Animation
The Illusion of Life
What is Animation?
‘Animation’ is what we call a series of images viewed in quick succession, which if they are similar enough to each other create the illusion of movement. This is due to something that is believed to happen between the human eye and brain called the ‘persistence of vision’. This means that the retina in the human eye (the part of the eye that receives the image of what we look at), retains an image for a brief moment. The theory of the persistence of vision tells us that images seen at a rate of faster than around eight per second, if they are similar enough to each other, seem to us to be one moving image.
For animation seen on film, these images should be viewed at more than sixteen images per second to avoid the flicker of the projector becoming distracting, so the convention for film is twenty four frames per second (or f.p.s.). Televison in most of Europe is twenty five f.p.s and in the USA thirty f.p.s.
To save time and money the images in animation are often doubled up so each separate image appears in two frames, which means if it was projected at twenty four f.p.s. we are actually seeing the images at half that rate, at twelve f.p.s. On cheaper TV animation the frame rate of the animation is often designed to be seen as low as six frames per second.
The animation images can be flat drawn images, three dimensional models or as is common today, computer generated models. These are amongst the main types of animation used today:
What is Animation?
‘Animation’ is what we call a series of images viewed in quick succession, which if they are similar enough to each other create the illusion of movement. This is due to something that is believed to happen between the human eye and brain called the ‘persistence of vision’. This means that the retina in the human eye (the part of the eye that receives the image of what we look at), retains an image for a brief moment. The theory of the persistence of vision tells us that images seen at a rate of faster than around eight per second, if they are similar enough to each other, seem to us to be one moving image.
For animation seen on film, these images should be viewed at more than sixteen images per second to avoid the flicker of the projector becoming distracting, so the convention for film is twenty four frames per second (or f.p.s.). Televison in most of Europe is twenty five f.p.s and in the USA thirty f.p.s.
To save time and money the images in animation are often doubled up so each separate image appears in two frames, which means if it was projected at twenty four f.p.s. we are actually seeing the images at half that rate, at twelve f.p.s. On cheaper TV animation the frame rate of the animation is often designed to be seen as low as six frames per second.
The animation images can be flat drawn images, three dimensional models or as is common today, computer generated models. These are amongst the main types of animation used today:
Cell Animation (or ‘2d’ or ‘drawn’ animation)– This is traditionally the most common form of animation although in the last two decades it has been superseded by computer generated images (‘CGI’ or ‘digital’) animation.
The most famous and successful producers of cell animation were Walt Disney Snow White (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Sleeping Beauty (1959), Jungle Book (1967) Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Little Mermaid (1989)) who pioneered a lot of the techniques and principles of traditional character animation used worldwide today.
Amongst recent notable films to largely use cell animation have been The Iron Giant (1999) and the films of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and his Gibli Studios Nausicaa Valley of the Wind (1984) , Laputa Castle in the Sky (1986) My Neighbour Totoro (1988) Spirited Away (2001).
Cell animation usually starts with animator creating drawings at a ‘light box’, a desk with a semi transparent surface with a light behind, so he can look through the top drawing and see the other drawings in the sequence underneath it to use as a guide. In the past these drawings were then transferred onto ‘cells’, transparent plastic sheets, where they were painted by hand and then filmed, frame by frame, on top of the background painting.
The use of cells was so that the background part of the drawing didn’t need to be created over and over for every frame. Nowadays it is more common for the drawings to be scanned into a computer and then coloured digitally, before being placed over the background image also inside the computer. As a lot of animation is now 3 dimensional (3d) CGI, the cell animation style is now often known as 2d animation.
Amongst recent notable films to largely use cell animation have been The Iron Giant (1999) and the films of Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki and his Gibli Studios Nausicaa Valley of the Wind (1984) , Laputa Castle in the Sky (1986) My Neighbour Totoro (1988) Spirited Away (2001).
Cell animation usually starts with animator creating drawings at a ‘light box’, a desk with a semi transparent surface with a light behind, so he can look through the top drawing and see the other drawings in the sequence underneath it to use as a guide. In the past these drawings were then transferred onto ‘cells’, transparent plastic sheets, where they were painted by hand and then filmed, frame by frame, on top of the background painting.
The use of cells was so that the background part of the drawing didn’t need to be created over and over for every frame. Nowadays it is more common for the drawings to be scanned into a computer and then coloured digitally, before being placed over the background image also inside the computer. As a lot of animation is now 3 dimensional (3d) CGI, the cell animation style is now often known as 2d animation.
CGI – Computer Generated Imagery nowadays usually means 3d graphics but there are also various kinds of other computer graphics, generally associated with early computers and video games.
3d CGI - Pioneered by the American studio Pixar, 3d CGI is now the dominant form of animation at the box office. In 3d CGI computers are used to generate graphical worlds and characters that often appear to be highly detailed, realistic and believable, even when the design is stylised and cartoon like. The quality of design, animation, characterisation and storytelling in Pixar’s pioneering 3d CGI films Luxo Jr (1986), Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004)) has often imitated by many other studios but never bettered. Pixar is now wholly owned by Walt Disney Studios.
Other good quality 3d CGI films have been produced by studios such as PDI Antz (1998), Shrek (2001)) (now bought by Dreamworks) and Blue Sky Ice Age (2002), Robots (2005)). 3d CGI animation is also used to create most special effects and creatures for many live-action films (live–action means any film that is filmed not animated) like King Kong (2005 version) and the most recent Star Wars films.
3D CGI animation is also the most common type of animation used in video games, such as ‘Mario Galaxy’ and the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ series. Sometimes it can be rendered to look flat, like 2d animation, as in the game ‘Zelda : Wind Waker’ . 3d animation is great for games due to its suitability for interactive control within a computer programme.
No matter how they are created and viewed these images still have to be carefully crafted by someone to create a convincing impression of movement and if they are images of living things, they have to create, as Walt Disney called it, ‘The Illusion of Life’. Animators themselves might tell you that with the long hours it takes to create animation, painstaking days of concentration sitting at your desk, the idea of actually having a life can seem like the illusion!
3d CGI - Pioneered by the American studio Pixar, 3d CGI is now the dominant form of animation at the box office. In 3d CGI computers are used to generate graphical worlds and characters that often appear to be highly detailed, realistic and believable, even when the design is stylised and cartoon like. The quality of design, animation, characterisation and storytelling in Pixar’s pioneering 3d CGI films Luxo Jr (1986), Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004)) has often imitated by many other studios but never bettered. Pixar is now wholly owned by Walt Disney Studios.
Other good quality 3d CGI films have been produced by studios such as PDI Antz (1998), Shrek (2001)) (now bought by Dreamworks) and Blue Sky Ice Age (2002), Robots (2005)). 3d CGI animation is also used to create most special effects and creatures for many live-action films (live–action means any film that is filmed not animated) like King Kong (2005 version) and the most recent Star Wars films.
3D CGI animation is also the most common type of animation used in video games, such as ‘Mario Galaxy’ and the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ series. Sometimes it can be rendered to look flat, like 2d animation, as in the game ‘Zelda : Wind Waker’ . 3d animation is great for games due to its suitability for interactive control within a computer programme.
Vector Graphics CGI- Whereas most computer imagery is rendered or displayed as ‘bitmaps’, types of image that are made up of thousands of tiny different coloured dots like newsprint, vector graphics are calculated and displayed as solid sharp lines filled with solid sharp areas of flat colour. This can be ideal for flat very cartoony graphics and, as it needs less computing power and memory to produce and store, is common on web animation (created in applications like Flash) and was common in early video games. Vector graphics are also ‘scalable’, they can be blown up to large sizes without becoming fuzzy and breaking down into pixels, so are used for graphic design and print.
Vector graphics
http://www.vecteezy.com/
Flash web animation
http://www.atomfilms.com/films/flash_cartoons.jsp
Flash web animation series
http://www.icebox.com/index.php?id=shows
Pixel Graphics CGI- Pixel graphics basically means the ‘dots’ or pixels that make up the image are big enough to be clearly visible. The bogger the pixels are the fewer are displayed and so the less memory needed. These is why large pixel graphics were widely used on early video games and computer art, and consisted of pictures or frames of animation ‘painted’ by laying down individual pixels. This is an art form in itself, especially with the limitations of early games where the pixels were usually restricted to blocks of 16x16 or 32x32 and with 32 or 64 colour palettes.
Pixel game graphics
http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/1528/
Vector graphics
http://www.vecteezy.com/
Flash web animation
http://www.atomfilms.com/films/flash_cartoons.jsp
Flash web animation series
http://www.icebox.com/index.php?id=shows
Pixel Graphics CGI- Pixel graphics basically means the ‘dots’ or pixels that make up the image are big enough to be clearly visible. The bogger the pixels are the fewer are displayed and so the less memory needed. These is why large pixel graphics were widely used on early video games and computer art, and consisted of pictures or frames of animation ‘painted’ by laying down individual pixels. This is an art form in itself, especially with the limitations of early games where the pixels were usually restricted to blocks of 16x16 or 32x32 and with 32 or 64 colour palettes.
Pixel game graphics
http://www.retrojunk.com/details_articles/1528/
Stop Motion (or stop frame or claymation)- Stop motion is the process of using real models and moving and then filming them frame by frame.
This is perhaps the oldest and simplest kind of animation yet is still very popular thanks to modern day producers like Aardman, from Bristol, and their best known director/animator Nick Park Chicken Run (2000), Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit (2005)) and other recent films produced or directed by Tim Burton Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996), The Corpse Bride (2005).
The technique has also been widely used in the past to animate realistic models of monsters etc which are then inserted into live action films like King Kong (1933 version), the films of Ray Harryhausen The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Clash of the Titans (1981)) and in the giraffe like giant AT-AT Walker vehicles in the early Star Wars films.
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer often uses household objects, food and fruit in his stop frame animation to create his many surreal and disconcerting films such as Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) and Alice (1998). Stop frame can be seen in many of the music videos of director Michel Gondry Fell in Love With a Girl by the White Stripes and Cellphone’s Dead by Beck and his film The Science of Sleep (2007)
This is perhaps the oldest and simplest kind of animation yet is still very popular thanks to modern day producers like Aardman, from Bristol, and their best known director/animator Nick Park Chicken Run (2000), Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Wererabbit (2005)) and other recent films produced or directed by Tim Burton Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), James and the Giant Peach (1996), The Corpse Bride (2005).
The technique has also been widely used in the past to animate realistic models of monsters etc which are then inserted into live action films like King Kong (1933 version), the films of Ray Harryhausen The Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), Clash of the Titans (1981)) and in the giraffe like giant AT-AT Walker vehicles in the early Star Wars films.
Czech animator Jan Svankmajer often uses household objects, food and fruit in his stop frame animation to create his many surreal and disconcerting films such as Dimensions of Dialogue (1982) and Alice (1998). Stop frame can be seen in many of the music videos of director Michel Gondry Fell in Love With a Girl by the White Stripes and Cellphone’s Dead by Beck and his film The Science of Sleep (2007)
Cutout - This is can be the simplest and quickest technique of all and the results are somewhere between cell animation and stop frame. Basically the drawing is cut out and then cut into sections which are put on a background and then moved frame by frame, whether using physical cut outs or cut out images inside a computer animation package.
Pixilation – the technique where actors move into poses and are photographed frame by frame, as pioneered by experimental Scottish animator Norman Mclaren in ‘Neighbours’ 1952. Pixilation is widely used in the 1993 film The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb by Bristol’s The Bolex Brothers and The Wizard of Space and Time (1979 +1989) by Mike Jittlov. It can also be seen in many music videos like ‘Sledgehammer’ by Peter Gabriel, ‘The Hardest Button to Button’ by White Stripes and ‘Heard ‘em Say’ by Kanye West.
Rotoscoping and Motion capture (or Performance Capture) – Some would say that ‘rotoscoping’ (and its digital cousin motion/performance capture) are not strictly speaking animation at all, but the techniques still rely on animators to interpret and blend the recorded movements together and apply them to the character.
Rotoscoping is when characters in a live-action film are traced or drawn over in order to give a life-like smoother movement. This has been successfully and widely used but can become boring to watch, as animation is more interesting when it is an exaggeration of life rather than a direct copy. This can also at times apply to modern CGI stuff when it is merely trying to recreate reality, or real movements, rather than invent new ones.
A lot of rotoscoping can be seen in Ralph Bakshi’s original version of ‘Lord of the Rings’ (1978), where they used the technique a lot more than they originally intended as they ran out of time and money and it can save time. We can see from the seventies hairstyles in the clip below how closely the filmed actors were traced! This film shows the dangers of rotoscoping in that if you rely on it too heavily you can get results that just seem like actors in costume miming badly.
More recently the technique of rotoscoping has been used in an interesting digital way by animator Bob Sabiston, particularly in the films of fellow inhabitant of Austin, Texas, director Richard Linklater, ‘Waking Life’ (2001) and ‘A Scanner Darkly’ (2004).
Rotoscoping is when characters in a live-action film are traced or drawn over in order to give a life-like smoother movement. This has been successfully and widely used but can become boring to watch, as animation is more interesting when it is an exaggeration of life rather than a direct copy. This can also at times apply to modern CGI stuff when it is merely trying to recreate reality, or real movements, rather than invent new ones.
A lot of rotoscoping can be seen in Ralph Bakshi’s original version of ‘Lord of the Rings’ (1978), where they used the technique a lot more than they originally intended as they ran out of time and money and it can save time. We can see from the seventies hairstyles in the clip below how closely the filmed actors were traced! This film shows the dangers of rotoscoping in that if you rely on it too heavily you can get results that just seem like actors in costume miming badly.
More recently the technique of rotoscoping has been used in an interesting digital way by animator Bob Sabiston, particularly in the films of fellow inhabitant of Austin, Texas, director Richard Linklater, ‘Waking Life’ (2001) and ‘A Scanner Darkly’ (2004).
‘Motion capture’ or ‘performance capture’, a 3D digital form of rotoscoping, is when actors movements are recorded by a computer, using sensors on their body, and these movements are applied to CGI characters. This again produces a very life like and smooth movement, and subtleties of acting performance can be easily and quickly transferred into the CGI character, but like rotoscoping it also can look cheap and become dull to watch compared to real character animation. The technique is best known in films like ‘Polar Express’ (2004), ‘Monster House’ (2006), ‘Beowolf’ (2007) and the Gollum in ‘Lord of the Rings: Two Towers’ (2002). The technique is also very widely used in video games where large volumes of animation are needed quickly and cheaply. It can be seen in games like the ‘Grand Theft Auto’ series and sports games like the ‘FIFA Football’ series.
Paint-on-glass animation, in which slow drying oil paint is painted and moved about on glass and filmed frame by frame. As seen in the films of Aleksandr Petrov like the incredible Oscar winning ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ (1999).
Drawn-on-film animation is where images are scratched or painted directly onto the film strip, as seen in the experimental work of British animators Len Lye and Norman McLaren.
Nowadays we would usually view all these kinds of animation as we view any other kind of film, cast on some kind of screen, but animation can also be viewed on a flickbook or a variety of other strange inventions from the past.No matter how they are created and viewed these images still have to be carefully crafted by someone to create a convincing impression of movement and if they are images of living things, they have to create, as Walt Disney called it, ‘The Illusion of Life’. Animators themselves might tell you that with the long hours it takes to create animation, painstaking days of concentration sitting at your desk, the idea of actually having a life can seem like the illusion!