post-produced soundtrack which distinguished it from earlier sound cartoons.
Lotte Reiniger - The adventures of Prince Achmed:
The Adventures of Prince Achmed is a 1926 German animated fairytale film by Lotte Reiniger.The film features a silhouette animation technique Reiniger had invented which involved manipulated cutouts made from cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera. The technique she used for the camera is similar to Wayang shadow puppets, though hers were animated frame by frame, not manipulated in live action. The original prints featured color tinting. I thought the film was very unusual. Views back then were very different to how they are today, and I'm sure this film would be considered racist to modern standards.
Meeting Aladin - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j0NjcykUVM8
Cinderella - 1950:
Cinderella is a 1950 American animated film fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Based on the fairy tale "Cendrillon" by Charles Perrault. Twelfth in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film had a limited release on February 15, 1950 by RKO Radio Pictures.
Hanna Barbera - Dasterdly and Muttly:
Dastardly and Muttley in Their Flying Machines is a cartoon produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions for CBS. Originally the series was broadcast as a Saturday morning cartoon, airing from September 13, 1969 to January 3, 1970. The show focuses on the efforts of Dick Dastardly and his canine sidekick Muttley.
Japanese Anime:
Anime are Japanese cartoons and computer animation. The word is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of 'animation'. The intended meaning of the term sometimes varies depending on the context.
While the earliest known Japanese animation dates to 1917, and many original Japanese animations were produced in the ensuing decades, the characteristic anime style developed in the 1960s—notably with the work of Osamu Tezuka—and became known outside Japan in the 1980s.
Both hand-drawn and computer-animated anime exist. It is used in television series, films, video, video games, commercials, and internet-based releases, and represents most, if not all, genres of fiction. Anime is currently popular in many different regions around the world.
Here are some examples of anime:
Ghost in the Shell - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oj-hU1xHpig
Science Ninja Team Gatchaman is another example of Japanese anime:
Here we have an American version of it, called "Battle of the Planets":http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjEaCi6S6_A
Cutout Animation:
Cutout Animation is a type of stop-motion animation produced by moving 2-dimensional pieces of material such as paper or cloth. Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, fabric or even photographs. The world's earliest known animated feature films were cutout animations.
My walk cycle 2D animation
This is a short digital animation, to be more exact, a walk cycle. I constructed it in flash.
From this experience, I have realised that creating animations is probably not my strong suit. I wanted my animation to be somewhat humorous, as the body and head doesn't move at all, only the legs are moving, as well as there being a 'laughing' soundtrack in the background. As you can see, it's not meant to look realistic, as the body proportions are unusual.
I made this animation purely for the learning experience. I wanted to know how to create an animation and get an idea of how it works. I now have an understanding of Flash, which will help me in the future when we come to creating video games. Hopefully what I have learned will stick, although I believe I will need some more practice. The walk cycle is very short and I would prefer it to be a bit longer so you can properly see the animation and hear the soundtrack.
At the end of the day, I think my walk cycle was successful. It runs smoothly, the limbs stay roughly the same size each frame, which I believe may have been a bit of a difficultly for some people (I say this from my experience). Of course it's not perfect, due to technical difficulties I had to outline everything to be able to use the 'colour fill' feature, in one frame the neck and tail are a bit wider due to this. Although I am proud of what I've been able to create, I think some of my colleagues walk cycles look much better. This experience was definitely worth while and will benefit me greatly in the future as we will be doing more animations.
Here are some comments I got from my colleagues:
I'm happy with the comments I have received from my colleagues. They more or less said exactly what I had thought, what was good and what could be improved.
I think the main thing that could improve my ability would be practice. The more I can learn, the better.
2D Animation story board
The walk cycle was just a practice run before creating a 1 minute 2D animation. I'm working on a flipbook animation as opposed to a digital one. Here is my story board for the animation, there are two because I found room for improvement on my first one.
My 2D Animation
I didn't spend as much time on this as I could have, as I'm sure you can probably tell. However, from this experience, I feel much more confident using Flash than I did before. I think I hadn't put in much time for it purely because I didn't like Flash. Admittedly, I needed a fair bit of help from my friends. Technology doesn't seem to be my strong suite, regardless of how much time I spend on my PC.
It's highly likely I'd be needing to use Flash again in the future and I'm feeling a lot more satisfied with the thought of that. I made this to try bump up my grade for animation from a pass to something higher. The task was to have a 60 second long animation. Technically, mine is over 3 minutes long, thanks to the beautiful sound track. The actual visuals, however, only last for about 45 seconds. I'm hoping that's enough.
Although I didn't spend much time on this and my Flash skills are poor, I'm fairly happy with how this turned out. I got the idea for the slow writing from one of my friends, I did make the writing appear particularly slow to try drag out some time, I must say. The 'tweening' of the writing works nicely and it's something I'd definitely use again. The animation itself is actually just my walk cycle with a coloured background, if I had actually stuck to my initial story board it would have required a lot more animating for the cat to do different movements. The animation is bad but the soundtrack is its redeeming feature.
Now that I am less afraid of Flash, I will try put in more time to my next animation. I think that was my downfall to be honest. The only way I'm going to get better using Flash is by putting the time into it.
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