Animation

Two major forms of animation

• Stop-motion animation
– Model
– Puppet
– Claymation
– Pixelation
– Cut-out animation
• Cartoon or created animation
– Cartoons
– CGI
 Animation has a long history
• Early visual toys
• Development of animation in early days of
film
– Gertie the Dinosaur
• Animated shorts
– Felix the Cat
– Mickey Mouse
– Merrie Melodies
 Disney
• During the 1930s Walt Disney’s animation
studios came to dominate the commercial
animation scene
– Turned to feature-length films after Snow White
– Naturalism
• Shorts were often produced by Warner Bros,
Fleischer, others
– More abstract
 UPA
• Very abstract
• Limited animation
– Cheaper
 Cartoon animation
• At first, all pictures were hand-drawn
completely
• Cel process
– Portion of the picture that moves is drawn on
plastic sheet, background remains steady
– As animation progressed, multiple cel layers were
developed
 Cartoon animation
• Developed a system (Disney perfected) where
main animators would produce “key frames”
or pictures that occurred at most important
moments of action, then “tweeners” would
produce the pictures that occurred between
the key frames
 Rotoscoping
• To improve the naturalness of the motion, the
device projected actual photos onto a light
table where they were traced and the outline
was then filled in with cartoon character
– Used in Snow White to make her movements
more realistic
 Abstract animation
• Many animators do not want to present
animation as though it were real—want the
art of the visual and the audio to be retained
– Fantasia
– Abstract independent animation
 Stop motion
• Take picture, move object, take picture
– Painstaking process
– Can look jerky
– Models can have mechanical problems
• May need multiple models/puppets, etc.
 Stop motion
• Melies
• King Kong
• Gumby
• Wallace and Gromit