More History of Animation - Review, Stop Motion and CGI

Quick review from yesterday's lesson...
Animation… What is it?
a graphic representation of drawings to show movement within those drawings.
Frames… What are they?
Shots, where images have changed slightly.
Why are hand drawn animations so labour intensive?
For every second of animation – 12 pictures

Why did the development of Cellulose acetate film make animation easier?
Allowed for static backgrounds
Artist could draw static images once
Who took animation to the next level?
Walt Disney – Steamboat Willy, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
What is “Persistence of Vision”?
The retina captures and holds an image for one- tenth of a second before processing the next image. If images are flashed before the eye at at least 10 frames per second, the brain thinks it is seeing a single moving image.
Thaumatrope, Zoetrope, Praxinoscope, Flip Book, Mutoscope.
When was film created?
1889


Stop Motion is used for many animation productions using physical objects rather than images, as with traditional animation.
An object will be photographed, moved slightly, and then photographed again. When the pictures are played back in normal speed the object will appear to move by itself.

This process is used for many productions, for example, clay animations such as Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit, as well as animated movies which use poseable figures, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.

The makers of 'James and the Giant Peach' were only able to complete 45 seconds of stop-motion animation a week -10 seconds a day. Characters had so many joints to move!




Robot Chicken is a television series that uses the stop motion animation technique.

One of the most recent full length feature films using stop motion is Coraline. This entire movie was shot in one warehouse.


We also see stop motion animation in main stream media such as commercials.



Another stepping stone in the animation process was incorporating animated images along with real life actors. The earliest example of this was Who Framed Roger Rabbit in 1988. This film had leading roles from both actors and animated characters.


This concept is known as "blue screen" or "keying". A scene is shot in front of a screen that is one solid colour of blue and then that colour is "keyed" out and replaced with other footage. Blue, and now green are used because they are the furthest from our skin tones.

The next step in the world of animation was CGI animation. Computer Generated Imagery. Entire worlds and characters were created on computers.
The "Snow White" of CGI technology was "Toy Story" in 1995. It was the first full length feature film created entirely using computers.


CGI animation is still a tedious process and adheres to many of the traditional methods of animation. A principle difference is that drawing is replaced by 3D modeling. A benefit of this technology is that once the work has gone into creating a character, it can be saved, reused, manipulated, etc. very easily. The same can be said for backgrounds and props. The initial work is time consuming, but future work is easier.

It also has monetary benefits...
Toy Story cost $30 million dollars to create and used 110 animators.
The Lion King used traditional animation techniques costing  $45 million to produce and used 800 animators!

Several movies have incorporated both CGI animation with live action performances. Examples of this would be King Kong, Garfield, Space Jam and many more.

CGI is most often used to depict fictional characters. That is because the viewing audience is more forgiving when they are not looking for human attributes in the characters.

Monsters Inc. was the first CGI feature film to attempt realistic fur in animation. It was an incredible success. The fur had to respond to various conditions and it had multiple colours. It had to react with the surrounding hairs.



The ultimate pursuit is to create realistic human CG animations. Final Fantasy; The Spirits Within attempted this in 2001. They made fantastic achievements in animating hair and clothing for humans and although it was a massive technical achievement it did not do well in the theaters and bankrupted the company.
Despite some excellent attempts…
human body functions, emotions and interactions, are too complex for CGI animation.
Being humans, we notice inconsistencies in the animations
Best used for monsters, characters, backgrounds or buildings where there is forgiveness in the animation.


Lets look at some more stop motion examples to help generate ideas for your project!