Animation Techniques

Steve Roberts

• Editore: The Crowood Press
• Anno: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781785009365
• Argomento: Médias et arts de la scène
• Categoria: Animation

Animation can be used to illustrate, simplify and explain complicated subjects, as well as to transform stories into engaging, fantastical narratives. There are many types of animation, all of which can incorporate different artistic techniques such as sculpture, drawing, painting, printing and textiles. In this practical guide, animation tutor Steve Roberts explores the twelve basic principles of animation, demonstrating the different techniques available and offering helpful exercises for readers to practise in their chosen style. From pencils to pixels, flip books to feature films, and plasticine to puppets, this helpful book covers everything you need to know about how to start animating and will be of great interest for anyone looking to learn how to make their own animated films.

1

WHAT IS ANIMATION?

Many people have tried to sum up what animation is and it is consequently open to several different interpretations. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, animation means to ‘Breathe life into; enliven, make lively’. This is a rather general interpretation of the word. For a more specific definition, the world’s largest animation festival (Annecy International) defines it as ‘Any audio-visual animation, created frame by frame whatever the technique, made for the cinema, television and any other screening platform may be entered.’

What’s clear here is that animation is something that consists of a series of images played one after the other in order to create movement, each of those images being partly or completely created by some method.

A recreation of an early human being creating a cave painting with movement.

The one thing that animation relies on is the persistence of vision. This is where the light receptive nerve endings in the eye continue to see an object, even after the light has ceased to be emitted from the object. It means that if we see a succession of images that change slightly from image to image, it will create the illusion of movement. This is helped by a ‘shutter’ which will create a millisecond of black between each image in order to help the eye register each picture.

A SHORT HISTORY OF ANIMATION

In order to understand animation, we need to look back in history to see its origins.

If we go right back to the first images created by Homo sapiens, often those images were there to help capture movement. Early cave paintings depict animals with multiple legs, giving the impression of galloping. Centuries later, Greek vases depicted athletes going through sequential images of the sports in which they were engaging. During the Renaissance in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy, Leonardo da Vinci created sequences of motion with drawings in his amazing and copious collection of sketches.

A recreation of a Greek vase showing sequential movement.

A Chinese inventor and craftsman called Ding Huan invented a device that created movement from a series of paintings on a cylinder, which was hung over an oil lamp and the heat of the lamp caused the cylinder to rotate. When the images were viewed through the slits of an umbrella type device, they would appear to move. This was invented in Han Dynasty China around 150BC.

The Ding Huan device used to produce animation – the first of its type.

Many centuries later, Joseph Plateau invented the Phenakistiscope, also known as the Spindle Viewer, in 1832. The Phenakistiscope was a disc split into equal segments, with an image drawn on each one. This was mounted on a stick. Slots were cut into the disc and the images would be viewed through the slots while holding the disc up to a mirror. When the disc was spun quickly, looking at one segment at a time would cause the images to create motion. The slots created a shutter between the eye and the images.

The Phenakistiscope (or Spindle Viewer) was invented by Joseph Plateau in 1832 as a way of causing images to create motion.

William Horner invented the Zoetrope in 1833. The Zoetrope consisted of a cylinder with slots in the side, balanced on a spindle. Inside was placed a paper strip of drawings, each showing a slight difference from one image to the next. Once the cylinder was spun, looking at the pictures through the slots created the illusion of movement. The slots acted as a shutter between each of the images.

The Zoetrope, invented by William Horner in 1833. When the cylinder was spun, the images on the inside of the cylinder came to life.

The first flip-book animation appeared in September 1868 and was patented by John Barnes Linnett, under the name Kineograph. This consisted of a series of drawings displaying frame by frame movement, stapled together in a stiff book and the pages flipped one after the other by the thumb. (You can make something similar with a pad of sticky notes.)

A flip book made from sticky notes (using the same principle as patented by John Barnes Linnett).

The Mutoscope (or a ‘What the Butler Saw’ machine). This was invented in 1894 by Herman Casler.

A more elaborate version of this was called the Mutoscope (or a ‘What the Butler Saw’ machine). This was invented in 1894 by Herman Casler. A sequence of images on cards was mounted on a drum and viewed though a small peephole. A crank was turned to rotate the drum and show each image, one after the other. The images were taken from film and then printed on to the cards.

In 1877, Eadweard Muybridge developed a system of creating sequential photographs of animals and humans that displayed their movement in accurate detail. He was financed in this endeavour by Leland Stanford, a wealthy race-horse owner. He also created the Zoopraxiscope for projecting these sequential photographs in 1879. Not exactly animation, but providing lots of information for animators. His books Animals in Motion (1899) and The Human Figure in Motion (1901) are still in print today and are well worth buying by any budding animator.

A series of images similar to those captured by Eadweard Muybridge.

At the same time in France, Charles-Émile Reynaud developed the Praxinoscope, which was an improvement on the Zoetrope, using light and glass mirrors in order to improve the animation of the images. He also invented the idea of projecting animation on to a screen. His Théâtre Optique device consisted of 300 to 700 gelatin plates (with images hand-painted on them) mounted in cardboard frames and taped together, and incorporating perforations to register against the gear wheels they ran around. A light would project through the images on to a screen and it created a soft, blurred impression of animated movement. In many ways it was also a development of magic lantern shows, which projected still or puppet-like movement images on to a screen. His invention could be thought of as the first ever cinematic experience.

All of these earliest examples of the moving image could be considered ‘animation’, so in many ways live-action film could be regarded as an offshoot of animation, not the other way round. Inspired by Eadweard Muybridge, in 1899, Thomas Edison created the Kinetoscope (though it was developed by his employee, William Dickson). It was a precursor to the ‘What the Butler Saw Machine’, where the movie was viewed through a peephole. It relied on a thin piece of film that ran past the eyehole, through a series of gears with a light to illuminate the film. Edison and Dickson developed the Kinetograph, a sophisticated (for the time) cine camera to shoot the movies.

One of the first uses of film to produce projected motion can be ascribed to the Lumière brothers. Auguste and Louis Lumière are considered the first ever movie makers. They both worked for their father, who was a pioneer photographer and photographic platemaker. Auguste and Louis developed machines that would mechanize the platemaking process. Later on, they set to work to make a film camera and projector. They acquired the rights to Léon Guillaume Bouly’s Cinematograph (a combined film camera and projector) and incorporated it into their own device. These were demonstrated in 1895. Their films consisted of documenting real life and none was more than a minute long. The first film shows workers leaving the Lumière factory. The brothers never developed their system and refused to sell their cameras and projectors to any film-makers. They spent the rest of their careers developing colour photography.

THE HISTORY OF DIFFERENT ANIMATION TECHNIQUES

Drawn Animation

Probably the first ever drawn animated film was Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (using a chalkboard and cut-out technique) by James Stuart Blackton in 1906. Blackton was a comic artist, a ‘chalk talk’ music hall entertainer and a journalist with an interest in new technology. He interviewed Thomas Edison about his new invention, the Vitascope (a form of electric projector), and Edison invited Blackton to draw him as they were filmed with his new, hand-cranked, camera. When Blackton saw the film, he noticed that at certain points of the movie the drawn line would suddenly get longer. This happened when the camera had stopped filming, but Blackton had continued drawing. This intrigued Blackton. He was most impressed and bought a camera, projector and several prints of films from Edison. These films were incorporated into Blackton’s stage shows.

A chalkboard music hall act, which led to some of the first film animation.

One of the earliest films Blackton produced was The Enchanted Drawing (1900). This was more a demonstration of one of his stage shows than an animated film. He drew a wine bottle on a piece of paper, then the drawn champagne bottle turned into a real bottle of champagne. Obviously at this point they stopped cranking the camera and substituted the drawing for the real bottle, before cranking the camera again. This led to further experiments and Blackton worked out that a certain amount of rotation of the crank of the camera would result in one frame of film being exposed.

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces was drawn on a blackboard with chalk and the lines rubbed out and redrawn in order to move them, cranking the camera slightly between each of the drawings. The film consisted of a man smoking a cigar, then a man and woman looking at each other and the man then blowing cigar smoke in the lady’s face. There is also a sequence involving a clown and a dog, with one arm and one leg drawn on black paper and moved (paper cut-out animation).

The first animated movie drawn entirely on paper and shot on film was Émile Cohl’s Fantasmagorie of 1908. This film was made as a series of ink drawings on paper but was shot on negative film. It gave the impression of being white lines on a black surface, like chalk on a blackboard. It is likely that the camera would have been placed on some kind of rostrum. The camera would have been facing down, so that the drawings could be placed under the camera and shot one at a time more easily.

Another pioneer of animation was Winsor McCay. He did not invent animation and used basic techniques to produce his films, but he elevated animation to a form of high art. His first film, Little Nemo, made in 1911 is an amazing piece of animation and displays a wonderful sense of performance and movement, combined with the greatest artistry. His film was even coloured by hand and has a beautiful, ethereal quality.

Up to this point 2D animated films had emphasized the magic of drawings moving. They were not trying to be anything other than a collection of drawings and something that was created by hand. From here, there were further developments. Light boxes and a paper registration system were used so that the previous drawing could still be seen.

Around 1913, the Bray Studio in New York developed the use of cellulose acetate sheets. The characters were traced from the original drawings on to these sheets so that the background behind the character cou...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Halftitle
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication and Acknowledgements
• Preface
• 1 What is Animation?
• 2 Animation Principles
• 3 Performance in Animation
• 4 2D Animation
• 5 Puppet Animation
• 6 3D Computer Animation
• 7 How to make an Animated Film
• 8 Promoting Your Animation and Working in Animation
• Glossary of Key Terms
• Further Reading and Resources
• Index