Tag: Stop Motion Animation

A Short History Of Animation Films

Roberto Sedycias asked:

To animate is to infuse life into something that is inanimate or without life. An animation film breathes life into painted or sketched characters. The hero and heroines are not real life movie stars or animals and birds.

Animation films involve the quick display of a series of images to give the illusion of movement. It is a kind of optical illusion of movement. The phenomenon is known as vision persistence.

Animation effects began long time ago and not some new invention of the movie world. In the cave paintings of the Old Stone Age the animals were having many legs on superimposed positions in an attempt to capture movement. In the 1800 flip books became popular when by rapidly thumbing through these special books the viewer got the impression of movement. However it was not until the debut of motion picture films that animation films really took off. No one person can be credited to be the creator of animation films. It involved several people in several projects.

Georges Melies was the first one to dabble with special effects in movies by using animation techniques. Accidentally he discovered it – the stop-motion animation, when his camera happened to break down. He was shooting a bus. But when he fixed the camera a horse came in the view and the net result was that the bus changed into a horse! J. Stuart Blackton came to combine the techniques of hand-drawn animation and stop-motion for the first time at the turn of the 20th century. Blackton is often referred to as the first successful animator.

French artist Emile Cohl made a film from hand painted cartoon strips name Fantasmagorie in 1908. The film depicted a stick moving and meeting other objects like a wine bottle that becomes changed into a flower. Sometimes the hands of the animator entered the scene. Each frame was drawn on paper and then each was shot on to a negative film that gave a blackboard effect. Thus it can be said that Fantasmagorie was the first animated film to make its debut.

Soon many other artists began to experiment. One was newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay who began to work with a team. He came to produce some noted films like Little Nemo and Gertie the Dinosaur. In the 1910`s cartoon animated films began to rule the scene. The technique came to known as cel-animation.

Warner Bros and Walt Disney studio came to be legendary names associated with full animation industry in the film world. Limited animation uses less detail. Japan and United Productions of America produced animated films using this method. Another popular technique is rotoscoping. In 1917 Max Fleischer patented it. Here the animators copy frame-by-frame live actions.

The other methods are stop-motion-animation, clay-animation (using clay figures), cutout-animation (using paper and cloth), silhouette-animation, graphic-animation, model-animation, object-animation and puppet animation. In pixilation human beings are used in stop motion roles. This allows for surreal effects like disappearances and appearance. The latest technique of computer animation includes many kinds of techniques. These are made digitally on a computer machine.

Thus we find that in animated films drawings and or paintings are photographed individually by stop-frame cinematography. One frame is slightly different from the other thus giving the illusion of movement. These are moved in rapid succession – about 24 frames in each second. Animation can be regarded as a film technique and not a distinct category of film. These films were ideal for depicting fairy tales and captured the hearts of children for all times to come. It is difficult to find an adult who will not admit enjoying animation films.

Animation Techniques

Kundan Mishra asked:

There are four basic techniques to be used in animation.

These are:

• Drawn animation

• Cut-out animation

• Model animation or stop motion animation

• Computer animation or computer generated imagery (CGI)

(1) Drawn animation– Drawn animation, also termed as traditional animation and classical animation, is the oldest and historically the most prevalent form of animation. In a traditionally-animated cartoon, each frame is drawn by hand. This encloses any form, where one drawing is put back by another in a progression. Each drawing is somewhat unusual from the one which is placed before.

Animated films are made up of thousands of drawings, depicted on screen very rapidly one after the other. It works in the same manner as the flip book does.

(2) Cut-out animation– The world’s earliest known animated feature film was cutout animations, made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani. By using flat characters, such as—strings, stiff fabric, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper; and by using buttons, matchsticks or even photographs, you can create cut-out animation. It embraces any figure of animation where cut-out forms be in motion or substitute by the other cut-outs.

(3) Model animation or stop motion animation– Model animation is a form of stop motion animation designed to merge with live action footage to create the illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence.

By using materials, such as—clay, wire that can be bent or formed into another shape, you can create model animation. This engrosses the filming of puppets or any other form of three-dimensional models. Before moving slightly and screening, it is placed, filmed and than these shots are placed jointly as a section of the film and will give the hallucination of moving models.

(4) Computer animation or Computer Generated Imagery (CGI)– Computer animation is the skill of building the moving images by means of computers. This refers to the portrayal of three-dimensional models and locations on the computer. Images can be scanned into the computer via digital photography or made within the computer itself.

To produce the delusion of movement, an image is presented on the computer screen which is swiftly put back by the new image that is alike to the preceding image, but shifted to some extent. Computer animation is basically a digital successor to the art of stop motion animation of 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations.

In a method known as—Tweening or Morphing, the variations in appearance between the key frames are automatically considered by the computer and finally Animation is rendered at the end.