1950s to 1970s animation

ANIMATION 1950's TO 1970's

Looney Tunes is a Warner Bros, animated cartoon series. The series features some of the most well known and popular characters in history, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Tweety Bird. Many of the characters have made cameo appearances in television shows, films and advertisements. Also all the characters had the same man doing all of the voice overs. and he was called Mel Blanc. 

Hannah- Barbera productions was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation for nearly three decades in the mid-to-late 20th centuary. The company was orgnially formed in 1957 by former Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer animation directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and live-action director George Sidney in partnership with Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems television division.

The magic roundabout was originally a french children's television program that was created in 1963 by Serge Danot. The BBC produced a version of the series using the original stop motion animation footage with new English-language scripts, written and performed by Eric Thompson, that had no relation to the original story lines. This version, broadcast from 18 October 1965 to 25 January 1977, was a great success and attained cult status, being watched by adults for its dry humour as much as by the children for whom it was intended.

early animation devices and modern

The earliest examples of "animation" come from Palaeolithic cave paintings and pottery/wall decorations from as far back as 5,200 years ago.

Around the Victorian Era, games such as the zoetrope, Thaunamatrope and flip book became popular. These were simple devices that, when moved in their individual way, would produce a basic animation.

Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer was an English photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection.

William Horner was another animation pioneer, who created the zoetrope. He created the zoetrope in the year 1834.

ZOETROPE
A zoetrope is a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession. It was basically a improvement on the phenkitascope. It lead to the praxinoscope being made and also lead to animation being viewed simpler.

In 1889 Emile Reynaud patents the praxioscope. This is a device that used mirrors to project a sequence of images onto a screen. The infinite tape length changed the medium of animation from a curiosity into entertainment.

In 1906 J. Stuart Blackton makes the first animated film which he called "Humorous phases of funny faces." His method was to draw comical faces on a blackboard and film them. This allowed the facial expressions to change before the viewers eye's.

In the 1914 Earl Hurd applies for a patent for the process of cel animation. This is the technique of drawing the animated portion of an animation on a clear celluliod sheet and later photographing it with its matching background.

1923 Walt and Roy Disney create Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio.

In 1964 Ken Knowlton working at Bell Laboratories started developing computer techniques for producing animated movies. 

1976 The feature film Futureworld, sequel to the 1973 Westworld, is the first film to feature CGI by making use of a computer - generated hand and face created by then University of Utah graduate students Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke. Catmull wold eventually end up as one of the three founders of Pixar and is the current president of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar.

1986 The computer graphics division of George Lucas's company Lucasfilm, Ltd is purchased by Steve Jobs for $10 million and established along with Catmull and ex-Disney animator John Lasseter as Pixar Animation Films, a company that is famous for their CGI feature films and shorts to this day. 

Disney/ Pixars first film TOY STORY becomes the first feature length film to be made entirely of CGI in 1995.

finished elmo animation

This is my finished elmo animation project. I used premier pro to edit the animation i copied my animation into premier pro and added a youtube song which was the elmo song. I cut the song so it lasted as long as the animation did and then put my titles on and the beginning and end. Overall i am happy with the animation but i would of liked it to be a little longer.

This is a screen shot of me working in premier pro to edit the animation and export it.

how animation is made

MODEL BASED ANIMATION

Model animation is a form of stop motion animation designed to merge with live action footage to create the illusion of a real-world fantasy sequence. Model animation was pioneered by Willis O'Brien it was first used in THE LOST WORLD in 1925. He has done work such as King Kong and The Black Scorpion.


CUT OUT ANIMATION

Cut out animation is one of the oldest and simplest animation techniques and has many forms and variations, Essentially, cut-out animation involves using flat characters, props and backgrounds made out of different materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs. Animators divide characters into smaller segments, piece together the individual cut-out shapes and move them in small steps, taking a picture - with a film camera capable of taking single pictures at each step, to create the illusion of movement.

PIXILATION ANIMATION

Pixilation is a form of stop motion animation, in which you animate live actors instead of clay figures. All you have to do is move the actors or the objects little by little in front of a camera, shooting one frame at a time, then play the images in sequence on film or computer screen. You take pictures instead of drawing them. This animation technique goes all the way back to the beginning of animation history. Pioneer animator NORMAN MCLAREN made a short film "neighbours" while working for the national film board of Canada - probably the finest greenhouse for experimental animations ever.

CELS ANIMATION

Classical animation also known as cel animation or hand - drawn animation is the traditional form of animation which usually consists of 24 frames per second, each frame is usually drawn by hand or an animator can draw main frames and another person can draw the "in-betweens", it usually looks flat not 3D. For example these are cel animation films many disney films such as "sleeping beauty" 1959 and "beauty and the beast" 1991 and other non disney films such as "an american tail" 1988 and Hanna-Barbera cartoons - Scooby doo, the Flinstones and Tom and Jerry.

TIME LAPSE

Time lapse animation is where a process which would appear subtle to the human eye is captured over a period of time and played faster per frames/s to achieve a sudden motion of activity. Some common subjects of time lapse animation include:
Rotting fruit
The movements of clouds
Plants growing
People moving around the city.

padlet account and evaluation

http://padlet.com/lauuhartley25/t8zuxz0myknd


From Marcus's comment on padlet i would defiantly next time make the lighting better and make sure i film the animation in a different place.
From Matthew's comment i would next time make sure that the background was not moving about but for this elmo animation i did mean to move the background about but it is something i will consider for next time.
From Gavin's comment i did want to add more to the animation and add more scenes to make it longer but i didn't have enough time to do that so that's something to think about also for next time.
From James's comment i need to change the lights and background so i know i need to film it in a different place next time.
Ethan gave me a really good comment so i appreciate that and all the other comments because i now know what i need to do next time.

elmo animation planning

I have printed out a background for elmo to be animated on to. I will then use the camera on the mac to take a series of images of elmo to make him look as if he is moving. This kind of animation is called a cut out and could take up to around an hour. So next lesson i will be doing the elmo animation. I have cut his legs and arms out so i can adjust the movement of him!http://itec-composer.eun.org/composer/download/file/applications/Padlet.png

I have used this elmo off google for the cut out.

And i will also be using a background that will be similar to the one below. I am planning for the background to move as well as the animation.

To start of i took a series of shots with the camera's that were plugged into the computer's and i formed the series of images to show elmo moving and the background moving also. I used I stop motion to take the series of images to produce the animation. The animation when being in I stop motion took a while because i had to make sure elmo moved the way i wanted him to and later i would add music so i needed to make sure elmo dancing would be in the same time as the music was playing. 

This is not my animation but this is how i used ISTOPMOTION to create my animation, i put the background on a table and put elmo on to the background i had cut his legs and arms off so i could move them differently, every time i moved the legs and arms i would take a picture so then when pressing play the elmo would move as well as the background, once i had finished taking the images i exported it and saved it into my file. 

I then put the animation into Imovie this is when i added a soundtrack and titles, i used the music from the actual elmo cartoon. 

animation 1900-1930

Animation within 1900 to the 1930's really took off with animators such a George Melies, Willis O'brien and Lotte Reiniger, these were also the main founding fathers of animation who really made animating take off!!

George Melies made a famous animation known as "a trip to the moon" in 1902 and the film is recorded at 16 frames per second. The film is based on two novels which are, from the earth to the moon and the first man on the moon.

Willis O'Brien was a stop motion animation pioneer who has been responsible for some of the images within cinema history, he has worked on films such as King Kong 1933 , The Lost World (1925) and Mighty Joe Young (1949)

Lotte Reiniger was an animator who released the first animated feature, The adventures of Prince Achmed in 1926 and is the oldest surviving feature film along side two others. Lotte created silhouette animation which is used within the adventures of prince achmed which is done by using cardboard and thin sheets of lead under a camera.

persistence of vision

Persistence of vision is a commonly-accepted although somewhat controversial theory which states that the human eye always retains images for a fraction of a second (around 0.04 second). This means that everything we see is a subtle blend of what is happening now and what happened a fraction of a second  ago. In film and video, this phenomena is often claimed to account for ability to perceive a sequence of frames as a continuous moving picture.




Persistence of vision. Your eyes have memory! The human eye forms an image on the retina - the light sensitive part - and transfers information about the image to the brain. Just like film in a camera, this process involves reactions. The light falling on the retina stimulates nerves. It takes time for the stimulation to clear. Normally we dont look at one thing for a long period, so further stimulation to clear. Normally we dont look at one thing for a long period, so further stimulation happens, over - riding the last image about 20 times a second. If we stare at things, however, things are different - especially when we stare at the dark and light areas ( as in the example below) Dark regions have little (or no) light coming from them so no stimulation occurs. The eye grows used to the image it sees , and the nerves go on relaying the same information over and over.

In the initially strange, example below the brain is confused by what it sees, and tries to add detail to it. Only when you close you eyes (zero stimulation) does the fading image of Jesus of Nazareth "appear". Unexpected is the fact that his hair is dark - whereas in the image, its bright! This is the result of over-stimulation. Some people imagine they see a colour image- in this case the result of their brain - over actively filling in missing detail.