Flick Book Draft | gamingwork

Un-Edited

How Did Animation Start?

What Is Stop Motion Animation And Why Is It Important?

Stop Motion Animation is a method of animation and this is done by getting e.g. a piece of clay and creating a model out of it, then taking a photo of it, then changing it slightly and then taking another photo and so on, so that when all the photos are put together it will illustrate movement. Stop Motion Animation is very important within this time and age as it is used highly in online websites, music videos or TV adverts, the good thing about this is that it attracts the user that see’s it and it’s a good way to promote your business and get it out there.

What Are The Main Techniques To Create 2D Animation In Modern Practises?

The main techniques that are used to create 2D animation in modern practises involve “Cel Animation”, “Rotoscoping” and “Flick Books”. Cel Animation is were you will have a stand still picture of e.g. a characters body and head and throughout the whole time the head and body will stand still, then the character will have different parts of it drawn and placed upon it, when placed upon it, it will have multiple pictures taken of it with these different drawings placed on it so that when they are all uploaded onto a computer and placed together will illustrate movement of that character. Rotoscoping is were you will have a real life footage that will then be taken onto a computer and re-worked on so that the real life footage gets turned into an animation/cartoon. Flick Books is were you will have multiple pieces of paper placed together behind each other, so e.g. you will have a character that is standing still on the first piece of paper and then on the next piece of paper his leg will slightly move and so on and then when flicked through these pieces of paper with a rapid movement it will illustrate movement towards the user.

Edited

How Did Animation Start?

The earliest form of animation started with “The Magic Lantern” this was where oil painting where drawn on the inside of the lantern and it used an oil candle to project the image so when the lantern was spun or when the inside of the lantern spun it would project an illusion onto a flat surface of movement. In the first century they had a 5,200 year old pottery bowl that was discovered in shahr-e sukhteh Iran. The bowl has five images painted around it that show phases of a goat leaping up to nip at a tree. An Egyptian mural that is approximately 4000 years old, found in the tomb of khnumhotep at the Beni Hassan cemetery, features a very long series of images that apparently depict the sequence of events in a wrestling match. The first animated film created by using traditional hand drawn animation was In Europe, the French artist, Émile Cohl, created the first animated film using what came to be known as traditional animation which was known as the 1908 Fantasmagorie, if u want to see the film there is a link to it here-

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfOmxAtI00Q&list=RDaEAObel8yIE&index=2

What Is Stop Motion Animation And Why Is It Important?

What Are The Main Techniques To Create 2D Animation In Modern Practises?

The main techniques that are used to create 2D animation in modern practises involve “Cel Animation”, “Rotoscoping” and “Flick Books”.

Cel Animation is where you will have a stand still picture of e.g. a characters body and head and throughout the whole time the head and body will stand still, then the character will have different parts of it drawn and placed upon it, when placed upon it, it will have multiple pictures taken of it with these different drawings placed on it so that when they are all uploaded onto a computer and placed together will illustrate movement of that character, when this work is in progress on paper. Cel Animation can be seen as “cartoons” a lot when you mention Cel Animation, the way Cel Animation is done is that the artist will get a sheet of transparent cellulose acetate which is a medium for painting animation frames. It is transparent so that it can be laid over other Cels and/or a painted background, then photographed. In Cel Animation the actors will record their lines and then the animators will use the vocal tracks to animate the lip vocals of the characters. Once all the Cels have been inked and painted, they are given to the camera person who photographs the backgrounds, along with their matching Cels, according to the instructions on the dope sheet. The processed film, vocal tracks, music and sound tracks are then synchronized and edited together. The final film is sent to the lab to make a film project print or to be put on video. If the studio is employing digital equipment, all these stages happen in the computer before the finished film is output. The reason why Animators use the same backgrounds or frames is so that they can save money as you can see it in some films, Disney is well known for using the same frames in different movies, I will put a link of it below –

Rotoscoping is where you will have a real life footage which will be recorded on a camera that will then be taken and uploaded onto a computer and re-worked on so that the real life footage gets turned into an animation/cartoon, this is done by using different software depending on who the artist is, the different software’s could consist of After Effects, Adobe Flash or Anime Studio. The different stages of this are to plan the storyboard, the film is then recorded and edited into a story, then this will be then exported onto the computer or into e.g. Adobe Photoshop as still images and then each frame will be drawn upon the still image, so that when the still image is hidden you will have the drawing above it that you have done because you have gone over the still image, but each frame needs to be done like this so that when they are all added together will demonstrate the illusion of movement. An example of this is below –

Flick Books also known as Flip Books, is where you will have multiple pieces of small paper placed together behind each other, so e.g. you will have drawn a character that is standing still on the first piece of paper and then on the next piece of paper his leg will slightly move because you have drawn it differently and so on until you have finished what you want to happen and then when flicked through these pieces of paper with a rapid movement with e.g. your finger, it will illustrate movement towards the user, as the pages are being flicked fast enough to resemble the illusion of movement for the human eye. An example of this is below –

The Humpty Dumpty Circus – 1897

The Humpty Dumpty Circus is the first American film to use the stop motion technique, it features a circus with acrobats and animals in motion, they used dolls which had jointed limbs so they could be balanced in place.

Ray Harryhausen

Ray Harryhausen is a living legend that is well known for his stop motion work and cinematic work. He is majorly famous for his work in “Mighty Joe Young”, “Jason And The Argonauts”, he creates his own models for the movies an example of this is on this link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pF_Fi7x93PY

The link above is his first coloured movie that he helped work on where he created and developed the skeletons and their movements. Ray Harryhausen carried on animating short films whilst he was in the army about the use and development of military equipment, he is well known for his puppet animation as well within his own fairy tales.

2D Bitmap Graphics

Bitmap images are also known as raster images, Bitmap Images are very small dots of colours which are known as pixels when all placed together form an image. Bitmap Graphics have different resolution that are in an image that are normally seen as DPI (Dots Per Inch) the more DPI in an image the better the quality of the picture. When an image is extended it loses its quality and the DPI’s are stretched out. The difference between Bitmap and Vector based graphics, is that Bitmap uses pixels and Vector are based on using lines and shapes to form an image.

After Effects

After Effects is a digital visual effects, motion graphics and compositing application that allows the artist to put their created piece of work onto it and then the software allows them to Rig their character and allow them to animate it to illustrate movement by changing the created piece of work slightly on each keyframe by e.g. changing slightly the movement of its leg, so when it is played it will illustrate movement.

Adobe Flash

Adobe Flash is a multimedia and software platform used for creating vector graphics, animation, games and rich internet applications (RIAs) that can be viewed, played and executed in Adobe Flash Player, flash manipulates vector and raster graphics to provided animation for text, drawings and still images.

Anime Studio

Anime Studio is a vector based 2D animation software that allows the artist to work with layers, layer ordering, camera movements, bones, tweening, physics, styles, masks, 3D abilities, audio lip synching, import pictures and video, multiple soundtracks, exports, scriptable, smart bones, editable motion graphs, onionskins, supports layered Photoshop files and includes timeline with keyframes.