Introduction to Animation:
We can understand animation from the Greek word “animare” which means to give life to something without. Animation is a series of still pictures that are shown in rapid succession creates the illusion of movement because of persistence of vision, this means the image stays on the retina a fraction of a second longer. If we see many images (24 a sec) they will all link up. There are many different types of animations:
Classical 2D animation:
Digital 3D animation:
Claymation:
Cut-out animation:
Flip book Animation:
Stop-motion animation
Frame rate is the frequency (rate) at which an imaging device displays consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate is usually expressed in frames per second
1830’s William Horner: Zoetrope
A Zoetrope is one of several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion. Zoetrope is bit like little cinema.
The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.
The Phi phenomenon is the optical illusion of perceiving a series of still images, when viewed in rapid succession, as continuous motion.Max Wertheimer defined this phenomenon in 1912.
Persistence of vision, which is popularly taught as the reason for motion illusion, is in reality merely the reason that the black spaces that come between each "real" movie frame are not perceived, which makes the phi phenomenon the true reason for motion illusion in cinema and animation, including the phenakistoscope, zoetrope, and others.
My Zoetrope
1918: Rotoscoping: Out of the Inkwell
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated movies. Rotoscoping (often abbreviated as "roto") has often been used as a tool for visual effects in live-action movies. By tracing an object, the moviemaker creates a silhouette (called a matte) that can be used to extract that object from a scene for use on a different background.
Examples:
This animation technique has some advantage:
- Your motion will be very realistic
- Your timing will be accurate
- Your animation will maintain its proportion and volume
- It helps you learn how to animate
- It helps you to understand how to break down a movement
- It helps you to animate very subtle motions, like a slight head turn or a slow raise of the hand
By the way Rotoscoping is a time-intensive process, laboring over every frame that needs compositing. When shooting video at 24 or 30 frames per second, those frames add up in a hurry.
1970’s Cut Out Animation: Terry Gilliam, Monty Python’s Flying Circus
Cut Out Animation is a technique for producing stop-animations by using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs.
Today, cutout-style animation is frequently produced using computers, with scanned images or vector graphics taking the place of physically cut materials.
Examples:
Advantages of Cut Out Animation technique:
The principal advantage of cut-out animation, especially for a solo animator, is that it requires many fewer drawings than full cel animation. The animator can use a single drawing, cut into pieces, to represent movement that would otherwise require hundreds of cells. Animators can design the cut-out pieces themselves, so the range of subject matter is limited only by their imagination.
Disadvantages:
The 2-D shapes make smooth, fluid movement - particularly movement toward or away from the camera - difficult to achieve. Any detail applied to a cut-out shape limits the angle at which an animator can take a picture of it. Similarly, cut-out animation doesn't work well for facial close-ups, so dialogue that requires the lip movements of a character to be synchronized with recorded sound - lip-sync - is rare. Cut-out animation is typically used for mimed stories with duration of five minutes or less.
My Cut Out Animation:
1977 Claymation Animation: Morph
Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay.
Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material as Plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature, and then arranged on the set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand to prepare it for the next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired amount of film. Upon playback, the mind of the viewer perceives the series of slightly changing, rapidly succeeding images as motion.
Examples:
Advantages:
Clay models are relatively easy to make and most importantly easy to move into position. They can be made to represent any object or person. Instead of using clay you could use a Figurine examples being a wooden artists mannequin or say an old action man. All you would need to do is replace the head and hands with clay as this will be easier to animate. These would work very well if the model needed to be clothed.
Disadvantages:
They do have some disadvantages; the most obvious is that they will look like clay models. Fine movement is not easy unless the model is made with ball joints. They also take a relatively long time to make and require maintenance as the heat/lighting dries them out.
My Claymation:
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