Unit 53 2D Animation

History of Animation – Methods and Terminology

Traditional Cel Animation also known as classical animation, Cel Animation or Hand-Drawn animation is a technique that is drawn by hand of each frame. The technique was the dominating animation form in the cinema until the computer animation was invented around the 1960’s.

Process

In many traditional ways of animated productions usually began by using a storyboard, which was basically a script of all written words and images. The images and written text were to allow the animation team to plan the flow of the plot and the composition of the animation. To begin they were to usually have a meeting with the director and may redraw a part of the script many times until it was eventually improved.

Cels

Cels, being one of the techniques used, which is also in the name of Tradition Cel Animation, is an important new idea, due to it being able to accept some parts of each frame to be repeated frame by frame.

In early cartoons made before the use of Cel For example Gertie the Dinosaur, each frame entirely including the background was drawn on single sheets of paper and then photographed. It had to be redrawn when the use of movement is being used. Pre-cel animation was later used and improved by using slash and tear techniques, which was invented by Raoul Baare. Actually actually having the background and animated objects separately done on separate papers used this technique. Earl Hurd and John Bray invented the Cel animation process in the 1915’s. My opinion on this technique is that it can be very time consuming in this day of age, with the technology available now we have so many short cuts.

Limited Animation

Limited Animation was in fact lower budget productions in which shortcuts were available through the cel technique. An example would be in a scene in which a man is sitting in a chair and talking, the chair and the body of the man may be the same in every frame; only his head is redrawn, or perhaps even his head stays the same while only his mouth moves.

 This is known as limited animation. The process was actually popular in the theatrical cartoons by United Productions of America and was used in majority of television animation. The finishing result of this technique wasn’t entirely lifelike, but it was an inexpensive way to produce a productions and can allow cartoons to be made on small tv budgets. I believe this technique is less time consuming than Cel due to being rather lazy towards its production but is also quite effective on what it shows.

Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is a method of traditional animation which was invented by Max Fleischer in 1915. The animation process of this technique was to “trace” over the actual film footage of actors and scenery. To create this technique the live action would be printed out frame by frame, then another piece of paper would be placed over the live action copy and would be traced using a light box. The finishing result would look hand drawn but the motion will look lifelike. An animated movie that uses rotoscope is Waking Life as well as American Pop by Ralph Bakshi.

Kanye West’s music video for Heartless features rotoscrope animation. As for American pop being fully rotoscoped. Rotoscope is mainly used to render human beings like Peter pan, Snow white and the seven dwarves and sleeping beauty.

The rotoscope method was later invented for the animation of a inanimate object, such as Cars, boats, or doors. To use such a technique moving the model, the camera of the mixture of both, filmed the object. It was either in real time or using stop-motion animation. Then it went through the process of cel being printed on paper and then adding detail onto the inanimate object and photograph it.

Stop-Motion Animation

Stop-motion animation also know as stop frame is an animation technique that requires moving an object to make it look as if it moving on its own. The object is moved ever so slightly to create a frame by frame animation, making it an illusion of movement. Dolls with moveable joints or clay figure are mainly used in the stop motion for their easiness of movement with the object. Stop motion animation using plastercine is called Clay animation or Clay-mation. Stop motion animation does always require using figures or models. Some stop-motions in fact use humans, objects around the house and other comedy effects. Stop motion using objects is sometimes known as object animation.

Stop Motion animation has been used for a long time in history of film. It was to show the movement of objects that were to appear as if it was magic. The first of the stop motion technique to be used was by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart blackton. They had created Vitagraph’s The Humpty Dumpty Circus created in 1897, in this production a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life.

In the 1960s and 1970s, single clay animator Eliot Noyes Jr. Improved the technique free form clay animations with the 1965 film clay, which was nominated an Oscar. He also used stop motion to create sand lying on glass for his musical film Sandman in 1975.

Cut out animation which consists of flat characters, props and backgrounds used on different materials. It was the world’s earliest known animations that included cut-out animations. This technique is in fact used in South Park until it had switched to computer animation. The cut-out animation would often have joints that were made with a pin or rivet to create movement much more easier. When made on a computer the process of moving a joint is anchor.

Silhouette Animation

Silhouette animation is a technique that shows characters in a black form. Using backlighting and a cut out of a character or background. Other methods exist with silhouetting. It is known as shadow play for a number of reasons. Inspired by European shadow play and European silhouette cutting. The medium of silhouette animation was invented by many individuals around the same time but the know earliest known silhouette animation The Sporting Mice which was made in 1909 by Charles Armstrong who is a British filmmaker.

Graphic Animation

Graphic animation is a mixture of stop motion and possibly flat cel animation and paper drawing animation, still technically a stop motion. Its consists an animation of photographs in a whole or in parts as well as other non drawn flat surfaced graphic material such as newspaper and magazines.

In a simple form, graphic animation can be made in the form of camera animation panning up and down and/or across individual photographs. Without changing it. Such as Frame to frame in a history documentary by Ken Brurns. The photos are moved frame to frame and can be used in a montage of movement that can be produced. Mike Jittlov’s 1977 short film, Animato. Another animation was created such an animation called The Wizard of Speed and Time.

Model Animation

Model Animation is a form of stop motion, which is designed to be mixed with live action footage to create an illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence. Willis O’Brien first created model animation with his creation of The Lost World made in 1925. His other works such as King Kong (1933), The Son of Kong (1933), Mighty Joe Young (1949), The Black Scorpion (1957) and The Giant Behmoth (1958).

Pixilation Animation

Pixilation is a stop motion technique that used live actors to create a frame by frame in an animated film. The technique is repeatedly posing while one or more frames are taken but with the slightest change in the pose before the next frame/frames. The actor then becomes a sort of stop motion puppet. It is a way to blend a live actor with animated ones within a movie such as The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb by the Bolex Brothers.

This technique in early days were used in El hotel eléctrico in 1908 and Jobard ne peut pas voir les femmes travailler (Jobard cannot see the women working) made in 1911 by Émile Cohl. The technique was first made by Grant Munro. He had created a movie named Pixilation which was an experiment.

Puppet Animation

Puppet animation is also known as Puppetry which is a form of theatre or performance which uses puppets as their acts. It is an ancient animation technique used in the 3000 years BC. Puppetry can take many forms but still contain is animating inanimate performing objects. It is used in much of human societies such as for entertainment in performances or even ceremonial rituals and celebrations which is possibly to be used in carnivals.

Puppetry is an ancient form of animation and is said to have been originated about 3000 years ago. They were used in the early times to animate and communicate ideas and needs of human societies. In Egypt around the time of 2000BC there is in fact evidence of string operated figures of wood which were manipulated to create a performance of kneading bread. Some puppets were even found in Egyptian tombs. Hieroglyphs described them as ‘walking statues’. Around the date of 5^th Century BC there were works of Herodotus and Xenophon which practised puppetry in Ancient Greece.

Many countries now inherit puppetry from Ancient times. Countries being Asia, Korea, West Asia, Europe, Italy around the middle ages and Renaissance, France, Great Britain, Netherlands, Denmark, Romania and Russia. Even Germany, Austria, Czech Republic and North America used puppetry.

2D Animation

2D animation is a computer generated digital image, mostly of two dimensional models. 2D computer graphics are used in applications that were developed on printing and drawing technologies. The two dimensional image doesn’t represent just a real-world object but an artefact. 2D animation is a process of making many drawings and then having them animate by playing them in a rapid succession.

Within the 2D animation industry, Walt Disney, the creator of Mickey the Mouse is credited with making 2D animation. He wasn’t the first as the first 2D animation was called Fantasmagorie which is a short cartoon made by Emile Cohl. The animation was created entirely in black and white. It started by drawing a simple stick man in live action. The animation process took about 700 different drawings to create its final finish. Several companies in the 1930’s-1970’s were called out with their high-quality, cartoons including Disney (Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy and many others), and Warner Brothers (The makers of Looney Tunes. These companies spread the revolution of 2D animation around the world.

3D Animation

3D animation is graphics that has use of three-dimensional. It is stored in the computer for the purpose of performing and rendering 2D images. 3D computer graphics like 2D Animations rely on the same algorithms. 3D computer graphics are also known as 3D Models. It is a mathematical representation of any three-dimensional object.

William Fetter was the first to come up with the term computer graphics in 1961 to describe his work at boeing. Futureworld (1976) being one of the first displays of computer animation. It had included an animation of a human face and a hand that has appeared in an experimental short animation called A computer animated hand which was created by University of Utah students Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke.

Drawn-on-film Animation

Drawn-on-film is also known as direct animation or animation without camera. It is an animation technique which used footage to produce an image on direct film stock. It is different to other forms of animation as they use photographs of images or objects frame by frame.

There are two ways of producing of producing an animation directly on film. One of the methods is to start with a blank film stock while the other is to develop on a black film.  On a blank film the artist can draw, paint, stamp, glue or even tape objects. While on black film or footage made can be scratched, etched, sanded or punched. The artist may use any tool to suit them and with all techniques the combination is endless. The boarders of the frame can be used to reach a limit or possibly ignored to make it limitless.

Paint-on-glass animation

Paint on glass animation is a technique used for animating films by using slow-drying oil paints on a sheet of glass. Aleksandr Petrov is the most well known Paint on glass animator with seven films he has created using such films, all of them have won numerous awards.

Pinscreen Animation

Pinscreen used a screen filled with moveable pins. They can be moved in and out by pressing an object onto the screen. The pins create a shadow from a light shining from the side. The technique has been used to creat animated films with many textural effects. The effects can be difficult to achieve within other animation techniques such as Traditional Cel Animation.

The birth of pinscreen animation was invented and developed by Alexandre Alexeïeff and his wife Claire Parker in their own studio. In total they have made 6 short films with the technique over a 50 year period. Besides the fact that they were short running films and a monochrome style of films, they had won many awards of the years. On August 7, 1972, Alexeïeff and Parker demonstrated the pinscreen to a group of animators at the National Film Board of Canada.

Sand animation

Sand animation is also known as sand art. It is a term with has two meanings. It is given to a sand artist with a style of performance art and to a type of animation. Using sand an artist creates a series of images. It is made by applying sand to a surface and rendering an image into the sand by using a hand to create lines and figures. Some artists use a overhead projector or light box with their sand performance. Animators move around sand on a surface, either black lighted or frontlighted piece of glass. To create a frame animated film.

Flipbook

A flip book which is also known as a flick book is a series of pictures on a 1 sided piece of paper, generally in a small note book which changes and gets altered within each page like almost frame by frame to create a story with drawings. When each page is flicked through rapidly you see a story within and it moves with each page change. Many flip books are illustrated for children books but also maybe suitable for adults. The flip book first appeared in 1868 by John Barnes Linnett. It was the first form of animation to create a sequence of images that look as if they move. Flip books now are considers a toy or a children’s novelty. They were even a prize in a cereal box.

Time-Lapse photography

Time-lapse photography is a technique where the film frames that are captured are reduced than the original view of the sequence. When played at the original speed it appears time is moving faster and is lapsing. For example, an image of a scene may be captured once every second, then played back at 30 frames per second. Time lapsing isn’t always like high speed photography or slow motion.

The technique has been used to photograph crowd’s traffic and even television. Georges Méliès' was the first use of time lapse photography in the motion picture Carrefour De L'Opera in 1897.

Creating an Animation

After the research on animation I was given an option out of two choices to create an animation on. One being 'Hallery Brown' and the other being 'The Magic Paint Brush', my choice of story was the magic paint brush because it was more interesting in my eyes, I was able to add more creativity to my ideas. I was able to base my story around previous games such as 'Castle Crashers' Or 'Mario' I had a few ideas I am going to put onto paper once I have prepared my story board.

After choosing my story choice, I had looked at a few examples of the story on YouTube. By doing so I was able to make ideas better. 

What I like about this animation of the story is that it is based around a games console. Nintendo DS. I thought it was very creative and I enjoyed watching it as it was also based around the game of 'Pokemon' which I am quite the fan of such a game.

After more research on animations based around the story I began creating a storyboard of my animation.

In my story board I have tried to base it around the super Mario game style, in the first scene he finds the box bonus up in Mario but it starts with being an old man. I will design it to be box with an old mans head on it and the main guy hits it with a paintbrush coming out.

As we progress in the story more boxes will appear but not in the same way as the first one we see. Instead we shall see a paintbrush in the box and once he has hit it the UP from the paintbrush makes the
brush bigger and then he creates what is needed within the story.

In flash I had created a moving shape at first, with the tools within flash we had to morph the shape into another. It wasn't very hard to change the shape or move it, all we had to do was select (a tool) and simply move the shape to where I wanted it. After that I had to use (another tool) which would allow the shape to change into another shape. 

Moving and morphing the shape, would help me in my animation gaining more experience for what has to come in my future lives using flash.

After changing a flat shape into another I was assigned to create a bouncing ball which was much more difficult than what I had done before. I had to follow a guide given to me by my tutors and followed the guide bit by bit. The guide was extremely helpful. After following the guide I was able to create another styled shape by myself, which being the square. I didn't need the guide at this point and even then it was a success I ended up making it spin to see if I was able to do such a challenge it became a success as you can see below.

After being able to create the bouncing ball, I had to follow a guide in creating a walk cycle with a character. Following the guide was very useful to me as I could follow the guide very easy. I enjoyed making my own work, I liked to see my character moving from left to right. 

After being able to create a walk cycle I had to include sound to make the walking sound more realistic. The one I had found wasn't that good and I will improve on that during the making of the actual animation I will have created.

Final Storyboard

Creating the next storyboard I added colour and more development of what I would like in my animation. Having more of a developed story board I found it easier to follow to what I want in my animation, its basically a guide.

Developments in Illustrator

During the making of my animation I had to begin by developing on my characters and scenes. By doing this I was able to use Flash easier knowing that it is already there and ready for my use at any time I required it.

Here is a screen shot of the few characters I will include in my animation, I had broken the main characters up to be able to show more movement in them as where as the other characters didn't really require much movement they needed. Breaking the characters bodies into parts I was able to distribute them to layers.
I produced these characters from the inspiration of the game 'Castle Crashers' Being a game I had played before and the characters in there I really liked and I was able to include inspired characters of my own. (The Main Characters Only)
The grim reaper looking thing is the badmans henchmen, I made him them look like that to had mystery to them, I like the idea of including a dark henchmen to my animation because I am able to create more development.

I had included building for the main character's and the extra houses for the extra's that weren't very important to the animation. I just wanted to set the scene to be more busy than it really is.
I wanted to prepare the ground, bushes, trees and hills for when I come to work on my animation, by doing this I was able to go straight to creating the animation knowing what I will go in with. It let me be more flexible with my time.
I included a prop as well, being the main aspect of the story I thought it would be more wise to include it to this page as these other props such as the trees and bushes will consist through out the animation.

This is the set for the bedroom the main character will sleep in at the start, I found it much easier to produce scenes and sets in illustrator and it worked out much better than actually producing them in flash. I am able to be flexible with the objects I use as I will be able to distribute to layers. I kept with the Chinese theme during the making of the houses and props etc. So I wanted the inside to have the Chinese fee to it.

Rest of the scenes, I will include the further I will get in the making of my animation. I really enjoyed making the scenes because I feel they have work out better than I expect, all I have to do now is produce a great animation to fit with these scenes. Some of the objects that are included in this page will also be animated while others will just stay as they are.
The scenes were inspired by the game 'Mario' in the game, travelling along the screen was great and so I felt it would be rather effective if I stuck with that. Even though I am able to change and develop it.

Interim Assessment Hand In So Far

25th of November is the interim date for wherever I have gotten to on my animation is the day I had to hand it in. It isn't completely done yet, I have a few things I must include and to also improve on in the 2 weeks I have before the final deadline on the 8th of December.

Interim Assessment Evaluation

Me, Myself and two others were grouped up into having to review each others animation, the comments that were given were gave me a better insight of what I have to work on in the next 2 weeks I have to do. Given this chance to have people review my animation I was able to gather real comments from the audience I have shown it to. I currently have 9 views on my youtube channel, its a shame I haven't had any comments or improvements I could possibly work on. Being able to receive such comments I am able to improve fairly well on my work. I know that there is much to do such as add sounds, improve some movement times (The turning).


Audience Response

Marios
Pros: Camera shots are very well done.
Cons: The turning of my characters.
Improvements: Change the turning and to include sound.

Wesley
Pros: Great backgrounds and seamless movement.
Cons: Classic tween on the turning movement and No sound.

Having been told these pros and cons towards my animation, I am glad to hear that they like my walk cycle but I will have to work on the motion tween on my characters moving. I also need to include sound to make it reach the best of its animating abilities.

3 Smart Targets

1 - To include the intro and outro.
2 - Change the motion tween of the characters turning.
3. Include suitable sounds into my animation.

By doing these 3 targets I believe I will have enough to possibly reach the grade of a merit, hoping that my research and development of my animation improves in the time coming. I hope to reach at least a Pass which is what everyone wants but I want at least a merit if I can do that.

 2nd December 2014 Overview

I have done 2/3 of the targets I have been given last week. 1 being the intro and outro and the other being the changing of my characters tween turning. I felt they were very well needed because people who have never seen/read the book wouldn't know what it is. For the outro its needed to give a shout out to the sounds I had used and the person who in fact created the animation, being me.
After changing the movement tween, I was much more happy with it the fact that they just flip into place makes it look more professional and has a higher standard.

Evaluation

During the making of my animation final finish I had updated everything that I had planned to do as my S.M.A.R.T target. Being able to complete this I thought I had created a well made animation. Even though its my first animation, it was quite a fun make but I still have got some improvements that I could work on if I had more time. I would make the animation pixels much larger to make a better looking animation due to how small it is, I was unable to maximise the animations quality which is a big shame, but I am still happy with the outcome and the funny sounds. If I could change a thing it would probably be the story, I had chosen The Magic PaintBrush over Yallery Brown. Next time I would choose Yallery Brown and see how my outcome would be.

Overall I feel like this could achieve possibly a merit with the soundtracks and the animated parts. It is also a completed animation with a few improvements if I had used my time more conductively, I think I could have got a distinction. After this experience I now know that I should use my time when I have it. In all honestly I didn't leave entirely to the last minute but I didn't leave myself a lot of time either but it still turned out well and was a fun experience. I would love to do this again but in the ways I had said earlier that I would change.

I tried to make the animation humourous because I want the reactions of my viewers to laugh, because laughing is a great emotion to hear. It shows happiness and amusement.

Comments Given After Seeing My Complete Animation.

Excellent intro. 

Great soundtrack

Cinematic approach to animation

Humourous sound effects.

Nice spinning magic paintbrush

Motion tweens at times could be sped up as you wait for them to complete which delays your immersion in the animation.

Each scene is lit differently which works well.

Game references work well also but could be sped up.

Good character development, characters have personalities.

Words were difficult to read.

Good syncing and timing except to speed up motion tweens.

I am glad I received many compliments from my peers, hearing that it is a good animation is motivating and will obviously help me during the future. The comments that I could have improved were just as good, I am able to get comments on what I could improve in the future. I could make a more effective animation if I tried again I would know how I can create an effective animation.