Animation is a rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways. The most common method of presenting animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods.

Even in the contemporary era, when animation enjoys mainstream success and a diverse presence in everything from feature films to television sitcoms to festival shorts, and to Web and mobile delivery, the animation form is still very much understood in the popular imagination as "the cartoon"; its history, as ostensibly "American"; and its principal identity, as "Disney." This neglects an extraordinary body of work made with different techniques and by animators and studios worldwide. Animation may be broadly categorized under four key headings: the traditional cartoon; stop-motion three-dimensional (3D) animation, including puppet and clay animation, and work undertaken within the special-effects tradition; digital animation, incorporating computer-generated films, Web animation, motion capture and postproduction visual effects; and alternative animation, embracing experimental and avant garde forms and independent, developmental films that are essentially related to a fine-art discipline and context. Inevitably, these definitions overlap and combine in specific works, but they operate as convenient signposts by which to address different "histories" of animation, and animation as a consistently progressive form even as it has entered mainstream acceptance and popular culture.

History[]

CARTOONS[]

Despite all the innovations in the early years of US cinema that eventually led to the emergence of the "cartoon," it is Fantasmagorie (1908), by Emile Cohl (1857–1938) with its surreal stick-figure animation, that should be understood as the first two-dimensional cartoon film. Its bizarre narrative shows off the possibilities of the new form and signals "metamorphosis" as the core language of animated stories. Inevitably, though, it is the US tradition that defines the form in the public imagination, beginning with cartoon versions of comic strips and quickly embracing vaudeville and slapstick film comedy as the touchstone for its development as an indigenous American art. The pioneering work of Winsor McCay (1871–1934), including Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). The cartoon characters including Pooch the Pup, Underdog, George of the Jungle, La Linea, Tennessee Tuxedo, Hunky and Spunky, Farmer Alfalfa, Flip the Frog, Koko the Clown, Bimbo, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Bosko, Buddy, Barney Bear, Popeye, Dinky Duck, Terrytoons, Chilly Willy, Andy Panda, Mutt and Jeff, Betty Boop, Felix the Cat and Woody Woodpecker, and Fleischer and DC's Superman cartoons. Tex Avery cartoons such as Tex Avery, Droopy, Wolf and Red. The arguably the first "personality" animation, was hugely influential on the aspirational Walt Disney (1901–1966), who became the key figure in creating an animation industry and ultimately in determining a critical view of animation as a film art. Disney's entrepreneurial and editorial skills drove his company and created a small-scale studio that could compete with the major players in the Hollywood system. Walt Disney's the first appearance of Pete in 1925, Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks starring Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse. Walt Disney's first Plane Crazy cartoon of Mickey Mouse in 1928, Walt Disney's the first official cartoon of Steamboat Willie starring Mickey Mouse in 1928, the Silly Symphonies, made throughout the 1920s and 1930s, first cartoon of Pluto in 1930, first cartoon of Goofy in 1932, first cartoon of Donald Duck in 1934, and arguably some of the studio's greatest works, preceded the groundbreaking Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), the first full-length, sound-synchronized Technicolor cartoon. Though challenged by the innovations of the MGM, Disney, Universal, Terrytoons, Columbia, Fleischer and Warner Bros. studios, Disney's masterpieces, Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Saludos Amigos (1942/1943), The Three Caballeros (1945), Melody Time (1948), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961), The Sword in the Stone (1963) and A.A. Milne and Walt Disney's first cartoon of Winnie the Pooh in 1966, consolidated the studio's hyperrealist "fullanimation" aesthetic, and defined animation as a form.

Once Disney prioritized its feature-length works, Disney, Warner Bros. and MGM successfully advanced the cartoon short. Warner Bros., with key figures such as Tex Avery (1908–1980), Chuck Jones (1912–2002), and Bob Clampett (1913–1984), modernized the cartoon by making it more urbane and adult and more self-consciously "cartoonal" by foregrounding the very mechanisms by which cartoon narrative and comedy was achieved. MGM enjoyed success with the Tom and Jerry series, becoming endlessly inventive in character humor and chase scenarios, a formula later aped by Chuck Jones in his Roadrunner cartoons. Warner Bros. prospered throughout World War II, continuing to make innovative cartoons, but chiefly establishing Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd as household names, and best starring Tweety, Sylvester, Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner, Foghorn Leghorn and as well as the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. Disney's Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Silly Symphony and Walt Disney cartoons, and Warner Bros' Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. The postwar period, however, was the end of the "Golden Era," as a breakaway group from Disney formed United Productions of America (UPA), working in a minimalist, modern-art style, and on far more auteurist terms and conditions. John Hubley (1914–1977), and later his wife, Faith Hubley (1924–2001), and their family, developed the cartoon form with an aesthetic that sometimes embraced non-Western art forms; spiritual aspiration in relation to philosophical or quasi-religious topics; and the direct engagement with personal subject matter, but now, Paramount Pictures and Fleischer Studios animated feature film Gulliver's Travels (1939).

As the postwar world changed, the cartoon adapted, but its production costs and declining popularity led to the closure of many of the major studios' theatrical cartoon units and to a watershed for Disney, which failed to produce the classics of old. Chuck Jones had made masterpieces for cinema screens in the last throes of theatrical exhibition (What's Opera, Doc?, 1957), Jay Ward's first cartoon of The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends (1959). The but the television era had begun in earnest, with Hanna-Barbera making more economically viable cartoons using a minimalist "reduced" style with simple and repeated movement cycles, and prioritizing witty scripts and characterful vocal performances. Terrytoons including Mighty Mouse (1942), Heckle and Jeckle (1946) and Deputy Dawg (1959). Ruff and Reddy debuted in 1957, and Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear soon became popular favorites, but it was The Flintstones (1960), the first prime-time animated sitcom, that cartoon is The Jetsons (1962), the vindicated the company's cost-effective methods and cartoon is Scooby-Doo (1969). Though the 1960s proved to be a time in which animation was arguably at its lowest ebb in the United States, the shifting political climate encouraged more independent work, and by the early 1970s, with the work of Ralph Bakshi (b. 1938), the cartoon fully embraced the counterculture and its value as an "adult" language of expression. In 1966 and 1967 respectively, Marvel animated television series is the superhero characters including Hulk, Spider-Man, Captain America, Thor, Iron Man and Namor is a The Marvel Super Heroes (1966) and Spider-Man (1967). In 1973 - First time ever is DC Comics and Hanna-Barbera including Super Friends starring Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman and other DC super heroes and villains. Other cartoons such as ComiColor Cartoons, Rainbow Parade, Color Classics, Harveytoons, Happy Harmonies, Tex Avery, Silly Symphony, Fractured Fables, Van Beuren cartoons, Tex Avery cartoons, MGM cartoons, Color Rhapsody and Aseop's Fables, and Hanna-Barbera starring Winsome Witch, Wacky Races, Penelope Pitstop, Captain Caveman, Wally Gator, Jabberjaw, Dastardly and Muttley, Atom Ant, Top Cat, Quick Draw McGraw, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, Hair Bear Bunch and many more.

Fritz the Cat (1972), Heavy Traffic (1973), and Coonskin (1975) engaged with the sexual, racial, and political mores of an America embroiled in the Vietnam War and coming to terms with the implications of Watergate. But now, The Beatles cartoon and animation including Well, Just You Wait! (as Nu, pogodi!) (1969), The Point (1971), Miaunel and Balanel (1974), Ramses' Tricks (as Ramsese Vembud, as Prodelki Ramzesa) (1985), Treasure Island (as simply Return to Treasure Island or Ostrov sokrovishch) (1988) and The BFG (1989). Rev W. Awdry and Christopher Awdry introduced The Railway Series such as Britt Allcroft including Thomas & Friends (commonly known as Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, simply known as Thomas the Tank Engine) (1984) and TV show introducing Tugs (1989). Comic and cartoon characters including Garfield, Heathcliff, Marmaduke, Johan and Peewit, Krazy Kat, Beans the Cat, Snorks, Biskitts, The Smurfs, Peanuts, Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Ox Tales, Mr. Rossi, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Peter Rabbit, Beatrix Potter, ThunderCats, Frosty the Snowman, Alvin and the Chipmunks, Mr. T, She-Ra, The Pink Panther, The Inspector, The Ant and the Aardvark, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Masters of the Universe, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, Cubitus, Inspector Gadget, Kalli, Gustav, Bumpety Boo, Shmoo, The Magic School Bus, Beetle Bailey, Mafalda, Mole (Krtek), Goilat, Monica's Gang, Little Audrey, Schoolhouse Rock!, Herman and Katnip, Once Upon a Time... Life, Mighty Man and Yukk, Ziggy, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Bangers and Mash, Bananaman, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, Tiny Toon Adventures, Brundibáři, Pohádky z mechu a kapradí (Fairy Tales of Moss and Fern), Hägar the Horrible, Bobby's World, Carmen Sandiego, Rainbow Brite, Marvin, Broom-Hilda, Flying Rhino Junior High, Calvin and Hobbes, Totoro, Paddington Bear, Mr. Magoo, Mr. Men and Little Miss, MoonDreamers, Detective Bogey, The Fruitties, Little Clowns of Happytown, Wil Cwac Cwac, Count Screwloose, Gabby, Barney Google & Snuffy Smith, Ghostbusters, Filmation's Ghostbusters, The Poddington Peas, G.I. Joe, Transformers, My Little Pony, Domo-kun, Hello Kitty, Marsupilami, Tintin, Diplodos, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Asterix, Blondie, The Land Before Time, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Curious George, The Beano, Cathy, Baby Blues, Ferdy the Ant, Dennis the Menace, Little Lulu, Bamse, Robotman (Monty) and The Katzenjammer Kids (as The Captain and the Kids). The British animation cartoon characters such as Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, The Family Ness, Jimbo and the Jet-Set, Roobarb, Noah and Nelly in... SkylArk, Henry's Cat, The Raggy Dolls, Muzzy, Puppydog Tales and Alias the Jester. Matt Groening's first cartoon of The Simpsons (1987) and Trey Parker and Matt Stone's first cutout animation cartoon of South Park (1992). The live action/animated films including Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Cool World, Space Jam and Looney Tunes: Back in Action in debut 1988, 1992, 1996 and 2003 respectively. Yoram Gross including Dot (1977) and Blinky Bill (1992). Best of anime and manga characters including Maya the Bee, Vicky the Viking, Heidi, Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Doraemon, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Osomatsu-kun, Gan to Gon, Princess Knight, Hutch the Honeybee, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Crayon Shin-chan, Anpanman, Perman, Moretsu Ataro, Astro Boy and many others anime and manga. Nintendo including Super Mario franchise anime and animated TV series, Capcom including Mega Man anime and animated TV series, Namco starring Saturday morning cartoon TV show introducing Pac-Man and Sega including Sonic the Hedgehog anime and animated TV series. Though not entirely successful, Bakshi's work was nevertheless a last hurrah for traditional animation, as it became clear that the rejuvenation of the form in the mainstream arena would be determined by the recovery of Disney classicism and the rapid development of the new computer-generated aesthetic. Disney best animated films including The Jungle Book (1967), The Aristocats (1970), Robin Hood (1973), The Rescuers (1977), The Fox and the Hound (1981) and Oliver & Company (1988). The former only came in the late 1980s with the work of Ron Clements (b. 1953) and John Musker, who with The Little Mermaid (1989) including Ariel, and other The Little Mermaid characters, and later, Aladdin (1992) including Aladdin and Jasmine, and Aladdin characters, and Hercules (1997), revived Disney's fortunes, ironically by using a more self-conscious, but now, Disney and Warner Bros. style. In the midst of their achievements, Beauty and the Beast (1991) and the phenomenally successful The Lion King (1994) also resurrected Disney's classical animation aesthetic in the guise of the romantic musical. Best Disney films Tarzan (1999) and Lilo & Stitch (2002). MTV including Beavis and Butt-Head (1992/1993). Interestingly, though, it was the computer-generated sequences in these films—the ballroom scene and the charge of the wildebeest, respectively—that signalled fully how computer-generated animation would eventually overtake traditional cel animation as the signature look of the animated feature. With the closure of the 2D animation department at Disney in 2003 came the tacit admission that 3D computer-generated imagery (CGI) was the new language of animation. Marvel cartoon shows starring Spider-Man, X-Men, Avengers and Fantastic Four. Ironically, for all of that, the work of Hayao Miyazaki (b. 1941), with the Oscar^® -winning Spirited Away (2001); Bill Plympton (b. 1946) with Mutant Aliens (2001) and Hair High (2004); and Tim Burton (b. 1958), Henry Selick (b. 1952), and the Aardman Studios working in 3D stop-motion proved that "tradition" was never very far away, but now best TV shows including Babar (1989), Rupert (1991), Where's Wally? (1991), Arthur (1996), King of the Hill (1997), Little Monsters (1998), Family Guy (1999), Futurama (1999), Happy Tree Friends (1999), Vampires, Pirates & Aliens (2000), Totally Spies! (2001), Mr. Bean (animated TV series) (2002), Yakkity Yak (2002), Winx Club (2004), Peppa Pig (2004), Zombie Hotel (2005), American Dad! (2005), Robotboy (2005), Phineas and Ferb (2007), Total Drama (2007), Spliced (2009/2010), The Cleveland Show (2009), Zig and Sharko (2010), Angry Birds Toons (2013), Rick and Morty (2013), Star vs. The Forces of Evil (2015), The Epic Tales of Captain Underpants (2018) and much, much more, Nickelodeon TV series including Rugrats, Doug and Ren and Stimpy in were created 1991 respectively, Nicktoons starring Hey Arnold!, CatDog, The Angry Beavers, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, Rocko's Modern Life, The Loud House and many more. Gaumont and Xilam's television series starring Oggy and the Cockroaches (1998), Stephen Hillenburg's the created Nickelodeon television series is SpongeBob SquarePants (1997/1999), Nick Jr. television series is Dora the Explorer (2000) and Cartoon Network television series including Courage the Cowardly Dog (1995/1996/1999), Chowder (2007), The Powerpuff Girls (1992/1998), Ben 10 (2005), Dexter's Laboratory (1995/1996), The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy (2000), Camp Lazlo (2005), Ed, Edd n Eddy (1999) and many more. Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network including What A Cartoon, Oh Yeah! Cartoons and Random Cartoons. But now, The Snowman (1982) and Barney (1988-1989).

3D STOP-MOTION ANIMATION[]

Three-dimensional stop-motion animation has two distinct histories. The first is the largely European tradition of short stop-motion films made by individual artists and stop-motion series made principally for children's television. The second, predominantly Hollywood tradition, is the "invisible" history of stop-motion animation as a branch of special effects for feature-length films. This is complicated further by the fact that 3D stop-motion animation also has two principal approaches, using either puppets or clay models, but also includes films made with objects and artifacts.

Though J. Stuart Blackton (1875–1941) and Albert E. Smith (1875–1958), Britons working in the United States, have been credited with making the first puppet film, The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1908), the British filmmaker Arthur Melbourne Cooper (1874–1961) made the first 3D advertisement ("Matches: An Appeal," featuring animated matches) perhaps as early as 1899. Cooper's "toys come to life" stories, including Dreams of Toyland (1908) and The Toymaker's Dream (1913), became a staple of early British animated film. Similar preoccupations informed The War and the Dreams of Momi (Giovanni Pastrone, 1913) and, later, The New Gulliver (Alexander Ptushko, 1935); but it was another Russian, Ladislaw Starewich (1882–1965), who first developed an extraordinary technique, following his interest in entomology, in animating three-dimensional insect characters. The Cameraman's Revenge (1911) is a melodramatic love triangle, and highly self-conscious in its reflexive tale of cinema about cinema. His later films Town Rat, Country Rat (1926) and Tale of the Fox (1930, released 1938) are masterpieces of the stopmotion form, drawing upon a darker, more amoral tradition of the folktale, yet they remained singularly unsung until recent years.

This neglect is a signal that animation made outside the US cartoonal tradition, in the long shadow of Disney, has been often marginalized in animation histories. This does more than negate important, aesthetically different work; it dismisses significant indigenous works that reflect national cultures and alternative perspectives on human experience. It is also true to say that the US tradition, particularly in its formative years, is largely a comic tradition. Other countries have aspired to different kinds of storytelling and have different thematic and artistic preoccupations. Indeed, even the comic work inevitably reflects different traditions of humor. The recovery of this work is paramount to a full understanding of the place of animation in international film culture.

Back in the United States, though, it was the pioneer Willis O'Brien (1886–1962) who inspired generations of what came to be called "effects artists." Amused by his brother, who playfully changed some of the postures of clay figures created for the exhibits in the San Francisco World's Fair of 1915, O'Brien experimented with his first stop-motion film, of a boxing match, soon to be followed by a prehistoric comedy, The Dinosaur and the Missing Link (1915). In 1925 he made The Lost World, based on a story by Arthur Conan Doyle, assisted by the gifted model maker Marcel Delgado (1901–1976), who constructed 18-inch models influenced by Charles Knight's acclaimed dinosaur paintings in the American Museum of Natural History. RKO then employed O'Brien on the groundbreaking King Kong (1933), which changed the status of special-effects work, fully deploying O'Brien's "rear-projection" system, which combined background live action with foreground miniature animation, first seen in O'Brien's aborted project, The Creation (1930). King Kong has generated a high degree of critical attention, playing out considerations of its sexual and racial subtexts, and the complex implications of its bestial and imperialist agendas. These issues were revisited in the 2005 remake by Peter Jackson (b. 1961), which uses the same combination of motion-captured performance, 3D puppet animation, and 3D computer animation so successfully deployed in the creation of the character Gollum for Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003).

O'Brien later became mentor to the most famous of all stop-motion animation artists, Ray Harryhausen (b. 1920), who, inspired by King Kong, sought to ape the technique in his own short films. After working with the renowned George Pal (1908–1980) on his Puppetoons, Harryhausen made his own short educational films, the first of which was the Mother Goose Stories, then joined O'Brien in making Mighty Joe Young in 1949. This was the beginning of a long and distinguished career in which Harryhausen created many fantastical and mythical creatures in films such as The Beast from Twenty Thousand Fathoms (1953), The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), and Clash of the Titans (1981). The effects tradition essentially defined by Harryhausen has the inherent contradiction that an effect must operate as something that draws attention to itself as "spectacle," but at the same time remains invisible as an "effect." Harryhausen's painstaking efficiency in the frame-by-frame compositing of increasingly complex miniature figures and creatures with live-action characters and environments represents a major achievement in cinema practice. As such, he is cited as a major influence by contemporary animators and artists from Phil Tippett (b. 1951) to James Cameron (b. 1954) and is referenced in animated films from Nightmare Before Christmas (Henry Selick, 1993), in which skeletons battle underwater, echoing Jason's fight with six skeletons in Jason and the Argonauts, to PIXAR's Monsters, Inc. (2001), in which a top-class restaurant is called Harryhausen's.

Harryhausen's legacy is great, but George Pal, his one-time employer, also produced fine work. His "replacement" technique was slightly different from Harryhausen's method: whereas Harryhausen manipulated his models by small increments and recorded them frame by frame, Pal created replacement pieces of his models—faces, arms, legs, and so on—which progressed the cycle of movement he was creating, and which he inserted and changed, once more recording the incremental progression frame by frame. Though a more cumbersome technique, it survives into the modern era, particularly in clay animation, and has been used in films by Aardman Animation in England. After making early films in Germany, Pal moved to Holland, fleeing the rise of Nazism, and established the biggest puppet studio in Europe, principally making striking advertisements for sponsors such as Phillips and Unilever. His Puppetoons, made in Hollywood, included Jasper and the Beanstalk (1945), Henry and the Inky Poo (1946), and Tubby the Tuba (1947). They were highly successful, though sometimes they fell afoul of what might be termed "cultural difference" in regard to the representation of race issues and the interpretation of Western humor. These films nevertheless secured Pal a reputation that enabled him to produce and direct feature-length science-fiction and fantasy films such as The War of the Worlds (1953), Tom Thumb (1958), The Time Machine (1960), and The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1963). These films all included tourde-force sequences of puppet animation—"the yawning man" from Tom Thumb being one of the most remembered. The quality of the animation by Harryhausen and Pal overshadowed similar efforts in the field such as, for example, Jack the Giant Killer (1961) by Tim Barr (1912–1977), one of a number of variations on The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) that sought to cash in on its popularity. Barr later joined up with Gene Warren (1916–1997) and Wah Chang (1917–2003) to work on visual effects for Pal and on their own work in Projects Unlimited.

Pal's legacy in Europe has been sustained, consolidated, and advanced by two major figures of Czechoslovakian origin. Influenced by indigenous marionette and theatrical traditions, Jirí Trnka (1912–1969) and Jan Svankmajer (b. 1934) produced a range of extraordinary films pushing the boundaries of stop-motion and other techniques as well. Trnka's politicized if romantic vision inspired masterpieces such as Staré povesti ceské (Old Czech Legends, 1953), Sen noci svatojanske (A Midsummer Night's Dream, 1955), and Ruka (The Hand, 1965), while Svankmajer's more subversive and challenging view, genuinely taboo-breaking in its daring, appears in such features as Alice (1988) and Otesánek (Little Otik, 2000). This altogether darker work inspired the Quay Brothers working in England, Kihachiro Kawamoto (b. 1925) in Japan, and Tim Burton and Henry Selick in the United States. Svankmajer's work is an important example of the ways in which the principles of modernist thought and political insight may be accommodated in experimental film. His "agit-prop" (strident critique of authoritarian regimes and political repression) and "agit-scare" (use of surreal images drawn from the unconscious to prompt moments of fear and revelation in his audience) are conceptual applications to the medium and should be understood as a methodology in the creation of distinctive imagery and alternative narratives. Svankmajer's masterpiece, Moznosti dialogu (Dimensions of Dialogue, 1982), is a tripartite meditation on the breakdown of communication, illustrating the brutal and destructive tendencies inherent in human exchange. The film is a complex metaphor and a challenging comment on humankind's inability to resolve its differences.

The contemporary era has seen the emergence of the Will Vinton studios in the United States and Aardman Animation in England as masters of clay animation. The two styles vary, but both studios value the "clay" aesthetic as something visually distinctive and engaging. Nick Park (b. 1958), Aardman's most famous son, created Wallace, the eccentric inventor, and his altogether smarter dog, Gromit, a now globally famous partnership, who have featured in Park's shorts A Grand Day Out (1989), The Wrong Trousers (1993), and A Close Shave (1995). Park's work, though speaking to a wider tradition of English wit and whimsy, nevertheless has clear affiliations with the stop-motion animation made for children's television in England by Gordon Murray (b. 1921) and Bura and Hardwick (Camberwick Green, 1966, and Trumpton, 1967); Oliver Postgate (b. 1925) and Peter Firman (b. 1928) (The Clangers, 1969, and Bagpuss, 1974); and Ivor Wood (1932–2004) at Filmfair (The Wombles, 1973, and Postman Pat, 1981). The high quality of 3D animation for children in England has been sustained by Cosgrove Hall, S4C, and BBC Animation, and has been only echoed in the United States by the early 1960s work of Jules Bass (b. 1935) (Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, 1964, and Mad Monster Party, 1968) and by Art Clokey's (b. 1921) simple clay figure, Gumby (1955 onward). Inevitably, Will Vinton's (b. 1948) Martin the Cobbler (1976), The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985), and the 1990s' advertisements for the California Raisin Advisory Board, featuring raisins singing popular songs, have in their various ways created a high-water mark in clay animation in the United States, which has always had to compete with the Disney tradition, but also in recent years with the now dominant CGI aesthetic. British film including The Wind in the Willows (1983). British TV show including Chorlton and the Wheelies (1976), Fireman Sam (1985/1987), Bob the Builder (1998), Joshua Jones (1991/1992), The Wind in the Willows (1984), Noddy (1975) and Bertha (1985), and TV show including Plonsters (1987), British-Swiss animation including Pingu (as "Hugo" pilot) in 1980, British-Swiss TV show including Pingu in 1986, British TV show including The Herbs (1968) and The Trap Door (1984) and stop-motion characters including Peperami, Noid and California Raisins.

Stop-motion and clay animators have always championed the "materiality" and "textural" aspects of their work as the distinctive appeal of 3D stop-motion, but one of the most significant aspects remains the necessarily artisanal approach to the work, which is reliant not on off-the-shelf software but on the ability to make and build things, as well as to respond to the miniature demands of theatrical practice and live-action filmmaking techniques on a small scale. The fundamental belief in the sheer "difference" and visual appeal of stopmotion animation has also prompted the emergence of important individual artists, from Serge Danot (The Magic Roundabout, 1965) to Joan Gratz (Mona Lisa Descending a Staircase, 1992) to Barry Purves (Gilbert and Sullivan, 1999), each bringing a specific vision to the materials, as well as a sense of theatrical space and the fluid timing of their narratives. Peter Lord (b. 1953) and David Sproxton's (b. 1954) Animated Conversations (1978) and Conversation Pieces (1982–1983), Aardman first stop-motion animation of Wallace and Gromit (1989), were also groundbreaking in their combination of animation and "documentary" soundtrack. Chicken Run (2000), an Aardman feature, proved hugely successful, and crucially represented the maintenance of 3D work in a physical and material context. The persuasiveness of 3D CGI has proved a serious threat to such work, but the sheer tactility, texture, and presence of 3D stop-motion work with puppets or clay has endured and has maintained its own aesthetic distinctiveness. Tim Burton's Corpse Bride (2005) and Aardman's feature Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) are testaments to the style's achievement and future, Aardman's Shaun the Sheep (2006/2007), Timmy Time (2009), Aardman film The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012) and stop-motion animation film is Coraline (2009).

DIGITAL ANIMATION[]

The history of digitally produced animation, and animation produced through the use of a computer, begins outside the sphere of the entertainment industry, emerging out of the work of military and industrial research teams seeking to use computer graphics for simulation and technical instruction. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer (ENIAC), created by the US army at the University of Pennsylvania in 1946, was the world's first electronic programmable computer; although it was a vast contraption, it had little processing power. With the first silicon transistors, made in 1954, and integrated circuits in 1958, computers became more powerful, and their uses more various but still largely untouched by creative endeavors.

JAN SVANKMAJER[]

b. Prague, Czechoslovakia, 4 September 1934[]

Jan Svankmajer studied sculpture, painting, engraving, and the writings of the surrealist artists at the College of Applied Arts in Prague in the early 1950s, eventually entering the famed Prague Academy of Performing Arts in 1954 to study puppetry and filmmaking. These multidisciplinary skills earned Svankmajer a place as director and designer at the Czech State Puppet Theatre in 1958 and secured him work with the Semafor Mask Theatre in 1960. His first films—Poslední trik pana Schwarcewalldea a pana Edgara (The Last Trick, 1964), Hra s kameny (A Game with Stones, 1965), and Rakvickarna (Punch and Judy, 1966)—demonstrate Svankmajer's trademark synthesis of the arts and the particular relationship between animated puppets and objects, human actors, and automata within performance contexts and "psychological" spaces.

The most significant influence on Svankmajer is the authoritarian context in which he worked. Following the Prague Spring of 1968 and his implicit critique of communism in Leonarduv denik (Leonardo's Diary, 1972), Svankmajer was banned from making animated films for seven years. When permitted to return to filmmaking, he agreed to make approved literary adaptations. His interpretations of Hugh Walpole's Castle of Otranto (Otrantský zámek, 1977) and Edgar Allan Poe's The Fall of the House of Usher (Zánik domu Usheru, 1981), are nevertheless thematically similar to his later Poe adaptation, Kyvadlo, jáma a nadeje (The Pendulum, the Pit and Hope, 1983) and his Lewis Carroll pieces, Zvahlav aneb Saticky Slameného Huberta (Jabberwocky, 1971) and the full-length feature Neco z Alenky (Alice, 1988). All are strident surrealist critiques of authoritarian regimes and political repression using irrational images drawn from the unconscious.

Svankmajer's bleak masterpiece, Moznosti dialogu (Dimensions of Dialogue, 1982), was banned in Czechoslovakia but enjoyed international success as a rich metaphor about the failure of personal and political communication. Do pivnice (Down to the Cellar, 1983) was an autobiographical interrogation of Svankmajer's childhood, depicting the terrors of unknown and mutable objects in a dark cellar. Many saw a similarly frightening engagement with childhood in Svankmajer's Alice, which sees Carroll's Wonderland recast as a nightmare world of disturbing images suggesting death, decay, and detritus, propelled by unconscious and complex desires.

The eventual downfall of communism produced Tma/Svetlo/Tma (Darkness/Light/Darkness, 1989), an absurdist fable about human endurance in the light of repression, and a short history of postwar Czechoslovakia, The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia (1990), which retains a chilling scepticism about oppression even in the newly democratic state. Svankmajer'ssubsequent features, Faust (1994), Spiklenci slasti (Conspirators of Pleasure, 1996), and Otesánek (Little Otik, 2000), combine live action and animation, yet continue his preoccupations with the "life" within found objects, the reconfiguration of "the body," and the surreal and subversive prompts of the unconscious.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING[]

The Last Trick (1964), Leonardo's Diary (1972), Dimensions of Dialogue (1982), Alice (1988), Jídlo (Food, 1992), Otesánek (Little Otik, 2000)

ALTERNATIVE METHODS[]

The term "alternative methods" merely begs the question—alternative to what? Within the context of animation, the methods discussed below essentially operate as alternatives to the trends in industrial production contexts, largely resisting the dominant aesthetics of contemporary CGI in feature work, traditional puppet and model animation, and orthodox cel or drawn material. There is also a resistance to the "Disney style," both visually and thematically, and inevitably a more personal or auteurist approach to the work, which often customizes a technique to achieve a highly individualized look.

Previously, these kinds of films might have been termed experimental animation, and to a certain extent this does embrace the auteurist sensibility present in such work, and the strong links it often has with an avant garde approach or the personal approach of fine art. "Experimental animation" as a term has become more associated with nonobjective, nonlinear work—which some claim is the purest form of animation—but in other ways this misrepresents a whole range of work that is not necessarily highly progressive in its "experimentation," but merely of a different order from "classical" or traditional 2D cartoons or 3D animation. It is essentially "developmental" animation in the sense that it is often a response to, and a resistance of, orthodox techniques, in a spirit of creating a personal statement or vision not possible in a big-studio context, or within the field of popular entertainment.

The abstract films of Walter Ruttmann (1887–1941), Viking Eggeling (1880–1925), and Hans Richter (1888–1976) in the early 1920s are commonly understood as a benchmark for some of the formative ways in which animation was used in the service of a modernist approach to filmmaking. Richter's Rhythmus 21 (1921), made with Eggeling, sought to use the movement of shape and form as an expression of thought and emotion in its own right. Ballet Mecanique (Fernand Léger, 1924), featuring full animation, painting directly on film, and Méliès-style effects, as well as live action, demonstrated a wholly self-conscious use of technique as a model of creative resistance to modernist machine cultures and consumerism. The kinetic combination of abstract form and sound to create a kind of "visual music" was pioneered by Oskar Fischinger (1900–1967) during the 1930s in experimental works such as Composition in Blue (1935). Lotte Reiniger (1899–1981) successfully combined abstract work with a visual narrative more accessible to wider audiences using the technique of cut-out, silhouette animation, most particularly in her full-length work The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926). She collaborated with Berthold Bartosch (1893–1968), who later made The Idea (1932), a thirty-minute poetic narrative of high technical innovation and achievement.

As the industrial model of animation production emerged at the Disney Studio and elsewhere between 1928 and 1941, experimental work continued. Mary Ellen Bute (1906–1983) and Leon Thurmin worked with the idea of drawing with electronically determined codes in The Perimeters of Light and Sound and Their Possible Synchronisation (1932), while Alexander Alexeieff (1901–1982) and Clare Parker created the "pin screen," where raised pins were lit to create particular images in Night on Bald Mountain (1934). Particularly influential were Len Lye (1901–1980) and Norman McLaren (1914–1987), whose work for the GPO Film Unit, under the auspices of John Grierson, significantly advanced experimental forms. Lye's Colour Box (1935) was painted directly on film, while his Trade Tattoo (1937) used stencilling on documentary footage. McLaren, who continued to work with Grierson at the National Film Board of Canada, experimented with many techniques, including direct "under-the-camera" animation, pixellation, cut-out and collage animation, and shifting pastel chalk, making many influential films including Begone Dull Care (1949), Neighbours (1952), and Pas de Deux (1968). Lye and McLaren essentially recognized that animation was a cross-disciplinary and interdisciplinary medium, and they exploited its affinities with dance, performance, painting, sculpture, and engraving.

This period of high experimentation in the 1930s was arguably the purest expression of what animation could achieve beyond the American cartoon and European 3D stop-motion puppet traditions, demonstrating that animation had credibility as a "fine art." Cartoon animation still remained unrecognized as an art form despite the critical and cultural attention enjoyed by the Disney Studio with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and Pinocchio (1940). Disney responded with Fantasia (1940), which aspired to combine classical music with lyrical animation in the same spirit as the abstract artists. The mixed reception to Fantasia helped to establish the sense of separatism between different kinds of animation, a trend that has continued into the contemporary era. Yet all animation is arguably "experimental" by virtue of its aesthetic, technical, and cultural difference, even as it finds continuing currency in mainstream culture. The late Jules Engel (1909–2003), though ostensibly an experimental filmmaker, worked on Disney features, developed the characters of Gerald McBoing Boing and Mr. Magoo at UPA, and worked on individual projects, rejecting the false boundaries within the field.

NORMAN McLAREN[]

b. Stirling, Scotland, 11 April 1914, d. 27 January 1987[]

Norman McLaren was one of the most innovative and influential figures in animation. Throughout his life McLaren worked in any number of techniques, including painting, drawing, and scratching directly onto film; pixellation (the frame-by-frame animation of staged live-action movement); stop-motion chalk drawing; multiple compositing; hand-drawn soundtracks; cut-outs; and 3D object animation. Beyond the implicit influence of his work, he also nurtured other artists, and maintained a pacifist, left-wing, humanitarian agenda in his creative practice, evidenced early in his student film, Hell UnLtd (1936).

Educated at the Glasgow School of Art in 1933, he made his first experimental "cameraless" film in 1934, and entered two films, Camera Makes Whoopee and Colour Cocktail in the Glasgow Film Festival of 1936. Though he believed the former to be his "calling card" to the creative industries, it was the latter that impressed the documentary filmmaker John Grierson, who invited McLaren to work at the General Post Office (GPO) Film Unit. Initially undertaking camerawork for Defence of Madrid (1936), and later, encouraged by the new studio head, Alberto Cavalcanti, he made Love on the Wing (1938) and Many a Pickle (1938); the former was banned by the postmaster for its use of phallic imagery. McLaren was then invited by the Museum of Non-Objective Painting, later the Guggenheim, in New York, to make a range of abstract loops, including Allegro (1939) and Dots (1940), though he managed also to make two other personal films—Stars and Stripes (1939), which used the US flag as its background, and an experimental electronic work with Mary Ellen Bute, Spook Sport (1939).

By this time Grierson had moved on to establish the National Film Board of Canada (NFB), and McLaren joined him, becoming head of the newly formed animation unit in 1943. Embracing the creative freedom offered by the NFB, McLaren embarked on a career that sought to advance animation as an art form, most notably by drawing upon its relationship to dance in such films as Blinkity Blank (1954) and Pas de Deux (1968), but also by the imaginative use of sound—for example, in Begone Dull Care (1949) and Synchromy (1971). McLaren's desire to transcend national and ethnic boundaries in his work, and to ensure aesthetic, technical, and creative innovation, meant that he used little dialogue, and employed multilingual credits. Neighbours (1952), his famous antiwar parable, not only redefined the cartoon, the principles of live-action performance, and the use of animation as a peacetime propaganda tool, but also embodies the philosophic, imaginative, and humanitarian heart of Norman McLaren's vision.

RECOMMENDED VIEWING[]

Love on the Wing (1938), Hen Hop (1942), La Poulette Grise (1947), Begone Dull Care (1949), A Phantasy (1952), Neighbours (1952), Blinkity Blank (1954), The Crow (1958), Pas de Deux (1968)

Animation[]

Views 2,192,698Updated Jun 08 2018

Animation[]

Animation is the art by which two-dimensional drawings or inanimate objects are turned into moving visual representations of three-dimensional (3-D) life. Computer animation uses computer hardware and software to make the animation process easier, faster, and executable by less skilled and fewer creators. Although there used to be clear divisions among cartoon and feature film animation, visual effects, gaming software, 3-D animation, and GIF animation , these related forms of animation now often overlap.

Animation can be described as the creation of the illusion of motion through a rapid sequence of still images. Although the quality of the original images is important, equally important is the quality of the sequence through which action, character, and story development are portrayed. There must be a coherent pattern to the action. A common story structure introduces characters, a source of conflict, the development of this conflict, a climax, and finally a resolution. But an animated story can also be more fluid, including the creation of forms or simple images, some interaction of them, and then a transformation or transmutation , such as a smiley face turning into a frown or dissolving into the background.

Creating An Animated Story[]

Although the process of animation takes many forms depending on the medium used, the following is typical. A preview or rough overview of the story, called a pencil test, is created. This is a sample sequence of pencil drawings created on paper to present a rough overview of the story. In the early days of animation, these were then recorded on an animation stand, but now they are placed on film or videotape. Sometimes, after a story idea is conceived, a "treatment" is created instead of a pencil test; this is a brief narrative description of the proposed film or video. Both pencil tests and treatments are often used to solicit sponsors. The action of the story and its development are conveyed through the use of storyboards, which are used to compose, organize, and deploy the animation.

A storyboard is a series of visual sketches that the story creator uses when developing the narrative and depicting the action of the animation. This is done so that everyone involved in the animation project can literally sketch out what is happening, making sure that important details are not overlooked. The storyboard details the sequence of actions necessary to convey the story line, character development, and point of view. This would include the background, action, and camera movement of the scene, but also each change of scene, each change in perspective, the timing and length of each scene, sound requirements, and the timing of the whole work.

With the storyboard in place, the dialog or music for the animation is recorded, and the sound length is determined in terms of the number of frames that it can handle. This information is entered on a "dope sheet"— a document detailing the nature of the music clips, their times, and the number of frames per clip. A layout is drawn up for each scene and the director uses the layout and dope sheet to plan the action and its timing. Next a background is created and the movement is created by a sequence of drawn images, which is then also entered on the dope sheet.

The image drawings for movement are then tested; if there are discrepancies, corrections are made to the timing or the drawings. In traditional animation, hand-drawn or cel animation is the most common technique. The cleaned-up drawings are inked and colored by hand on acetate overlays called cels. The cels are placed on the background, which is then placed under the camera. The camera operator, using the dope sheet, assembles the background and movement cels, and shoots each frame, after which the film is sent for processing and printing. The printed scenes are then edited to integrate all the sound tracks, including music and dialogue. The result of this integration is called a work or cut print. The lab makes a final print that can be projected to an audience or is transferred to film.

Computers are now used for many or all parts of this process. With current technology, the completed computer file is sent directly to digital tape, which will be transferred to film or broadcast on DVD or videotape.

Types Of Animation[]

Many types of animation exist but there is no common classification scheme to describe them. The Encyclopedia of Animation Techniques (1996) lists drawn animation and model animation, but there are also cutout animation, 3-D animation, virtual reality (VR) animation, and animatronics , to name a few other types. The hand-drawn or cel animation, mentioned earlier, is the most common traditional technique. Hundreds of examples of hand-drawn animation were generated by Walt Disney (1901–1966) and his studios, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi. Hand-drawn animation in pencil form and cels is no longer used much today. Drawings are often made with computer software, and foregrounds and backgrounds are now generated through the use of digital files.

Model animation follows a process similar to hand-drawn animation, using models such as puppets (sometimes referred to as puppet animation) or clay figures (sometimes referred to as claymation). Set workers create movement by physically modifying the clay figures or changing the positions of the puppets. Each time this is done, a new scene is recorded on film or videotape. Because motion is captured through the position-by-position image of the models on single frames, model animation employs a technique known as stop-motion animation. The Christmas favorite Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a classic example of stop-motion animation.

One of the well-known creators and directors of "claymation" was Nick Parks, who created the characters Wallace and Gromit in A Grand Day Out (1990), which won a British Academy Award. He also created Creature Comforts (1990), featuring interviews with inmates of a zoo, which won an Academy Award, as did two more adventures of Wallace and Gromit: A Close Shave (1995) and The Wrong Trousers (1998).

Cutout animation has been made notable by Terry Gilliam in Monty Python's Flying Circus and by Matt Stone and Trey Parker in South Park. To create cutout animation, an artist cuts actors and scenes out of paper, overlays them, and moves them, and captures their images frame by frame, again using stop-motion animation. In Gilliam's work, the animation was done frame by frame, but Stone and Parker quickly abandoned the physical work of generating the figures and turned instead to advanced computer workstations that create the same effect.

3-D animation is similar to hand-drawn animation, but it involves thinking in three-dimensional space and working with objects, lights, and cameras in a new way. 3-D animation requires the use of computers. The movie Toy Story is an example of 3-D computer animation.

Virtual reality animation is created through such technologies as VR and VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language). These make it possible to create 3-D environments, accessible through web sites, within which viewers can feel fully immersed in the animated surroundings. Quicktime VR uses photographic images or pre-rendered art to create the inside of a virtual environment that is downloaded to the viewer's own computer. VRML uses 3-D models and real-time interaction that puts the viewer inside 3-D environments.

Animatronics entails the use of computer-controlled models that can be actuated in real-time. These models have electronic and mechanical parts including motion-enabling armatures covered with a synthetic skin. These models, often used in conjunction with live actors, form the foundation for animation sequences. Films featuring animatronics include Jaws, Star Wars, and Jurassic Park.

Animation Techniques[]

Two basic animation techniques are keyframing and in-betweening. Keyframing is derived from key moments of still frames in the animation sequence. A keyframe is defined by its particular moment in the animation sequence, its timeline, parameters, and characteristics. In traditional pencil drawings, these would be keyframe drawings; in claymation or puppet animation, these would be key poses. Once the keyframes are established, then the sequences of animations between these keyframes have to be done. This technique is called in-betweening; it involves creating the frames that fill the gaps between the key frames. In computer environments, the technique is called interpolation and there are several varieties. Keyframe interpolation provides the frames that are required, but how this is done depends on the kind of interpolation used, linear or curved. Linear interpolation provides frames equally spaced between the key frames, based on an averaging of the parameters of the key frames and employing a constant speed. Curved interpolation is more sophisticated and can accommodate changes in speed.

History Of Animation[]

Most basic animation principles and techniques were developed in the first twenty years of the twentieth century, and were perfected by the 1940s, particularly by Walt Disney, whose studios popularized the form through full-length feature films. Disney's impact on animation and the entertainment industry was profound. Ironically, his first attempt at an animated film production was a failure. In 1922, as a twenty-one-year-old commercial artist, he launched Laugh-O-Gram films in Kansas City. The company went bankrupt after a year. Fortunately, his creditors permitted him to retain one of his short features, which provided the basis for the launch of Disney Brother Studios in Hollywood. It produced the Alice Comedies, which featured a combination of animation and live action.

Disney.[]

In 1928 Walt Disney teamed with his brother, Roy O. Disney, and animator Ub Iwerks to produce Steamboat Willie, the first cartoon that was synchronized with sound. Steamboat Willie gave us Mickey Mouse, one of the long line of popular characters—such as Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Cinderella, and Simba—that made Disney famous and on which the Disney empire is built. Then Disney made a series of animated short films set to classical music, called the "Silly Symphonies" (1929–1939), in which he introduced Technicolor into animation. Disney held the Technicolor patent for two years. Disney won an Oscar for the first cartoon and full-Technicolor feature called Flowers and Trees (1932).

In 1937 Disney released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature film. In order to produce this film, Disney invented the multiplane animation camera. With this invention, for which he was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, he changed the animation industry. Disney's camera made it possible to have cartoon characters move through many layers of scenery.

Disney always pushed the limits in his use of new technologies: for example, he produced Fantasia (1940) in Fantasound, a forerunner of current movie sound systems; Lady and the Tramp (1955) in CinemaScope, an innovative movie viewing experience with a wide screen and stereophonic sound; and 101 Dalmatians (1961) using Xerox technology to make cels from animated drawings.

Following the success of Snow White, Disney produced a series of animated films, now regarded as classics, that secured his reputation. Among them are: Fantasia (1940), Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Song of the South (1946), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Peter Pan (1953), Lady and the Tramp (1955), and Sleeping Beauty (1959). Starting in 1961, Disney found additional success in the rapidly growing medium of television with what came to be known as Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color, which included many animated components or productions. During his lifetime, Walt Disney won thirty-two personal Academy Awards, and the Walt Disney Studios during the same time won an additional twenty-three Oscars in categories such as in animation (e.g., Pigs Is Pigs in 1953) and original musical compositions or songs (e.g., Pinocchio in 1941).

After the death of Walt Disney in 1966, his studios continued to garner awards and to produce commercial animation successes such as The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), Mulan (1998), and Atlantis (2001). The company also produces many live-action films and television series. Disney's animations are also on display throughout the company's popular theme parks. The adventures of Disney, best characters starring Mickey Mouse, and his my best friends Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger, beautiful princess including Snow White, Cinderella, Ariel, Sleeping Beauty, Belle and Jasmine, and great stars such as Aladdin, Beast, Tarzan, Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, Simba and many others, and the clutches forces of the evil Disney villains.

Warner Bros.[]

Warner Bros. cartoons creators by Leon Schlesinger, Tex Avery, Chuck Jones and more. In 1929 - first Bosko cartoon. Warner Bros' cartoons including Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies in were created origins 1930 and 1931 respectively and the four most cartoon characters including Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny in were created 1935, 1937, 1937/1940 and 1938/1940 respectively. The adventures of Warner Bros. starring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd and other members of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies characters.

MGM.[]

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) was an early promoter of animated films. Two of their in-house animators, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, launched the Tom and Jerry films in 1940 that subsequently won five Academy Awards. They later created such familiar characters as the Jetsons, Scooby Doo, the Flintstones, and the Smurfs.

Trends.[]

Major growth in animation productions started in the 1960s prompted by the growth of mass media, particularly with visual effects in films (e.g., Mary Poppins ) and animated cartoon series on television (e.g., The Flintstones ). In the 1970s, the growth of computer animation was facilitated by the invention of minicomputers, particularly by Digital Equipment Corporation's PDP and VAX computers. Because of cost and complexity, computer-assisted animation was still the domain of commercial companies. While personal computers (PCs), such as the Macintosh and the IBM-PC, were introduced in the mid-1980s, it was only in the 1990s that their power and available software were adequate for personal computer animation authorship. The diversity of developments and inventions and increasing use of technologies for computer animation are presented in a timeline (1960–1999) in Isaac Victor Kerlow's The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Imaging (2000).

Principles Of Animation[]

Around 1935, some animators at Walt Disney Productions wanted to develop lessons that would refine the basic animation techniques that had been in use from the earliest days of animation. These became the fundamental principles of traditional animation, though most can also be applied to Internet and 3-D graphics environments. John Lasseter, in "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation," provides a list:

Squash and Stretch, in which distortion is used in animated action to convey the physical properties of an object;
Timing, in which actions are spaced so that they help portray the personal or physical characteristics of characters or objects;
Anticipation, meaning that actions are foreshadowed or set up;
Staging, through which the animator conveys ideas clearly through background, foreground, and action;
Follow-Through and Overlapping Action, wherein the end of one action builds a bridge to the next action;
Straight-Ahead and Pose-to-Pose Action, which are two primary ways of creating action;
Slow In and Out, which refers to the animator's placement of the in-between frames to create various levels of sophistication in timing and motion;
Arcs, a visual representation of movement that appears natural;
Exaggeration, wherein an idea is emphatically represented through design and action that is not restricted to representing reality;
Secondary Action, which refers to the action of an animated object or character that is caused by the action of something or someone else;
Appeal, or audience-pleasing action, stories, and visuals.

Web Animation[]

Several software formats have been used for producing animation on the Internet. One of the first was Netscape Navigator 2's GIF89, which allowed a user to animate GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) images. It was not intended as a medium for full animation, however. Partly as a response to this, dHMTL (dynamic Hypertext Markup Language) was born. Dynamic HTML is a hybrid of JavaScript, HTML, and cascading stylesheets, but the disparity between Internet Explorer and Navigator platforms made it difficult to use.

When CD-ROMs (Compact Disk-Read Only Memory) became common, Macromedia distinguished itself with Director, a multimedia authoring system. In 1995 the company released the Shockwave Internet browser plug-in for Director, which allowed users to see online content created by Director. Macromedia later produced a plug-in designed specifically for web browsers, called Flash, which it continues to improve and support. However, realizing the value of dHTML, Macromedia created another product, called Dreamweaver, which avoids many browser platform disparities, by producing a dHTML page as an HTML page. Unfortunately, the standard HTML page was not conceived as a medium for animation, and its performance is not as great as plug-in formats, such as Flash, Director, or Quicktime, although the standards may evolve.

Game Animations[]

Games began to appear almost as soon as computers appeared. In the late 1960s, Spacewar! was created, partly as a way of experimenting with one of the earliest computers, the PDP-1, developed by Digital Electronic Corporation. A lot of two-dimensional games began to follow, including Pac-Man. In 1984 Atari's I, Robot appeared. Loosely based on Isaac Asimov's book by the same name, it foreshadowed the movement to three-dimensional games. At the same time, Nintendo was working on a video game console, Famicom, which later emerged as the Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States.

Part of the success of these systems was the structure of the computer they used: the computer had chips for the central processing unit (CPU), audio, and video which permitted better efficiency and looser control. This was the case with Commodore's Amiga and Atari's ST computer series. Before long, PC peripheral manufacturers started producing more powerful video cards (e.g., "graphics accelerator cards" with their own chips and memory, such as the ATI series), and sound cards (e.g., SoundBlaster). These eventually posed a challenge to the units designed specifically for games because they could handle the graphics and sound requirements necessary for games. Examples include Nintendo's GameCube, Sony's Playstation and Microsoft's X-Cube.

Animation in the early games was basic, relying on simple movement and graphics, but current games embrace sophisticated animation. There are many genres of games, including electronic versions of traditional games like Monopoly, Solitaire, Hearts, and Jeopardy! Early maze games, such as Pac-Man, and puzzle games, like Tetris, paved the way for more sophisticated action games like Street Fighter and Killer Instinct (fighting games); Castle Wolfenstein (a first-person shooter game); and third-person 3-D games, such as Tomb Raider and Deathtrap Dungeon. Animated computer games also include racing games such as Destruction Derby and 3-D vehicle-based games, such as Dead Reckoning ; flight simulators, such as Wing Commander, and other popular simulations (e.g., Sim City, Sim Ant ); role-playing games, such as Dungeon Hack ; and adventure games, such as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. At the pinnacle are full-motion video games, like Myst and Raven. Software, including The Games Factory and PIE 3D Game Creation, has emerged to cope with the demands of creating animated games.

see also Games; Music; Music, Computer.

Thomas J. Froehlich

Bibliography[]

Finch, Christopher. The Art of Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995.

Kerlow, Isaac Victor. The Art of 3-D Computer Animation and Imaging, 2nd ed. New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 2000.

Lasseter, John. "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation." Computer Graphics (ACM) 21, no. 4 (1987): 35–44.

Taylor, Richard. Encyclopedia of Animation Techniques. Philadelphia, PA: Running Press Book Publishers, 1996.

Wagstaff, Sean. Animation on the Web. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press, 1999.

White, Tony. The Animator's Workbook. New York: Billboard Publications, 1988.

Computer Sciences Froehlich, Thomas J.

Animation[]

Views 2,452,160Updated Jun 08 2018

Animation[]

Walt Disney's first full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), consisted of approximately 477,000 photographed drawings.

Animation is a series of still (nonmoving) drawings that, when viewed one after the other at a fast pace, gives the impression of a moving picture. The word animation comes from the Latin anima, meaning breath or soul, and animare, meaning to fill with breath.

Since early history, people have used various ways of giving the impression of moving pictures. Drawings found in caves showed animals with legs overlapping so that they appeared to be running. Other art forms that exhibited some kind of animation include Asian puppet shows, Greek sculpture, Egyptian funeral paintings, medieval stained glass, and modern comic strips.

Early Experimenters[]

In 1640, a German Jesuit priest named Athanasius Kircher (1601–1680) invented a "magic lantern" that projected enlarged drawings on a wall. This invention is often considered the first movie projector. It consisted of a little tin box lit by candles and oil lamps and with a chimney on top. The "magic lantern" earned its name from its slide-show type of presentations of devils, ghosts, and goblins. Gaspar Schott (1608–1666), using his associate Kircher's idea, created a strip of pictures that was pulled across the lantern's lens (a piece of clear glass). He later changed the design of the lantern to a spinning disk (thin, flat, round plate).

Optical Illusion[]

The popularity of magic-lantern shows grew with the discovery of the physical occurrence called "persistence of vision," by which the retina of the eye holds on to a still image for a fraction of a second longer after the eye has seen it. When a person views drawings of the different stages of an action, the eye sees one drawing blending into the next, so that the person has the mental impression of a continuous movement.

In 1832, Belgian scientist Joseph Plateau (1801–1883) invented the phenakistoscope, a cardboard spinning disk with holes. Pictures were drawn around the edges of the disk showing successive (arranged in order) movements. The viewer held the disk at eye level in front of a mirror and spun the disk, using a stick attached to its back. The reflection (the bouncing back) of the pictures passed through the holes, giving the illusion of movement. In Austria, Simon Ritter von Stampfer (1792–1864) made a similar device, calling it a stroboscope. In 1834, William George Horner (1786–1837) invented the zoetrope, in which a strip of pictures on the inside of a rotating drum were seen as moving objects through small openings in the outside of the drum.

Projecting Pictures[]

In 1845, Baron Franz von Uchatius (1811–1881) of Austria invented the first movie projector, a device by which images painted on glass were passed in front of the projected light. In 1888, George Eastman (1854–1932) introduced celluloid film, a strip of celluloid acetate with a light-sensitive coating that retained and projected images better than glass.

Animated Cartoons[]

In the United States, James Stuart Blackton (1875–1941) showed the first animated cartoon, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, in 1906. As the Sunday comic strips gained popularity, other cartoonists, including Bud Fisher (1905–1954), who created Mutt and Jeff, and George Herriman (1880–1944), who created Krazy Kat, started doing animated films. However, among the early animators, Winsor McCay (1867–1934) stood out. McCay's animated film of his comic strip Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) is credited for raising the art of animation to a higher level with its lifelike character and the fluid movement of the film.

Felix the Cat was the most popular animated cartoon character before the introduction of sound. Created by Otto Messmer (1892–1983) in 1919, Felix easily became a model for drawing cartoon characters.

Walt Disney[]

In 1928, Walt Disney (1901–1966), with his associate Ub Iwerks, created the character Mickey Mouse. In 1928, the pair introduced their third Mickey Mouse film (the first two were soundless), Steamboat Willie, complete with voices and music. Steamboat Willie was an instant hit. Disney used color for the first time in 1932 in Flowers and Trees. His first full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, came out in 1937. The movie consisted of approximately 477,000 photographed drawings. Translated into thirteen foreign languages, it went on to become the box-office favorite all over the world the following year. Other Disney favorites include Dumbo (1940), Fantasia (1940), and Cinderella (1950).

Moving On[]

Since the 1950s, filmmakers have experimented with new methods of animation, including pixilation, in which live people are filmed in different fixed poses to give the impression of humanly impossible movements. This method was used in 1968 in Yellow Submarine starring the Beatles. In 1978, The Lord of the Rings, directed by Ralph Bakshi (1938–) used rotoscope animation, in which live actions were filmed first. The images were then projected frame by frame onto a drawing surface. These images were traced and colored to create a series of animation cels and filmed again frame by frame.

By the late 1900s, animators were experimenting with computer technology to create animation. Movies such as the Alien and the Star Wars series used computer special effects to enhance their stories. In 1995, John Lassiter directed the Walt Disney film Toy Story, the first feature film created entirely with computer animation.

Raw Materials[]

The most important raw material in creating an animated film is the imagination of the animator. However, a variety of supplies are needed to help translate that creativity to material form. Some of the supplies are constructed by the animator; others are purchased.

The animator works at an animation stand, which has a baseboard. Register pegs hold the drawings on the baseboard. The animation stand also holds a camera, a work surface, and a platen (a clear sheet of glass or Plexiglas® plastic that holds the drawings in place).

The images are drawn on cels (short for celluloids, a type of plastic), drawing papers, or films. Most professional animation is drawn on cels, which are transparent (see-through) sheets five millimeters thick. Each cel measures about 10 inches by 12 inches (25.4 centimeters by 30.5 centimeters). The top edge of the cel, paper, or film is punched with holes to fit the register pegs on the animation stand and baseboard. The pegs keep the drawing surface taut.

Opaque inks and paints, as well as transparent dyes, are commonly used to draw the story. Felt-tip markers, crayons, and litho pencils can also be used.

The animation is photographed using 35-millimeter cameras. Some animators use Super 8 or 16-millimeter models. Different camera lenses are used, including standard, zoom, telephoto, wide-angle, and fish-eye lenses.

The Manufacturing Process[]

The creation of an animated film, whether short or full-length, is a time-consuming process. The average short film requires about 45,000 separate frames. A frame is a still (nonmoving) drawing A total of twenty-four frames per minute are needed to give the illusion of movement.

The story is written[]

1 The animator may also be the writer of the story. The writer makes a storyboard, which is a series of one-panel sketches pinned on a baseboard. It looks just like a big comic strip. Dialogue and/or summaries of action are written under each sketch. The sketches may be rearranged several times depending on how the writer, the animator, and the director wish to present the story.

The dialogue, music, and sound effects are recorded[]

2 Actors record the voices of each character. Background music and sound effects, such as footsteps, the opening and closing of doors, and popcorn popping, are recorded on magnetic tapes.

The music is timed for beats and accents. This music information is recorded on a bar sheet so that the animation can be fitted around the music. This process of fitting the actions to the music is called "Mickey Mousing," named after the popular character whose creator, Walt Disney, was one of the first do so.

Many animation studios now use an optical sound track on which voices, music, and sound effects are represented by varying lines. An electronic sound reader and synchronizer give an accurate count of the number of frames needed for each sound.

Dialogue measurements are entered on an exposure sheet[]

3 A technician called a track reader measures each vowel and consonant in the dialogue. Words are recorded on exposure sheets (also called x-sheets or dope sheets). Each sheet represents a single film frame. This allows the animators to synchronize (let occur at the same time) each movement of the character's lips with the dialogue.

Footage, the time needed between lines of dialogue for the action to occur, is also recorded on the exposure sheet. Slugs, sections of film without sound, are inserted where the action occurs.

Model character sheets are created[]

4 A model of each character is made to ensure his or her appearance is the same throughout the film. The models can be detailed descriptions. They can also be sketches of the characters in different positions with various facial expressions.

Artists create the layout or set design[]

5 A layout artist creates linear drawings that animators use as a guide for action. Background artists use these same drawings for painting the backgrounds.

Characters' actions are sketched[]

6 The head animator uses the model character sheets to sketch the primary actions. For example, if the character is running, the head animator will draw three to five or six frames out of the twenty-four needed per second to create animation. One drawing will be of a foot leaving the floor, the next of the foot in the air, and a third of a foot returning to the floor. The details in between these three "extreme" actions will then be filled in by the animation assistants, sometimes called the "in-betweeners."

The drawing is done on a transparent drawing board that is lighted from below. After a drawing sheet is done, a second sheet is placed on top of the first. The second sheet is drawn slightly different from the first to show movement.

Drawings are cleaned up and checked for accuracy[]

7 Artists compare characters drawn against the model sheets. Drawings may be made sharper but not changed. Scenes are checked to ensure they include all actions recorded on the exposure sheet. The artists also make sure the characters are properly lined up with the background.

A video test is conducted[]

8 The animators make a computerized videotape of the sketches to check for smoothness of movements and proper facial expressions. Adjustments are made as needed.

Artists create background[]

9 The artists create color backgrounds, including landscapes, scenery, buildings, and interiors. These are done using the linear drawings. The artists then use a computer to fill in the color. As the computer scans (reads) the layout, the artists click on colors from a template, or a palette of colors.

Sketches are inked in and painted[]

10 If the animation drawings have been done on paper, they are transferred to cels using a photocopying process. In some studios, a person known as an inker traces the pencil sketches onto the cels, using a special ink that sticks to the cels. Colors are applied to the other side of the cels, using the same computer process to color the background. All inked and colored materials are checked for accuracy.

The action is filmed[]

11 The cels and backgrounds are photographed following the instructions on the exposure sheet. One scene of actions can take several hours to photograph. The cels are placed on top of the backgrounds and photographed from above. As more characters appear in a frame, more cels are stacked on the background. Each level of cels is lighted up and staggered to make the resulting pictures seem three-dimensional (having height, weight, and depth). Then, the film is sent to the photo lab, where a print and a negative are made.

CELS[]

A very important development in animation was the introduction of clear sheets of celluloids (cels) on which drawings were made. Patented in 1914 by American Earl Hurd (1880–1940), cels allowed the placing of different drawings of movements on top of a single background scene. This way the artist did not have to draw the same background over and over, allowing more time to add details to the fewer background scenes needed, as well as to the characters.

The sound is dubbed[]

12 Dialogue, music, and sound effects are rerecorded from several tracks into one sound track. Two other sound tracks—the dialogue and music—are made. These will be used for translation when the film is sent to foreign countries.

The dubbing track and print are combined[]

13 The final dubbed track is combined with the print to make one unit called a "married print." If the animated film is for television viewing, the negative and the married print are usually sent to a video postproduction house to be converted to videotape.

The Future[]

Computer-generated animation continues its popularity. In the summer of 2001, Shrek, one of the most popular animated movies of all time, was produced with the aid of more than 1,000 computers. Anime, a cartoon form that started in Japan after World War II (1939–45), has become popular worldwide. The characters and movements are more detailed and realistic. Varied camera angles give viewers a clearer look at the actions.

comic strip:: A narrative series of cartoons.
dubbing:: A rerecording from the original sound track.
frame:: A single still (nonmoving) drawing, twenty-four of which are needed to make one second of animation.
magnetic tape:: A thin ribbon of plastic coated with iron oxide and used to record sounds, images, or data.
persistence of vision:: A physical phenomenon in which the retina of the eye holds on to an image for a fraction of a second longer after it has seen the image. The brain, which works with the eye, puts these still images together so that the eye perceives them as a single movement.
rotoscope animation:: A type of animation in which live actions are filmed first, images are traced and colored to create a series of animation cels, and then refilmed frame by frame.
sound track:: The recorded dialogue, music, and sound effects in an animation production.
synchronizer:: A device that makes the sound and actions occur at the same time.

For More Information[]

Books[]

Charnan, Simon. Walt Disney: Creator of Magical Worlds. New York, NY: Children's Press, 1999.

Hahn, Don. Animation Magic: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at How an Animated Film IsMade. New York, NY: Disney Press, 1996.

O'Donnell, Annie. Computer Animator. New York, NY: The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc., 2000.

Periodicals[]

Ansen, David. "The Shrek Effect: This jolly green giant is putting the squeeze on Disney's Mouse House, raising the bar on animation and threatening to steal the first Oscar in the field." Newsweek. (June 18, 2001): pp. 50-51.

Web Sites[]

Burns, Paul T. "The Complete History of the Discovery of Cinematography." http://www.precinemahistory.net (accessed on July 22, 2002).

"How We Make A Movie: Pixar's Animation Process." Pixar Animation Studios.http://www.pixar.com/howwedoit/index.html (accessed July 22, 2002).

CDs, Super Glue, and Salsa: How Everyday Products Are Made: Series 3×

Animation[]

Views 1,954,307Updated May 21 2018

Animation[]

Background[]

Animation is a series of still drawings that, when viewed in rapid succession, gives the impression of a moving picture. The word animation derives from the Latin words anima meaning life, and animare meaning to breathe life into. Throughout history, people have employed various techniques to give the impression of moving pictures. Cave drawings depicted animals with their legs overlapping so that they appeared to be running. The properties of animation can be seen in Asian puppet shows, Greek bas-relief, Egyptian funeral paintings, medieval stained glass, and modern comic strips.

In 1640, a Jesuit monk named Althanasius Kircher invented a "magic lantern" that projected enlarged drawings on a wall. A fellow Jesuit, Gaspar Schott, developed this idea further by creating a straight strip of pictures, a sort of early filmstrip, that could be pulled across the lantern's lens. Schott further modified the lantern until it became a revolving disk. A century later, in 1736, a Dutch scientist named Pieter Van Musschenbroek created a series of drawings of windmill vanes that, when projected in rapid succession, gave the illusion of the windmill circling around and around.

The magic lantern became a popular form of entertainment. Traveling entertainers, visiting the villages and towns of Europe, included it in their shows. In London, the Swiss-born physician and scholar Peter Mark Roget, most famous for compiling the Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases, was fascinated by the scientific phenomenon at play and wrote an essay entitled "Persistence of Vision with Regard to Moving Objects" that was widely read and used as a basis for subsequent inventions. One of the first was the thaumatrope, developed in the 1820s by John Paris, also an English doctor. The thaumatrope was simply a small disk with a different image drawn on either side. Strings were knotted onto two edges so that the disk could be spun. As the disk twirled around, the two images appeared to blend. For example, a monkey on one side appeared to sit inside the cage on the opposite side.

The next major innovation was the phenakistoscope, created by Joseph Plateau, a Belgian physicist and doctor. Plateau's contribution was a flat disk perforated with evenly spaced slots. Figures were drawn around the edges, depicting successive movements. A stick attached to the back allowed the disk to be held at eye level in front of a mirror. The viewer then spun the disk and watched the reflection of the figures pass through the slits, once again giving the illusion of movement.

In Austria, Simon Ritter von Stampfer was toying with the same idea and called his invention a stroboscope. A number of other scopes followed, culminating in the zoetrope, created by William Homer. The zoetrope was a drum-shaped cylinder that was open at the top with slits placed at regularly spaced intervals. A paper strip with a series of drawings could be inserted inside the drum, so that when it was spun the images appeared to move.

By 1845, Baron Franz von Uchatius invented the first movie projector. Images painted on glass were passed in front of the projected light. Forty-three years later, George Eastman introduced celluloid film, a strip of cellulose acetate coated with a light-sensitive emulsion that retained and projected images better than those painted on glass. The first animated cartoon Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by J. Stuart Blackton, of the New York Evening World, was shown in the United States in 1906. Two years later, French animator Emile Cohl followed suit with Phantasmagorie. Winsor McCay introduced Gertie the Dinosaur in 1911. Other cartoonists who brought their characters to the screen included George McManus (Maggie and Jiggs) and Max Fleischer (Betty Boop and Popeye). By 1923, Walt Disney, the world's most famous animator, began turning children's stories into animated cartoons. Mickey Mouse was introduced in Steamboat Willie in 1928. Disney's first animated full-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, debuted in 1937.

Yellow Submarine, a 1968 animated film starring the Beatles, featured the process of pixilation, in which live people are photographed in stop-motion to give the illusion of humanly-impossible movements. In the film The Lord of the Rings, directed in 1978 by Ralph Bakshi using rotoscoping, live action was filmed first. Then each frame was traced and colored to create a series of animation cels. By the late twentieth century, many in the industry were experimenting with computer technology to create animation. In 1995, John Lassiter directed Toy Story, the first feature film created entirely with computer animation.

Raw Materials[]

Although the most important raw material in creating animation is the imagination of the animator, a number of supplies are necessary to bring that imagination to life. Sometimes these items are purchased; sometimes they are constructed by the animator.

The animator works at an animation stand, a structure that holds a baseboard on which the drawings are attached by register pegs. The animation stand also supports a camera, lights, a work surface, and a platen (clear sheet of glass or plexiglass that holds the drawings in place).

The drawings are executed on cels, drawing paper, or on film. The majority of professional animation is drawn on cels, transparent acetate sheets five millimeters thick. Each cel measures approximately 10 in by 12 in (25.4 cm by 30.5 cm). Holes are punched along the top edge of the cels, paper, or film, corresponding to the register pegs on the animation stand and baseboard. The pegs keep the drawing surface rigid.

Opaque inks and paints, and transparent dyes are the most common media for drawing the story. Felt markers, crayons, and litho pencils can also be used.

Professional animation is photographed with 35mm cameras. However, it is possible to use Super 8 or 16mm models. A variety of camera lenses are employed, including standard, zoom, telephoto, wide angle, and fish-eye lenses.

The Manufacturing[]

Process[]

Creating an animated short or full-length feature is a long, tedious process. Extremely labor-intensive, the average short cartoon has approximately 45,000 separate frames. To make a character say "Hello, Simon," can require 12 drawings to depict each movement of the character's lips.

The story is written[]

1 Sometimes the animator is also the writer. The animator makes a storyboard, a series of one-panel sketches pinned on a board. Dialogue and/or action summaries are written under each sketch. The sketches may be rearranged several times as a result of discussions between the writer, the animator, and the director.

The dialogue, music, and sound effects are recorded[]

2 Actors record the voices of each character. Background music and sound effects, such as doors slamming, footsteps, and weather sounds, are recorded. These recordings are generally preserved on magnetic tape. The music is timed for beats and accents; this information is recorded on a bar sheet so that the animation can be fitted around the music. Because Walt Disney was one of the first animators to fit the action to the music, this process is called "Mickey Mousing." Many professional studios now use an optical sound track on which voices, music, and sound effects are represented by varying lines. An electronic sound reader and synchronizer gives an accurate count of the number of frames required for each sound.

Dialogue measurements are entered on an exposure sheet[]

3 A technician known as a track reader measures each vowel and consonant in the dialogue. Words are recorded on exposure sheets (also called x-sheets or dope sheets), each of which represents a single film frame. This allows the animators to synchronize each movement of the character's lips with the dialogue. Footage, the time needed between lines of dialogue for the action to take place, is also charted on the exposure sheet. Slugs, or sections of film without sound, are inserted where the action occurs.

Model character sheets are created[]

4 A model is created for each character in order to keep their appearances uniform throughout the film. The models can be detailed descriptions or sketches of the characters in various positions with various facial expressions.

Artists create the layout or set design[]

5 A layout artist creates linear drawings that animators use as a guide for action and that the background artists use to paint the backgrounds.

Characters' actions are sketched[]

6 Using the model sheets, the head animator sketches the primary, or "extreme," action. For example, if the character is running, the head animator will draw the foot leaving the floor, the foot in the air, and the foot returning to the floor. Or if the story calls for the character to blink, the head animator will sketch the eyes going through the motions. Animation assistants then fill in the details. The drawing is done on a transparent drawing board that is lighted from below. After one drawing is completed, a second sheet of paper is laid on top of the first and the second drawing is varied slightly to signify movement.

Drawings are cleaned up and checked for accuracy[]

7 Artists check the characters against the model sheets. Drawings are enhanced but not altered. Scenes are checked to ensure that all action called for on the exposure sheet is included. All figures are checked for proper line-up with the background.

A video test is conducted[]

8 A computerized videotape is made of the sketches to check for smoothness of motion and proper facial expressions. Adjustments are made until the desired effect is achieved.

Artists create backgrounds[]

9 Artists create color background paintings, including landscapes, scenery, buildings and interiors, from the pencil layouts. The color is filled in by computer. As the computer scans the layout, artists click on colors from a template.

Sketches are inked in and painted[]

10 If the animation drawings have been executed on paper, they are now transferred to cels using xerography, a process similar to photocopying. In a few studios, the inking is still done by hand, tracing the pencil sketches onto the cels. Colors are applied to the reverse side of the cel, usually by computer, in the same manner that background colors are applied. All inked and painted materials are checked several times for accuracy.

The action is filmed[]

11 The cels and backgrounds are photographed according to the instructions on the exposure sheets. One scene of action can take several hours to photograph. The cels are laid on top of the backgrounds and photographed with a multiplane camera that is suspended high above. When more than one character appears in a frame, the number of cels stacked on top of the background increases. Each level is lit and staggered, creating the illusion of three-dimensional action. The film is sent to the photo lab where a print and a negative are made.

The sound is dubbed[]

12 Dialogue, music, and sound effects are re-recorded from 10 or more separate tracks onto one balanced track. Another set of two tracks, one with dialogue and the other with music and sound effects, is often made to facilitate translation when the film is sent to foreign markets.

The dubbing track and print are combined[]

13 The final dubbing track is combined with the print to make a married print. If the animated film is for television viewing, the negative and the tracks are often sent to a video post-production house to be put on videotape.

Animation studio[]

Richard Williams was described as “the face of animation” by film historian John Canemaker, author of the book Walt Disney’s Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation (2001, Disney Editions). The comparison is not exaggerated. He animated, produced, directed, wrote, illustrated and even voice acted for animation — he was the voice of Droopy in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, Touchstone Pictures).

For Williams, there was not a reason to do anything if you wouldn’t reach the best possible result. At the age of 35 he already was the head of a renewed animation studio, had been awarded internationally and was very well requested in the industry.

Animation titans such as Ken Harris (1898–1982), forerunner of animation at Warner Bros and the Looney Tunes (the Bugs Bunny gang), and Roy Naisbitt, (89) who worked with Stanley Kubrick in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968, Metro Goldwyn-Mayer), worked with Williams in several projects in his studio in London.

Richard Edmund Williams was born in Toronto, Canada, in 1933. He was the son of Leslie Lane, a renewed illustrator that was the source of inspiration for Williams.

The passion for animation began early, at age 10, when he read the book How to Make Animated Cartoons, by Nat Falk, now out of print. Published in 1941, this preciousness depicted the seven major animation studios at the time, such as Disney, Warner Bros and Terrytoons. It was didactically straightforward and it would serve as an excellent support material for Williams while creating the concepts of character animation in Who Framed Roger Rabbit more than four decades later.

When he was 12 years old, Williams did his first animated piece: a walk cycle of a bird for his history class. At 15 he decided to make a 5-day trip from Toronto to Los Angeles to discover the Disney studios. Just like filmmaker Steven Spielberg tried to infiltrate in the Universal Studios lot and to escape the tours, Williams did the same at Disney to introduce his achievements do some animators. And he was very well received. He met giants from the studio such as Richard Kelsey (1905–1987) and Ward Kimball (1914–2002). Richard Kelsey was the father of the famous pixie dust in Cinderella (1950) in which her clothes transform into a beautiful dress, later becoming a trademark of the studio. Ward Kimball was one of the Nine Old Men of Disney, something similar to the “Nine Elders of Disney”, who were major animators of the studio’s golden age. Disney's first cartoon characters including Pete (1925), Mickey Mouse (1928), Pluto (1930), Goofy (1932) and Donald Duck (1934). They were responsible for classics such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia (1940) and Dumbo (1941). Kimball won an Oscar in 1970 of Best Animated Short-Film for It’s Tough to be a Bird. He even got to meet Walt Disney himself, but said in a lecture in the New York MoMA, with John Canemaker (February of 2018), that he “wasn’t interested in meeting him, because Walt Disney didn’t draw”.

William’s first big lesson came from Kelsey, who at the time had already been the production designer of films such as Pinocchio, Dumbo and Bambi (1942). In one of the stories that Williams tells in The Animator’s Survival Kit he quotes Kelsey’s big advice: “First of all, kid, learn to draw. You can always do the animation stuff later”. After coming back home, Williams phoned Kelsey and asked again what he should do. For which Kelsey replied: “I told you what to do! Learn to draw!”.

Williams took the advice seriously and got into an art school. At the age of 16, he was already working with commercial illustrations. His interest for animation vanished for a period, for he was determined to learn how to draw. When he was 20 years old, he moved to Ibiza, Spain, where he dedicated himself to painting for two years.

At age 22, Williams was invited by George Dunning (1920–1979), director of the feature-film “Yellow Submarine” (1968), to work on commercial in United Productions of America (UPA) in London. This was a time which Williams was trying to escape the Hollywood monopoly. In the same conversation with John Canemaker in the New York MoMa, Williams admitted that he as arrogant when young and thought that the Disney style was tacky, sentimental and with a mechanical process of production.

When he wasn’t working with Dunning, Williams used his free time to work on his first short-film. The Little Island was completed in 1958 and in the following year, at 26 years of age, Williams was awarded with his first BAFTA of Best Animated Short-Film.

The short-film was showed to the UPA’s director Leo Salkin (1913–1993), director of the special for television short-film The 2000 Year Old Man of Crossbow Productions, who wasn’t impressed. Williams only got promoted to the seat of animator after making a commercial for Bob Godfrey (1921–2013), who won an Oscar of Best Animated Short-Film for Great. Six months later, Williams was promoted to the director seat, but the UPA’s unit in London closed its doors. Williams then produced commercials for Dunning for more three months, and decided to create his own studio. It was in Richard Williams Animation where he spent most of his career.

Until 1992, when the studio closed, Williams and his team produced more than 2.500 commercials and gave the most diverse services of animation to live-action films, many times to big names in the industry. For Tony Richardson — director of Tom Jones (1963, Woodfall Film Productions) — and Blake Edwards — director of the film series “The Pink Panther” from 1963 until 1993 -, for instance, Williams created the opening animations and drew the posters. His most notable works include What’s New Pussycat? (1965, Famous Artists Productions), Casino Royale (1967, Famous Artists Productions), The Graduate (1967, Mike Nichols/Lawrence Turman Productions), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968, Woodfall Film Productions) and The Return of the Pink Panther (1975, ITC Entertainment).

Williams did not see the production of animation as a job, much less as a career. The Cartoon Brew channel described his passion in an article in dedication of his death as “a way of life, a religion” which he never got “enough of it”.

To stimulate his staff, he constantly invited prestigious animators and artists to teach and share their knowledge with the youngsters. One of the most significant ones was Art Babbitt (1907–1992) — animator of the mushroom dance in Fantasia’ (1940) -, who gave several classes to the animators and even contributed to some of Williams’ projects.

This was the studio’s routine: lectures and classes with titans of animation in the morning; work in the afternoon; homework from the lectures at night. This is where the american animator Eric Goldberg was discovered, one of Disney’s most prestigious animators, where he works since 1992.

The persistence and focus in the technical development influenced one of Williams’ most recognized films: The Thief and the Cobbler (1993, Warner Bros and Miramax), which its production differs from any other production in film history. Due to its constant interruptions, the film took more than 30 years to be completed.

Williams and his team financed the project with money from their commercial jobs and movie openings, but his insistence on wanting to produce the biggest and the best animation film of all times led to contribute to the delay of the film’s release and to successive budget overflows.

The development of this film began in 1966, when Williams had the idea to adapt into an animation the book The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin, by Idries Shah (1924–1996), published in the same year. He was very well known to the story, for he had illustrated the book, and the author’s brother, Omar Ali-Shah (1922–2005), worked in his studio as a producer.

Williams highlighted in the animation industry with The Thief and the Cobbler after winning his first Academy Award in 1972 for the short-film A Christmas Carol, adapted from the novel by Charles Dickens (1812–1870). The film involved Chuck Jones (1912–2002) — Warner Bros’ director of animation who directed more than 200 Looney Tunes cartoons — as an executive producer. The film’s development process was described by Williams as “a trial run for our feature (The Thief and the Cobbler)” and the chance to discover their weak spots and strengths in moments of pressure. Throughout the years, the film would pass through several changes.

In 1973 Williams had already produced more than 3 hours of animation, but according a testimony from composer Howard Blake, 80, in the documentary Persistence of Vision (2012, Kevin Schreck Productions), the whole thing seemed more like a compilation of short stories then a movie itself. To complicate even further, divergences with the family’s author came up. They wanted 50% of everything that was raised and related to the main character, Nasrudin. And under the fire, Williams accused Omar, his producer, of diverting the studio’s money and Omar stepped down from office, taking with him all the rights for the character and story of Nasrudin. The only thing which Williams was still allowed to work with was a secondary character: the Thief. After all of this, nine years of animation work had just been thrown away.

With the main story scrapped, Williams joined composer Howard Blake to write a new version of the screenplay, and was advised to work in a character inspired on Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton. They ended up creating Tack, the Cobbler. The story created by Williams and Blake would still be altered several times, specially with the involvement of Margaret French, a Williams’ lover. But in 1973 the plot was completed and the team imagined that the film would finally be made. This, however, did not happen.

Williams demanded a lot from his staff. Special effects artist Chris Knott tells in Persistence of Vision that “he had a terrible reputation (…) he could be the best or the worst”. He also says that Williams had very high standards which he applied not only to himself, but above all, to everyone else. In the same documentary, animator Julianna Franchetti estates that Williams “would be very volatile quite often, very emotional about things if people did things incorrectly, he’d want to fire them. His phrase was, ‘There’s the door’”.

In an exclusive interview for LabJor FAAP, canadian animator Nik Ranieri — who collaborated with Williams in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit”- said, however, that Williams “believed in praise as much as he did in criticism. (…) Dick (Williams) pushed his animators to do their best work — sometimes through encouragement and sometimes through fear”.

The production of The Thief and the Cobbler would take a turn after Who Framed Roger Rabbit, one of Williams most recognized and acclaimed works.

The Fanta soda commercials that Williams developed with Chris Knott got to the attention of filmmaker Steven Spielberg, one of the most remarked directors and producers of the US. They showed kids playing soccer and interacting with Mickey, Goofy, Donald Duck and Pluto with the same technique applied in Roger Rabbit.

Williams’ secret was to animate on ones — that is, one drawing for each frame — on perspective. On the shootings, the actors would interact with points of reference so that their eyes would be turned to the characters’ eyes or with mechanical arms and objects that were manipulated by puppeteers. In the process of animation, the characters were inserted on top of the references. The commercials also counted with a process called aerial image, developed by Chris Knott. This technique consists on inserting shadows and tonalities in animated characters that interact on a live action environment.

Very well impressed by those commercials, director Robert Zemeckis, 65, who had just finished shooting “Back to the Future” (1985, Universal Pictures), recruited Williams to assume the seat of director of animation for Who Framed Roger Rabbit. He imposed three conditions: the animation should have the versatility and articulation of Disney, the characters should look like they were made by Warner Bros and the humor should be similar but no so brutal as the Tex Avery (1908–1980) short-films, who worked in Tom and Jerry (1940, Hanna Barbera).

The schedule was unyielding. According to Nik Ranieri, approximately 75% of all the film’s animation was completed in 6 to 7 months. The three-minute opening sequence took half the production time to be made. The film was an instant success and raised more than US$300 million worldwide according the Box Office Mojo, a website that collects cinema’s statistic data. The film also won 4 Oscars, two of those awarded to Williams: one for Best Visual Effects, and an Honorary Award for the achievements in the use of animation for this film.

With the success of Roger Rabbit, Williams got US$50 million from Warner Bros to produce and distribute The Thief and the Cobbler. A light in the end of the tunnel finally came up for the endless production of the film. But the animator could not fit to the deadlines established by the studio. According to the documentary Persistence of Vision, Williams didn’t even completed the film’s storyboard, the sequence of illustrations that pre-visualizes the entire film in order to design the production. In 1992 he was called to the Warner Bros’ head office in Los Angeles to exhibit the film. But approximately 85% of the film was completed. The delays and the budget overflow displeased the investors and Williams was fired from his own film. With that, his studio closed its doors.

The Thief and the Cobbler would then be finished by Fred Calvert and released in 1993 under the title The Princess and the Cobbler. Eventually, Miramax — Disney’s subsidiary at the time — bought the rights of the film and made their own version, changing the name for Arabian Knights. Both versions were badly received by critics and the audience. Throughout the years new versions of the film were released, made by independent artists who seeked to do justice for Williams’ work. In 2013 The Thief and the Cobbler was preserved by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences.

After the bumping ride with The Thief and the Cobbler, Williams came back to Canada and lived five years with his wife in an island. But he didn’t missed the taste of learning. He came back to study drawing and re-approached the students. He decided to conjoin everything he had learned with the great masters of animation — as well with some of his students. He than wrote what is considered today an obligatory bibliography for anyone who wants to work in the field: The Animator’s Survival Kit.

Williams spent the rest of his life dedicated to education and giving lectures about animation worldwide. With clear and easy to understand language, he meticulously describes all the process of animation and tells stories of his experiences with animators such as Ken Harris, Milt Kahl (1909–1987) — Disney animator of films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and The Jungle Book (1967) — , Grim Natwick (1890–1990) — also an animator for Snow White and A Christmas Carol, and Art Babbitt. His achievements are so charmingly described that the impression is that he is in fact having a conversation with the reader.

In the last years of his life, Williams recovered an idea he had since he was 15 years-old: to adapt Aristophanes’ (411 BC) play Lysistrata into a feature film. Williams took almost six decades to develop the project because he believed he didn’t have the necessary manual abilities to conceive it.

In 2015, as a prologue for his film, he released the short-film Prologue. He presents to the audience a continuous conflict between four warriors, without cut, and with a drawing line that distows from all of his previous works. There is a saying that animation should do what a camera can’t do. Williams took this saying kind of in the literal way.

“I was thunderstruck when I watched it”, said animator Rosana Urbes, director of the short-film Guida (2014, RR Filmes de Animação) in an exclusive interview for LabJor FAAP. For her, the film “could only have been made in animation, with a flawless animation anatomy design and an impeccable animation”.

Exhibited in Annecy International Animation Film Festival in 2015, Prologue was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short-Film in 2016, and became Williams’ latest published material.

The animator passed away on August of 2019, at 86 years of age, while he was still producing his feature-film. His wife and daughter stated he worked at least seven hours a day, every day of the week. And not didn’t even stopped working on the day he died.

The Future[]

In the last decade of the twentieth century, computer-created animation began to make great strides. Although purists decry this development, it is unlikely that computer animation will disappear. What remains to be seen is whether or not traditional cel animation survives.

Anime, a cartoon form from Japan, is also changing the nature of animation. Story lines and characters are more detailed and reality-based. Varied camera angles bring the viewer further into the action.

Where To Learn More[]

Books[]

Cawley, John and Jim Korkis. How to Create Animation. Pioneer Books, 1990.

Locke, Lafe. Film Animation Techniques. Betterway Publications, 1992.

Periodicals[]

Harmon, Amy. "Making a Face." Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1996, p. D-l.

Considine, J.D. "Toon in Tomorrow." The Baltimore Sun, April 14, 1996, p. 1H.

—MaryF.McNulty

How Products Are Made McNulty, Mary

Animation[]

Views 2,781,015Updated Jun 11 2018

Animation[]

In movies, computer animation has become astonishingly adept at mimicking reality. The animation power of computers and computer-aided design (CAD) software is now being exploited as a forensic tool.

Forensic animation seeks to produce images that recreate eyewitness accounts of crime scenes, vehicle accidents, and other events. The animation is intended primarily for a jury in a courtroom trial. Instead of relying solely on a verbal account of an eyewitness, jury members can watch a recreation of the testimony.

As an example, animation can recreate the weather conditions visible from the inside of a moving car on the night of a motor vehicle accident, to provide the viewer with a much better appreciation of what a driver faced than what could be realized from verbal testimony.

In another example, an animated reconstruction can be made of a crime scene. The simulation can duplicate the appearance of the scene. In addition, the view of the crime scene can be shifted from a ground level to an overhead view. This can provide a much richer appreciation of the crime scene than would listening to testimony alone or even looking at a series of photographs.

In one real-life example, animation was used in a liability suit in Iowa over a 1993 collision that killed University of Iowa basketball player Chris Street. In the accident, Street was struck and killed by an oncoming snowplow when he pulled out to pass a truck. The driver of the truck acknowledged that he was speeding 10 miles per hour over the speed limit at the time of the crash.

The driver's admission was key to the US$14-million lawsuit filed against him by Street's parents, who contended that his negligence resulted in the death of their son.

The animation formed part of the defense. Using reports from the police, an accident investigator who reconstructed the incident, and measurements of the actual braking distances required for the snowplow at various speeds, two computer animations were created. The first displayed the accident when the snowplow was traveling at 55 miles per hour in the 45 miles per hour zone. In that animation, as in the real-life accident, the snowplow struck the center of the car.

In the second animation, the snowplow was traveling at the speed limit. Then, the plow still struck the car, this time at the rear of the vehicle. The defense argued that, despite the different impact points, the crash that likely would have occurred at the legal speed limit would still have been fatal. In viewing the animations, the jury decided that the accident was caused by Street's failure to properly assess traffic conditions before pulling out in front of the truck.

In another example, an animated recreation of the shooting death of a Scraton, Pennsylvania woman was a vital piece of evidence that led to the conviction of her husband for murder . The man, a former police officer with a history of domestic violence, had claimed that he shot his wife in self defense as she tried to attack him with a knife.

Based on the photographic information gathered at the crime scene by forensic investigators, an animation was created that presented a three-dimensional view of the room. The detail and multi-perspective view of the scene was used convincingly by the prosecution to argue that the blood pattern on the victim was not consistent with her husband's explanation of the death.

Implicit in the above examples is the accuracy of the information that forms the database of the animation file. The intent of forensic animation is to accurately present the testimony of eyewitnesses or experts to a jury, not to create a situation that is not based in reality.

Similar concerns have been voiced in the past about the reliance on expert testimony and the use of other forensic reconstructions that attempt to indicate what a long-missing person might appear like in the present day.

The normal sharing of information by prosecution and defense will hopefully circumvent this recognized risk that animation could be misused to create a fictitious reality. For example, in the Chris Street case, the opposing attorneys were able to view the animations prior to their presentation in court, giving them time to formulate their response strategy. As well, an animation can be presented frame-by-frame, with questioning and expert commentary provided for each frame.

Another concern surrounding forensic animation, exemplified by the above example, is the cost of producing an animation. The high cost of producing a high quality animation, in the tens of thousands of dollars, is often beyond the budget of a defense team.

see also Accident reconstruction; Computer forensics; Crime scene staging.

Popular and many genre[]

The painterly style of Warner Bros. and Walt Disney’s feature films, short films, cartoons and TV shows introduced animation to generations of viewers—but for decades, the cartoons that aired on American TV were a lot dumber and sloppier than their big-screen counterparts. Disney’s work was art; televised animation was broad, cheaply produced, and mostly aimed at an indifferent, younger audience. (The Flintstones may be a cultural touchstone, but it makes for a terrible viewing experience.) Even the best stuff often couldn’t escape the taint associated with the genre; Mickey Mouse universe and Donald Duck universe all cartoon characters and starring Looney Tunes, the classic Warner Bros. theatrical shorts, were packaged as entertainment for kids when they started airing on TV, despite all those knowing winks from Bugs Bunny and the social commentary sandwiched into each segment’s inventive visual gags. Then came The Simpsons, which revolutionized television in innumerable well-documented ways. Most of all, though, the show proved what televised animation was capable of—that it could be cosmopolitan and subversive and topical, that it was the perfect canvas for everything from deeply felt character work and incisive commentary to brilliantly dumb jokes. (The best Simpsons bits somehow manage to be all of those things at the very same time.) Though The Simpsons has soldiered on for nearly three decades, its current incarnation—which launches its 30th season September 30—bears only a cursory resemblance to the show at its creative peak (Seasons 2 through 8 or 10, depending on who you ask). Perhaps its greatest legacy, then, is that since The Simpsons debuted, English-language animation has grown by leaps and bounds, using freedom offered by the medium to craft increasingly sophisticated series. Thanks to The Simpsons, social satire, psychological depth, the horror of adulthood, and the frustrations of intimacy all became fair game for animators. Studios under the auspices of MTV, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Disney, and now even Netflix have offered opportunities to a wide range of voices and styles. Even the stuff ostensibly meant for children has gotten vastly more refined, moving light years ahead of the cheesy glorified toy commercials and lame slapstick of earlier eras. We are in a moment replete with animated gems—but these are the 30 best of all, the shows that have reached the greatest heights since The Simpsons debuted 30 seasons ago. Our final list includes only shows developed in the English language—partly to keep its size manageable, and partly because Japanese anime is often altered, dumbed-down, or just poorly translated for overseas audiences (as are other popular cartoons in other languages). Several of the shows we’ve featured do borrow from Japanese anime in style and tone; hand-drawn Korean animation has also been the industry standard for shows developed in America since the 70s. Beyond that criteria, our final picks run the gamut. Some are joke-heavy; others are operatic, nearly silent odysseys. Their animation styles range from quick-turnaround cutouts to lavish, evocative landscapes. And their protagonists range, too: from adventurous adolescent boys and cynical teenage girls to washed-up fiftysomethings and bored office workers. (One of the essential joys of animation is the wide age range it can appeal to, from very young children to geeky adults—and often, the best stuff does both.) for animation.

Animations[]

Animation is a method in which figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation (which may have the look of traditional animation) can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth, or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets, or clay figures.

Commonly, the effect of animation is achieved by a rapid succession of sequential images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon and beta movement, but the exact causes are still uncertain. Analog mechanical animation media that rely on the rapid display of sequential images include the phénakisticope, zoetrope, flip book, praxinoscope, and film. Television and video are popular electronic animation media that originally were analog and now operate digitally. For display on the computer, techniques like animated GIF and Flash animation were developed.

Animation is more pervasive than many people know. Apart from short films, feature films, television series, animated GIFs, and other media dedicated to the display of moving images, animation is also prevalent in video games, motion graphics, user interfaces, and visual effects.^[1]

The physical movement of image parts through simple mechanics—for instance moving images in magic lantern shows—can also be considered animation. The mechanical manipulation of three-dimensional puppets and objects to emulate living beings has a very long history in automata. Electronic automata were popularized by Disney as animatronics.

Animators are artists who specialize in creating animation.

The perhaps best adventures greatest animation all time company featured world's finest respectively production classic stars indisputable appearing popular characters including Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, The Simpsons, The Flintstones, Snow White, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Cinderella, Popeye and many others.

#1: SILENT BUT DEADLY (FUNNY)! (USA 1900-1927)

J. Stuart Blackton and the first American cartoon! Thomas Edison sues everybody! Winsor McCay creates the first character animation, "Gertie the Dinosaur," to go along with his vaudeville act! J.R. Bray and the cel method! Felix the Cat rules the silent roost! Margaret Winkler is the most powerful person, male or female, in early animation, instrumental in the early careers of early tech innovator Max Fleischer and some guy from Kansas City named Walt Disney!

#2: LOONEY STUDIOS! (USA 1928-1940)

Walt Disney revolutionizes cartoons with sound and color—and drives out Ub Iwerks, his best animator! Walt Disney starts out cartoon Pete and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit! Walt Disney starts out first cartoon including Mickey Mouse! The best cartoon characters such as Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto! Fleischer Studios teaches us to sing "Boop-boop-a-doop" and eat our spinach! Betty Boop! Popeye! Warner Bros starts out copying Disney's "Silly Symphonies" with "Looney Toons" but ends up creating some of the most beloved cartoons ever! Warner Bros starts out cartoons including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies! Disney and Warner Bros. studio meeting respectively adventures best perhaps company three cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse, Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck! And on the eve of World War II, labor troubles threaten to scuttle the whole industry! MGM cartoons starring Tom and Jerry! Female cartoon starring Little Lulu! Casper the Friendly Ghost! Woody Woodpecker!

#3: WORLD WIDE OF TOONS! (THE WORLD 1908-1984)

World War II disrupts the whole industry, so we double back and go global! France and Emile Cohl's dynamic doodles in Fantasmagorie. Imperial Japan brings us Momotaro’s Divine Sea Warriors, the first full-length “anime"—then Osauma Tezuka conquers TV the way he conquered manga! Walt Disney's which respectively introduced Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs for the first feature length animated movie by two decades! Best Disney movies including Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi and Cinderella! Jay Ward the creators of Rocky and Bullwinkle! MGM and United Artists cartoon called The Pink Panther! Walt Disney and A.A. Milne cartoon Winnie the Pooh! DC Comics animated cartoon superheroes including Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman!

#4: SATURDAY MORNING FUNHOUSE! (USA 1958-1990)

“Show me what you’ve got, TV!” Hanna-Barbera! Yogi-Bear! Huckleberry Hound! The Flintstones! The Jetsons! Winsome Witch! Penelope Pitstop! Captain Caveman! Dastardly and Muttley! Wacky Races! Scooby-Doo! Ruby-Spears! The Best Christmas cartoon called Frosty the Snowman! Waldemar Bonsels the anime TV show starring Maya the Bee! The Plastic Age of Toy-based TV shows: GI Joe! Transformers! He-Man! Comics including Garfield, Heathcliff, Cubitus, Peanuts, Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Asterix, The Smurfs, Blondie and Dagwood, Dennis the Menace and Cathy! British TV shows starring Roobarb, Danger Mouse, Henry's Cat, Noah and Nelly in SkylArk, Muzzy, Count Duckula, Chorlton and the Wheelies, Alias the Jester, The Raggy Dolls, Jimbo and the Jet-Set and The Family Ness! Strawberry Shortcake! Care Bears! And the new golden age of TV animation, sparked off by Matt Groening’s The Simpsons! Aardman starring Wallace and Gromit! Marvel Comics animated cartoon superheroes including Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men and Fantastic Four! Doraemon! Dragon Ball! My Neighbor Totoro!

#5: CGI SENSATIONS! (THE WORLD 1990-TODAY)

Jurassic Park and the computer animation revolution! Dragon Ball Z! Post-Oliver & Company Disney! The Little Mermaid! Toy Story! Pixar! South Park! Pokémon! Oggy and the Cockroaches! SpongeBob SquarePants! Shrek! Ice Age! Studio Gihbli conquers the world! AND ANYTHING ELSE WE FORGOT TO PUT IN THE PREVIOUS FOUR ISSUES!

Contents[]

DO YOU HAVE ANY STRETCH GOALS?!
- Risks and challenges
- Definition
- References
- See also

DO YOU HAVE ANY STRETCH GOALS?![]

Ugh, we have already expended most of our limited mental energy doing this comic and coming up with these rewards. NOW YOU WANT US TO DO STRETCH GOALS TOO?!?! Okay, okay, fine.

$18,000 -- FASTER COLOR EDITION!

If we raise enough simoleons, we will hire the terrific Adam Guzowski—he of the four-color Comic Book History of Comics—to color the whole book fully! Otherwise, Ryan will have to color it himself, and he is slow. This way you get the whole book quicker! YAY LATE STAGE CAPITALISM!!!

$30,000 -- NICER HARDCOVERS!

Our printer has this "premium color" edition that we'll do if we raise enough money. Heavier, glossier paper stock...the fancy stuff. You know, the kind they use on those big fat books they do of museum exhibits. We think. Anyway, "unlock" this "bonus" through the "achievement" of "giving us more money" (are we doing this right).

$50,000 -- WE WILL GO TO JAPAN!

We want to go to Japan. Mainly to do research for issues #3 and #5 at the Tezuka Museum in Osaka Prefecture and the Studio Ghibli Museum outside Tokyo. We will bring you back something nice, we promise, like more fine quality content to this book ... I don't know, what? Ten pages? Fifteen? We are not going to lie, we are probably going to see some non-animation-related castles and temples and things while we're there too, maybe go for a hike in the mountains. What do you care? You're not the boss of us. Give us money so we can go to Japan.

©2020 Ryan Dunlavey and Fred Van Lente, all rights reserved. The Comic Book History of Animation is a work of historical scholarship. All trade names, product names and trademarks of third parties, including any trademarked and/or copyrighted characters, are referenced or represented solely for historical, scholarly and educational "fair use" purposes only, or, where applicable, the purposes of parody and/or identification. No sponsorship, endorsement or affiliation by or with those third parties exists or should be implied. The views and opinions expressed on this page or in the book are solely those of Ryan Dunlavey and Fred Van Lente and do not reflect the views or positions of the owners or producers of the works referenced therein.

Music: Circus Theme (Ragtime Version) by Alexander Nakarada (www.serpentsoundstudios.com)

Licensed under Creative Commons BY Attribution 4.0 License

SPECIAL ISSUE: THE HOLLYWOOD CARTOONS, CUTOUT ANIMATION, COMPUTER-ANIMATED AND STOP-MOTION:

WARNER BROTHERS

By Greg Ford

Focus on a studio and masters animators cartoons form: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Elmer Fudd, Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies

MICHAEL MALTESE AND MAURICE NOBLE

Interview by Joe Adamson

Chuck Jones’s crucial collaborators

CHUCK JONES

Interview by Greg Ford and Richard Thompson

Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, the Roadrunner

DUCK AMUCK

By Richard Thompson

Chuck Jones’s cartoons with Bugs, Daffy, and Elmer Fudd

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER AND UNITED ARTISTS

The creators form: The Pink Panther, The Inspector, The Ant and the Aardvark

WINSOR MCCay

By John Canemaker

Gertie the Dinosaur, Little Nemo

MAX AND DAVE FLEISCHER

By Mark Langer

Ko-Ko, Betty Boop, Popeye, Gulliver, Superman

GRIM NATWICK

Article-interview by John Canemaker

Master animator of the female form: Betty Boop, Snow White

THE VAN BEUREN STUDIO

Memoir by I. Klein

Master animator of the cartoons form: Van Beuren cartoons

WALT DISNEY

By Jonathan Rosenbaum

Focus on a studio and master animators cartoons form: Mickey Mouse, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, Donald Duck, Goofy, Winnie the Pooh, Pluto, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Pete, Chip 'n' Dale, Bambi, Dumbo, Sleeping Beauty, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Alice in Wonderland

METRO-GOLDWYN-MAYER AND HANNA-BARBERA

Master animators cartoons form: Tom and Jerry, The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Captain Caveman, Winsome Witch, Penelope Pitstop, Dastardly and Muttley, Wacky Races, The Jetsons, Wally Gator, Jabberjaw, Snagglepuss, Huckleberry Hound, Quick Draw McGraw, Pixie and Dixie and Mr. Jinks, Scooby-Doo

PIXAR

Master computer-animated form: Toy Story, Cars, Monsters, Inc., The Incredibles, WALL-E, Up, Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, Ratatouille

DREAMWORKS

Master computer-animated form: Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, Monsters vs. Aliens, Bee Movie

BLUE SKY STUDIOS

Master computer-animated form: Ice Age, Robots

STOP-MOTION ANIMATION FILM

The creators form: Coraline

BRITISH-SWISS ANIMATION

The creators form: Pingu

TERRYTOONS

Master cartoons form: Deputy Dawg, Mighty Mouse, Heckle and Jeckle

ANIMATION CARTOON

The creators form: Ramses's Tricks (as Ramsese Vembud, Prodelki Ramzesa), The BFG, The Point

20TH CENTURY FOX

The respectively cartoon form: The Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, King of the Hill, American Dad!

COMEDY CENTRAL

The respectively cartoon form: South Park

MR MEN AND LITTLE MISS

The best creators form: Mr. Men and Little Miss

DISNEY RENAISSANCE AND DISNEY

The creators form: The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Tarzan, Lilo & Stitch

CGI-3D COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM

The creators form: Frozen

CHRISTMAS STOP MOTION ANIMATION

The creators form: Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer

DC AND MARVEL

The superheroes and supervillains from DC and Marvel form: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Batgirl, Supergirl, Joker, Catwoman, Hulk, Spider-Man, X-Men, Fantastic Four, Captain America, Venom

WESTERN PUBLISHING, PARAMOUNT AND FAMOUS STUDIOS

The female cartoon form: Little Lulu

JAY WARD

The cartoon form: Rocky and Bullwinkle

HARVEYTOONS

The cartoon form: Casper the Friendly Ghost

AARDMAN

The creators form: Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep, Timmy Time, Morph, Chicken Run, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists!, Aardman shorts

WALTER LANTZ

The creators form: Woody Woodpecker, Wally Walrus, Andy Panda, Chilly Willy, Pooch the Pup

NICKELODEON

The creators form: Doug, Rugrats, Ren and Stimpy, Hey Arnold!, Aaahh!! Real Monsters, CatDog, Rocko's Modern Life, Angry Beavers, SpongeBob SquarePants

NICK JR.

The creators form: Dora the Explorer

CHRISTMAS CARTOON

The creators form: Santa Claus, Frosty the Snowman

RKO RADIO PICTURES STOP-MOTION AND MONSTER

The creators form: King Kong

VIDEO GAME CARTOONS AND ANIME

The video games creators from: Mario, Sonic the Hedgehog, Mega Man, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Kirby, Angry Birds, The Legend of Zelda

BRITISH AND UK CHARACTERS

The best creators introduced form: Roobarb, Henry's Cat, Chorlton and the Wheelies, Alias the Jester, Puppydog Tales, Danger Mouse, Count Duckula, Noah and Nelly in SkylArk, The Raggy Dolls, The Family Ness, Jimbo and the Jet-Set, The Poddington Peas, Paddington Bear, The Herbs, Beatrix Potter, Peter Rabbit, Bod, The Herbs, Wil Cwac Cwac, The Trap Door

LIVE ACTION/ANIMATED FILM

The creators form: Who Framed Roger Rabbit

COMIC AND CARTOON CHARACTERS

The creators studio form: Garfield, Peanuts, Snoopy, Charlie Brown, Robotman, Dennis the Menace, The Beano, Heathcliff, Cathy, Cubitus, Asterix, The Smurfs, Muzzy, Marvin, Blondie and Dagwood, Beetle Bailey, Baby Blues, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Inspector Gadget, Care Bears, He-Man, Masters of the Universe, She-Ra, Hägar the Horrible, Miaunel and Balanel, The Katzenjammer Kids, Care Bears, Strawberry Shortcake, G.I. Joe, ThunderCats, Broom-Hilda, Rupert Bear, Babar the Elephant, Where's Wally, Raggedy Ann and Andy, Little Monsters, Rainbow Brite, My Little Pony, Kalli, Bamse, MoonDreamers, Jem, Transformers, Diplodos, My Goldfish is Evil, Pelswick, Atomic Betty, Yakkity Yak, Flying Rhino Junior High, Totally Spies!, King Arthur's Disasters, Zombie Hotel, Vampires, Pirates & Aliens, Little Clowns of Happytown, Maisy Mouse, Spot, Junglies, Gustav, Bump, Treasure Island (simply Return to Treasure Island or Ostrov sokrovishch)

UNIVERSAL AND WALT DISNEY

The creators form: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

ENID BLYTON

The creators form: Noddy

THE RAILWAY SERIES AND BRITT ALLCROFT

The best of creators form: Thomas the Tank Engine, Thomas & Friends

UK TV SHOW

The creators form: Tugs, Postman Pat, Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam, Joshua Jones, The Wind in the Willows, The Wombles, Bertha, Clangers

STOP-MOTION TV SHOW AND COMMERCIAL

The creators form: The Koala Brothers, Igam Ogam, Poko, Dragon, California Raisins, Noid, Peperami

M&M'S

The creators form: M&M's

MTV

The creators form: Beavis and Butt-Head

STOP-MOTION ANIMATION

The creators form: Gumby, I Spy, Chapi Chapo

TEX AVERY

By Jonathan Rosenbaum

Droopy, Wolf, Red, Chilly Willy, George and Junior Bear

ANIME AND MANGA CHARACTERS

The best creators of anime and manga form: Dragon Ball, Dragon Ball Z, Pokémon, Doraemon, Astro Boy, Maya the Bee, Kiteretsu Daihyakka, Bumpety Boo, Ox Tales, Naruto, Bleach, One Piece, Totoro, Princess Knight, Heidi, Vicky the Viking, Once Upon a Time... Life, Moretsu Ataro, Osomatsu-kun

GAUMONT AND XILAM

The creators form: Oggy and the Cockroaches

CARTOON NETWORK

The creators form: Courage the Cowardly Dog, Ben 10, The Powerpuff Girls, Dexter's Laboratory, Chowder, Cow and Chicken, The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy, Ed, Edd n Eddy

MONDO MEDIA

The creators form: Happy Tree Friends

CGI-3D COMPUTER-ANIMATED

The creators form: Miraculous Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir

TOM AND JERRY

By Mark Kausler

The animators’ art

TV ANIMATION

By Leonard Maltin

From Rocky & Bullwinkle to Yogi Bear & Boo-Boo

CARTOONS

The creators form: Color Classics, Silly Symphony, Happy Harmonies, Tex Avery

OTHER FEATURES:

LONDON JOURNAL by Jonathan Rosenbaum

ISTANBUL JOURNAL by Gerald Weales

INDEPENDENTS by Amos Vogel

WITHER THE AFI? by Austin Lamont

“WHAT IS THE BFI?” by Verina Glaessner

BOOK REVIEWS by George Morris and Joan Mellen

CORRECTIONS Roger Greenspun on Letter from an Unknown Woman

LETTERS

Risks and challenges[]

Look, we've doing these kinds of comics for a long time. By our calculation, Fred has written and Ryan has drawn at least 1,000 pages of them, including 320 pages of Action Philosophers, 440 pages of Action Presidents (out now from HarperCollins) and 250 pages of Comic Book History of Comics (out now from IDW), plus various others. So, overall, we're a safe investment, you know? As always, though, there are potential unavoidable delays to a project, but you have our promise that we will do our best to deliver everything on time. Learn about accountability on Kickstarter

Definition[]

Animation is

“

apparent movement produced by recording step-by-step a series of still drawings, three-dimensional objects, or computer-generated graphics. Movement over time is shown by replacing each image (frame) by the next one in the series at a uniform speed — frames per second (fps). The human eye perceives fluid movement at 30 fps — the approximate rate of film, television, and recorded video.^[1]

”

References[]

↑ Adult Literacy and New Technologies: Tools for a Lifetime, at 252.

Moviepedia

Animation

History[]

CARTOONS[]

3D STOP-MOTION ANIMATION[]

DIGITAL ANIMATION[]

JAN SVANKMAJER[]

b. Prague, Czechoslovakia, 4 September 1934[]

RECOMMENDED VIEWING[]

FURTHER READING[]

ALTERNATIVE METHODS[]

NORMAN McLAREN[]

b. Stirling, Scotland, 11 April 1914, d. 27 January 1987[]

RECOMMENDED VIEWING[]

FURTHER READING[]

FURTHER READING[]

Animation[]

Animation[]

Creating An Animated Story[]

Types Of Animation[]

Animation Techniques[]

History Of Animation[]

Disney.[]

Warner Bros.[]

MGM.[]

Trends.[]

Principles Of Animation[]

Web Animation[]

Game Animations[]

Bibliography[]

Animation[]

Animation[]

Early Experimenters[]

Optical Illusion[]

Projecting Pictures[]

Animated Cartoons[]

Walt Disney[]

Moving On[]

Raw Materials[]

The Manufacturing Process[]

The story is written[]

The dialogue, music, and sound effects are recorded[]

Dialogue measurements are entered on an exposure sheet[]

Model character sheets are created[]

Artists create the layout or set design[]

Characters' actions are sketched[]

Drawings are cleaned up and checked for accuracy[]

A video test is conducted[]

Artists create background[]

Sketches are inked in and painted[]

The action is filmed[]

CELS[]

The sound is dubbed[]

The dubbing track and print are combined[]

The Future[]

For More Information[]

Books[]

Periodicals[]

Web Sites[]

Animation[]

Animation[]

Background[]

Raw Materials[]

The Manufacturing[]

Process[]

The story is written[]

The dialogue, music, and sound effects are recorded[]

Dialogue measurements are entered on an exposure sheet[]

Model character sheets are created[]

Artists create the layout or set design[]

Characters' actions are sketched[]

Drawings are cleaned up and checked for accuracy[]

A video test is conducted[]

Artists create backgrounds[]

Sketches are inked in and painted[]

The action is filmed[]

The sound is dubbed[]

The dubbing track and print are combined[]

Animation studio[]

The Future[]