UNIT 34 2D ANIMATION

PRODUCTION: TASK 1

I would like to thank Wikipedia, Google and YouTube for helping

me to gather some of the information for 2D Animation.

What is 2D Animation? 2D Animation is the process of making moving

images by rapidly showing them in a certain sequence. All the images will differ in some way so that it makes a story as they’re shown.

• Animation started of as simple cave drawings that would show a scene. The person may of drawn the animal with more than two or four legs to show that it was moving. It later developed into pot drawings. Then it developed into animation to do with your persistence of vision for example the Flip Books and Zoetropes, it later took a big jump into Traditional Animation. Then as the computer was invented, some animation began to be replaced with Digital Animation.

When did Animation start?

Techniques:

Flick Books: A flick or flip book also known as a kineograph first appeared in September, 1868. Max Skladanowsky was the first person to exhibit his flip book in 1894.

A flick book is where you create a bunch of images which differ slightly every page. Then when they’re flipped through it makes the images look animated.

Flick books rely on persistence of vision so as you stare at one part of the page and flick it, it creates the illusion that the image is moving or doing something.

Flip Books used to be toys but are still used today, as its fun. They’re also used in the famous kid books Captain Underpants and they’re occasionally found in magazines, or the corner of pages. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D0kG4URfxs

Zoetrope Its one of the many pre-cinema animation devices which

creates the illusion of motion using objects or images. Its devised from the Greek Words zoe (life) ands trope (turning) so it means Life-turning.

Zoetropes consist of slits on the side with an image on the inside. As the spin the zoetrope they look through the slits to see the image. Kids used to make/have these as they were fun and entertaining.

Zoetropes are closely based off Phenakistoscope but they were designed to be better. The drum like shape was made in 1833.

There are three types of Zoetropes, the normal one, the Linear and a 3D one. Here's my own example of a Zoetrope: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0uS0OOYIVA&list=UUp2qALNcz6_HFoO286HI3Cw

Cel (Celluloid) Animation Cel Animation is traditional animation; animation that is

drawn by hand and not done by a computer. A Cel animation uses a transparent sheet where the maker

draws or paints objects. It was used mainly round the first half of the 20th century until it was largely replaces as it was flammable. Disney used to use cels until the 1990’s due to computer animation, which sadly meant Cel animation was never used.

Earl Hurd was the one who came with cel animation in 1914. Normally its drawn with ink and then painted on the other side.

One of the important breakthroughs in Cel Animation was in 1985 by Walt Disney who released the Black Cauldron.

Disney Stores also sold old cells which were used in the production of Little Mermaid.

Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping was invented by the cartoonist Max Fleischer, who used it in his series Out of the Inkwell which debuted in 1915. He also used Rotoscoping for Betty Boop, Gulliver’s Travels and Superman cartoons in the 1940’s, which were really unrealistic. It was also used for Looney Tunes, Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarf’s. Then it was later used for Lord of the Rings in 1978. It’s still used today.

Rotoscoping is a technique in which animators would trace over their footage for use in live-action and animated films. This was usually done frame by frame.

A rotoscope is where an animator would draw live-action film images which were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. However it was later replaced by computers. It’s classes as Traditional Animation (drawn by hand).

Rotoscoping was also used for the musical video Take On Me and it was used to create the glowing effect of the lightsabers in the first three Star Wars films. It’s still popularly used in the visual effects industry.

Drawn on Film

Drawn on film was made by the brothers Arnaldo Ginanni Corradini and Bruno Ginanni Corradini who wanted to express the ideas visually.

Drawn on film is where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film stock (film strip), instead of the other forms of animation where the images or objects were photographed frame by frame.

With Drawn on Film you could do anything. The first method is you could draw, paint, glue and even stick objects onto it. The second is you could scratch, etch, sand, or hole punch it. The artists would use anything they find to create gnarly designs.

It can be a mixture of narrative or abstract design. One example of an artist is Norman McLaren who wrote a short illustrated introduction on how to make animated movies without a camera which was originally published in 1949.

Here’s an example of Drawn on Film: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjDAepjjop4

Photographic Stills (Photoanimation)

Photographic stills also known as Photoanimation can be used for animation its basically like stop motion. This is where you take a series of photos and put them all together in order to create the illusion of movement.

The animation would be done of the stand, the camera would be able to move in the directions of a compass (north, east, south and west). They would also use backlighting to add any special effects.

This was made by Raúl DaSilva who worked with camera stand operator, Francis Lee, in the late 1960’s. Where it would be used for communication, instruction, promotional and advertising motion pictures.

This can be done with any background, plot and characters. Here’s an example of Photoanimation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovvk7T8QUIU&feature=player_embedded

2D Bitmap Graphics and2D Vector Graphics:

2D Bitmap Graphics: Bitmap images are made up of

pixels in a grid, these are small dots of colours which together form what is seen on the computer screen.

Bitmap graphics are dependent on resolution. It is hard to re size an image, if the image is increased in size.

All scanned images are bitmap images, and also all photo's taken with a digital camera are also bitmap images.

Common bitmap formats; BMP - Bitmap File Format, GIF -

Graphics Interchange Format, JPG/JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group and more.

2D Vector Graphics: Vector graphics are based on

vectors. The term vector graphics is

typically used only for 2D (planar) graphics objects

They are made up of many individual and scalable objects.

They're dined by mathematical equations rather than pixels.

Popular vector drawing programs are: Adobe Illustrator, Inkscape and more.

Common Vector Formats include:

AI (Adobe Illustrator), SVG (scalable vector graphics), WMF Windows Metafile and more.

Application Software: Toon Boom Studio

It’s a Canadian Software Company, founded in 1994. Its aimed at home users and individuals, which means students can use it.

Companies like Walt Disney, Nickelodeon Movies, Warner Bros. Animation, and more use this programme to develop a variation of things like Films/Series/Programme and more.

It can be used for Traditional Digital or Paper Animation, Stop-Motion, Mixed Media and Cut-Out Animation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZyx3KNogqA

Flash

It was created by Jonathan Gay. Once an animation is done its normally distributed in the

SWF File format. In the 1990’s due to bandwidth many artists created

shorts which they could stream. Its able to integrate bitmaps however Flash Film are

created using only vector-based drawings. Now as Flash animation is more popular its now taught in

schools throughout the UK as either a GCSE or A-Level. Stan Lee from Marvel Comics made a site which showed

animated comic strips. Here's an example of someone using Flash to make a

character walk: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qOuvtgAkyQ

After Effects

It was released in 1993 and then taken over by Adobe in 1994 were the third version was released.

It’s a digital motion graphics, visual effects app. Which is mainly used in post-production process of filmmaking and television production. It can also be used as an Video editor.

It allows 2D and 3D, it uses keyframing and it contains many effects allowing the user to import and manipulate a variation of image formats.

This website will delve you into After Effects and teach you about some things: http://www.videocopilot.net/basic/

Anime Studio:

Anime Studio is a software which allows uploads from other software's like Photoshop and allows to upload to software's like Unity Game engine.

It works with vector based art, you can import or record audio and it automatically lip-synchs it and you can work in 2D or 3D.

Originally in 1999 called Moho. The name change was in 2006 when the product manager said that it should be called Anime Studio due to the fact it works with the Japanese Art.

An epic video which shows you bit about Anime Studio: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnxI0jkcIR4

People which helped animation develop:

Development:Pioneers

Joseph Plateau (Phenakistoscope: He was a Belgian physicist who was the

first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image.

He used two counter rotating discs with repeating drawn images on one and one with regularly spaced slits in the other.

He called it the Phenakistoscope in 1832.

William Horner (Zoetrope)

He was a British mathematician, schoolmaster, headmaster and school keeper.

The modern invention of the zoetrope, has been attributed to him.

• He created the Praxinoscope in 1877.• Here's an example of his work:

Edward Muybridge

He was an English photographer for his work in photographic studies of motion.

In 1877 and 1878 he used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-motion photographs and his zoopraxiscope a device for projecting motion pictures.

1874 he shot and killed his wife’s lover.

Edison (Kinectoscope)

He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world including the phonograph, the motion picture camera.

Also known as a Kinetograph. In 1891 he built the Kinectoscope, or peep-hole viewer.

It was installed in penny arcades where it allowed people to watch short, simple films. They were both publicly exhibited May 20 1891.

Walt Disney He was an American cartoonist, filmmaker and voice

actor. He is known for his influence and contributions to

animation, he was the voice actor for Mickey. Because of how famous he was he now has resorts all over the world.

He started drawing at 4, he was introduced to motion picture by a friend called Walter. As a freshman he became a cartoonist for the school newspaper.

In 1923 he later extended Max Fleischer’s technique of combining live action with cartoon characters to make Alice’s Wonderland.

He later went off to develop, cast, take part in and release a variation of movies/musicals.

How Disney Evolved:

The cultural impact of Disney on America and the rest of the world - possibly talk about the advent of World War II for example and how the films reflected that period.

Disney’s Team:

Techniques that he and his teams developed/ pioneered:

Find images and clips from the films to illustrate your findings.

Hanna-Barbera Productions: H-B Production was an American animation

studio that dominated American television in the mid to late 20th Century.

It was formed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. They made lots of successful animated show including The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo, Tom and Jerry and more.

Hanna-Barbera was purchased from Taft and then it used much of its back catalogue to program its channel Cartoon Network, which is still running today.

Warner Bros Later Hanna-Barbera went and joined Warner

Bros. Entertainment Inc. Its an American producer of film, television,

and music entertainment. They weren’t noticed until 1924. In 1926 the studio suffered a gigantic net

loss. They have a theatre called Warner’ Theatre. 1927 Jazz Singer was released which started

the silent era and combined sound and images for the first time.

Norman McLaren

He was a Scottish-born Canadian animator and film director.

He did drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound.

His early experiments were scratching and painting film stock. As he didn’t have an access to a camera.

He later went on to combine music and animation. 1g

J. Stuart Blackton

He made the first animated film called Humorous phases of funny faces.

He drew comical faces on a blackboard and then filmed them.

He would keep doing this by erasing the face and redrawing it differently.

This was the start of stop-motion.

Winsor McCay

In 1911 he produced an animation using his comic strip character called Little Nemo

He later went to produce another cartoon called Gertie, The Trained Dinosaur in 1914 which consisted of 10,000 drawings.

1824 Persistence of Vision 1831 Phenakistoscope by Plateau 1872 Animals in Motion by Eadweard 1889 Edison Kinetoscope 1892 Renynaud Celluloid 1906 First ever animated film 1911 Winsor McCay produced an animation using his comic strip character called Little Nemo 1914 Cel Animation 1919 Felix the Cat 1923 Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio 1945 Animation done by directly drawing on film 1972 First ever computer generated facial animation 1993 Jurassic Park uses CG for realistic living creatures 1995 Toy Story first full-length 3D CG feature film.

Animation Before Film and after

There were numerous of devices before motion picture. They were used to entertain, amaze and more. The majority could only be viewed by one person so they were considered toys but they’re still used and built today for students to learn.

It then went to Traditional Animation which was were there were sequences of figures moving.

Then came along the Silent Era which added music to moving images. After that along came Stop Motion and then once the computer was

made people started to use CGI Animation which caused animation to move from 2D to 3D.

Even now animation is still developing further releasing things like Oculus Rift, which allows you to feel like your in a certain scenario like a Haunted House

There is also 3D Glasses which are used at home and in the cinema to see virtual 3D images. Animation is still used today to make famous kids shows like Adventure Time and like Avatar the Movie, people are now using Motion Capture and Facial Capture to put expressions and emotions onto Animated Characters.

Bibliography Here is a list of all the websites I used to gather information:Wikipedia:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_animationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disneyhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winsor_McCayhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_McLarenhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._ Stuart_Blacktonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanna-Barberahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warner_Broshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Edisonhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_George_Hornerhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridgehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drawn-on-film_animationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscopinghttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetropehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Flashhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toon_Boom_Animationhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime_Studiohttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_After_Effects

Blog Spot: http://2danimationpp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/2d-bitmap-graphics.htmlhttp://2danimationpp.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/photographic-stills.html