Jay Smith

Animation Research

S0045090

Animation History To begin talking about animation we have to go back in time to truly understand how animation works, Since the beginning of time, humans have tried to capture some sort of motion in their art work. Animation cannot be achieved without firstly understanding the fundamental principles of the human eye, this is what is called the persistence of vision meaning is were we cannot see the gap of a film or animation between the frames, as it's projected on the screen, we mostly see it as a continuous flow. this is usually done by placing the images together to make continuous movements, there are usually 24 images per second during the sequences in the film or animation. The persistence of vision was first introduced by Paul Roget in 1982, and was the proud inverter of the thaumatrope, it was made up with a piece of disc and string with on one side would be the bird and on the other side of the disc there would be a bird cage, as the disc would spin it would seem that the bird would appear in the cage. This method proved that the human eye retains images when it is exposed to a series of images one at a time. As the thaumatrope was such a great achievement to how animation worked two other invention were introduced the phenakistoscope which was introduced by Josheph Plateau in 1826, the phenakistoscop was a circular card with several slits around the edges, the viewer would hold the card up into a mirror and then would start peering through the slits as the card would spin, as the viewer would look though the slits it would come clear to them that the images would be resulting in some sort of motion. This same method was used in the zoetrope that was invented by Pierre Desvignes in 1860. The zoetrope is a strip of card that in bent in a shape of a cylinder, which contain some sort of drawings in the inside, then as the cylinder rotates on a spindle the viewer would then took through the slot at the top of the cylinder, as this is going on the cylinder rotates the drawing inside that would then create a motion that would endlessly in a loop and loop . As animation slowly started to progress and rise to fame, it was not till the early twenties when animated cartoons was on the declined movie exhibitors were looking for an alternative entertainment in the media. The art of animation could accomplish was not yet clearly relevant in this period of time, except for the work of Winsor McCay with his animation Gertie the Dinosaur 1924. this piece of animation was one of McCay's biggest accomplishments due to the fact that McCay had developed a character within a dinosaur that had been seen in a previous animation Felix the Cat that was deveoped by Otto Messmer which appeared in Feline Follies 1919. McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur had a major impact on the audience. The impression of the dinosaur coming to life on a screen that the audience was amazed by, from all of the earlier animation Felix the Cat had made the most Impact on screen personality wise, but yet failed to develop any further, relying on crude visual tricks to entertain the viewers as oppsed to develop a stronger screen persona.

Jay Smith

Animation Research

S0045090

At this time many animation were based on gags and violence, which is still true to the cartoons we have now a days such as Ichy and Scratchy, one character would beat the other character continuously only to have the other character recover and then would return the favour, as in this case Ichy would torture Scratchy in many brutal ways only to have Scratchy reappear as if he was magically unharmed.

Computer Generated Imagery History As 2D animation started to progress in hand drawings, it wasnt till 1973 when 2D CGI was being more frequently used , this technique made it possible to quickly and easily to counter problems caused by the the traditional mode of animating. This technique cut down on the production time of an animation, as now animators only needed to animate a key frame and the computer would fill in the rest, not only did computers help in the way that animation is done, it also create a new type of genre of animation. Most CGI animation movies we have now a days like Toy Story, A Bugs Life and Antz that were all done by Disney and Pixar and produced by Dreamworks, that is only just the start of computer animation, with computer animation it made it possible for almost anyone to create their own piece of animation. It wasn't till 1967 when the first computer generated animation was introduced in Britain by Tony Pritchett with The Flexipede the short animation was only 16 minutes long and that was in plain black and white, that consisted of a centipede moving in and out of the screen. The Flexipede was made on the University of London's Atias computer using a programme called autocode. The Flexipede soundtrack was produced by using foley sounds, which are sounds effects usually are added to a film or animation during the post production, Foley sounds is a technique that is used for synchronizing life sounds with the captured footage in screen.

Jay Smith

Animation Research

S0045090

Before computer generated imagery came along it took money, special equipment and incredible amount of talent and patience to create an animation, the history of CGI animation dates back to 40 years ago when the first ever computer drawing system was designed. Design augmented by computers (DAC) is one of the earliest graphical computer aided design system that was developed by General Motors, this system allowed the user to view any sort of 3D model and change the angles and the rotations of the view. Dating back to 1961 MIT student (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) Ivan Sutherland created an outstanding piece of software that many years later many other graphic software designers would base their software in this and it was known as The Sketchpad. This software primarily allowed you to draw any sort of figure directly on to a computer screen with a light pen, this technique is used the same way as we use the Graphic Tablet now a days.

It wasnt till the 1980s were a popular film known as Star wars Empire Strikes Back was released that had one of the most influential computer animation graphics that was started. George Lucas an American film producer, screenwriter and director, also proud founder and chairman of Lucasfilm. Started to recruit CGI specialist in order to create an computer animation section within his company. The result in this was Industrial Light and Magic a team that soon began producing special CGI effects for films and animation, it is Industrial Light and Magic that produced the CGI effects for films such as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 2008, The Iron man franchise 2008/2010, Transformers franchise 2007/2009, Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith 2005 and many more.

Jay Smith

Animation Research

S0045090

In 1986 this is were the world of CGI was expand into even further, a small group of the team of Industrial Light and Magic broke off from the company to only start their own computer animation company known as Pixar.

Despite the huge success of Pixar's featured length animations, most animators would strongly agree that the greatest contribution to the world of computer graphics is a software known at Renderman. Renderman is possible the standard of software used today due to it's simplicity and adaptable features. Pixar and Walt Disney Pixar is one of the most leading animation company now a days with its Academy Award winning for computer animations, with its technical, creative production ability to create a whole new outlet of animated films. Pixars main objective is to combined technology with creative talent to develop memorable animated film with characters and story lines that can appeal to the audience of all ages. Since the release of Snow White and the Seven Drafts that was released by Walt Disney Productions in 1937, it was then when animated films had become one of the most universally enjoyable form of entertainment. Walt Disney is known for its fantastic animated films such as Snow white and the Seven Dwarfs, one of the first full length animated film, and pioneered a whole new outlet on family entertainment. Seven decades later Disney Animation Studio continued to honour its legacy with its loveable characters, story telling, and most of all technology. Disnery went on to create more fantastic animated films such as Pinocchio 1940, Dumbo 1941, Cinderella 1950, Alice in Wonderland 1951 and much more memorable animated films. During 1991 Pixar singed an agreement with Walt Diseny for the development and production for up to three computer animated films to be marketed and distributed by Walt Diseny. It was to this agreement that Toy Story was developed, produced and distributed in 1997, during this period Pixar engaged into a new Co-production agreement on producing five original CGI films that could be distributed by Diseny themselves, the five CGI films were A Bugs Life, Monster In, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, and Cars. As Pixar and Walt Diseny worked considerably well together to create such great films it wasnt till 2006 when Pixar sighed an argeement with Walt Diseny to merge the two companies together, the deal was approved by the shareholders from both companies. Pixar is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company.