ANIMATION

Animation is everywhere
refer to the likes of Wallace
before Christmas. This
beyond the animations,
actually work.

however most commonly we

and Gromit and nightmare
article takes one step
looking at how they

Persistence of vision
is an animation theory
which states the
human eye can retain
images for just
approximately 0.04
seconds. With these shortly
retained images our eyes
convey we see things move smoothly when looking at them as the retained images
we saw 0.04 seconds ago are blended with the images you are currently retaining.
The idea of persistence of vision can commonly be seen in flip books and cartoon stop
motion animations.
Stop
captured

drawings can

frame is the movement of something which is

one framed at a time and then is shown in
sequence to create a fluid motion of
movement. The example below shows a flip
book of images, when moved the flip book
animates the arranged drawings on each page
to give the illusion of movement. Flips books
are fun and easy to create however limits
the animator to basic designs as complex
look messy when made into a flip book.

The frame rates determine the smoothness of an animation and are set per second
(FPS). An animation made at 5FPS will show 5 pictures per second and will look jumpy
as opposed to an animation made at 30fps which will have 30 pictures per second and
will look smooth much like a professional animation.
By having a higher frame rate an animations quality will look better the higher it is
taken as shown in the picture below. Frame rates allow for slow motion for example
Slow Mo guys as they film in such a high frame rate than once slowed down you can
see clear detail in the picture

Many

animations are created with the use of

models, for example the nightmare before
Christmas animation is created with
models (as shown on the right). Tim
Burtons character were created with
armatures which are 3d models with
movable joints allowing the animator to
manipulate and control the figures to make whatever moves suited to the current scene. The
use of these models gives the animation a lot more life with the three dimensional characters
who can be expressed in thousands of ways including moment of eyes, mouth and fingers
however by using models you can be restricted with what you can pull off when creating an
animation as opposed to drawing it.

The long list of pioneers involved in the history of animation began with William Horner,
born in 1786 was the inventor of the zoetrope. The zoetrope is an animation device in the
shape of a cylinder which
displays a sequence of drawings
through vertically cut gaps in the
cylinder.

Some years later animation

was taken further with Joseph

Plateau who was a Belgian

the first person to display a moving
disks with images drawn on, this
which he created in 1832

physicist born in 1801. Plateau was

image illusion using counter rotating
was called the phenakistopscope

Using the conventions of

the time Auguste and Louis
credited as the first
film Sortie Du Lusine
1894.

animation and photography at

Lumiere, born in France are
filmmakers in history. Their first
Lumeiere De Lyon was shot in

These inventors were significant because of the influential

techniques that they had developed which are still used and
are being improved to this day. The use of persistence of
vision in William Horners Zoetrope gave the illusion of
movement through cut images within the device, this paved
the way for animators using this concept of imagery to
create moment.
The animation world has been developed such as Willis OBrien is most famously
known for his special effect work in films such as King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe
Young (1949) Where he used the idea of Dynamation. With animation being used and
adapted for over 100 years until 1933 when Willis OBrien used the animation skills

already known to create the special effects for the movie King Kong. The illusion of a
giant gorilla rampaging in a city was created with the use of animating inanimate
object thus taking the use of animation a huge step forward Ray Harry Hausen created
Dynamation and used it in film such as Jason and the Argonauts which is the notion of
bringing two images together to create movement and depth. For example in Jason
and the Argonauts he created a scene where seven individual skeleton models were
brought to life at once creating the idea of multiple movements within a frame this
required five or more adjustments per from of 35 moves
for each frame in total moving the stop motion techniques
forward dramatically from the individual movements of
William Horners Zoetrope.

The contemporary work of the likes of Tim Burton

(Nightmare before Christmas) and Aardman (Wallace and
Gromit) takes animation to the next level to what
we see today. These creative animators took the
idea of moving objects to create film and broke
the boundaries to create such unique and
entertaining pieces of animation, they have done
this trough using computer generated movement,
special effects, putting narrative into a story and
using CGI to create a more realistic version of
Harry Hausons Jason and the Argonauts. Using
these special effects characters now can show a variety of movement and emotions
much like Tim burtons Nightmare Before Christmas characters
Stop motion development has exceeded over the years and they can now be used for
many different formats such as TV, Film, Adverts and Music videos they have been
used in videos such as TV Series Spongebob Squarepants and Music videos for the
band The Gorillaz