Animation Level 3 (Y1): September 2013

Pixelation is a stop motion technique where actors are like used as an object and every step they take just like any other animation had to be taken a photo off one wrong move and it will ruin the whole thing. Pixelation animation can be sometime be called as 'live animation' because the actor because like a puppet.

I would suggest for this type of animation that you buy a professional animation camera or software because you must be really still and depending on the acting that your doing it require skills and patience.

Such movies have used this animation technique like The secret adventures of Tom Thumb and Bolex Brothers. This type of animation has been around a long time since like the 1900s.

Norman McLaren (1914-1987) he is a Canadian Animator and he introduced pixelation in his Oscar winning film Neighbours (1952) and also the film The Chairy Tale (1957). He instead of making a series of drawing he used actors and placed them in a series of positions in front of the camera which took a lot of time and effort. But he is popular to this day.

This one was really interesting and cool as well.

Its a good example of a pixilation animation. I also tried it to view my animation scroll down below.

For this animation lesson I was totally un-prepared because I didn't really have an idea of how am going to do my animation to be honest if I had more time I would have done better and thought of better idea but because I didn't want to work in a pair. I had an idea that could have been better produced better and with more time I know I could have done a better job than this.

so I decided that I would want to use one hand where I used my other hand to make my clay figure and to take pictures with it so basically I've been using one hand for this this whole time.

But before I started doing my short animation I had a look at a few different animation which were really cool and I like animation with a message so Norman Maclaren's animation called neighbours is my favourite because I thought it was really clever.

But I know I would never be able to make something as good as that so I went with my idea and used i stop motion to take a step by step photo as I go along so it was easy but I did work by myself which was hard because as I moved I also took a photo with my other hand without trying to move.

I want to create something like this one day because it's now my favourite animation technique and it looks really cool.

Model animation is stop motion animation sequences and its designed to make models look 3D but in 2D you can make model sheets to show the same character but in different angles.

It's one of the most popular animation type today and you can create model animation with just about anything whether its clay, yourself or even with dolls.

It is an animation that a manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object can be just about anything and it has each movement you make had to be individually photographed. Whether the object has moveable joints or not you can still create stop motion with any object you like.

Some animation cameras have onion skin which will make it easier for to do your animation in but it's still taking a photograph of it and if you've got your camera still you should be able to do it just fine.

There are so many animations that was made from modelling such as King Kong that was made in 1993.

Another example would be James and the giant Peach which was made in 1996.

And the final example would be GUMBY which was made in 1995.

and of course there are loads more examples of model based animation.

I did also produce one but I don't know what happened to it I think I exported it to the wrong file format but I do have screenshots of it.

This isn't it but it was one that I did before I don't even know what I was doing...

Time-lapse animation is a technique where the frequency at which the film frames are captured (aka the frame rate) is much lower that that which will be used to play the sequence back. When you replay this sequence at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and lapsing.

This is hard to do from the looks of it but I haven't attempted it before I would've loved to if I had more time to do I mist the lesson on this which but I know what it is and how to make it nothing stopping me from making one in my spare time.

Eadweard Muybridge 19th century photographer is the one who originating the technique this is by far one of my favourite animation and what I like about it is the fact that it does look like a video and I have to try it out at some point it will look great as a gif.

Now that I've seen it I have made one before in Preston park for photography but it was for a different lesson but I'll upload it anyways.

Cut out animation is a technique used for producing animation using flat shapes or words and it has to be something you can cut out like paper, fabric, card etc.

Not much is known about exactly when was the earliest animation but we know it was Quirino Cristiani from Argentina who originated the idea. He made the world earliest surviving cut out animation.

Today cutouts animation are sometimes made by computers with scanned images or vector graphics compared to before where everything was literally cutout. South park is the most popular cut out animation it first made with cut outs each episode taking them months to do now just new episode get made in weeks.

I have made one for my lyric animation video its on the other post on my blog. I love this show so much it's so funny and one of my favourite animations.

Cell-based animation is where each cell is reproduced and variations are made to the next cell. This continues until there is a series of cells. Each cell is slightly different from the previous. It gives the appearance of movement, thus animation.

An excellent example of cell-based animation is to watch any of the Disney movies especially Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. All cells were hand drawn and painted.

Path-based animation where the first (original) cell or frame is drawn and the last cell or frame is drawn. The software then fills in the gaps between (tweening) these two frames, giving the appearance of movement. An example of path-based animation is the ballroom scene from the Disney movie, Beauty and the Beast.

I remember watching these best cartoons ever...

Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, is deformable which means it is made of a clay.

This animation comes from cel animation and stopmotion and all of them are similar to each other they are produced by recording each frame back in rapid succession before the viewer.

This and other moving images from zoetrope to films and games, creates the illusion of motion by playing at over 10/12 frames per second.

An example of clay animation.

Early types of animation

We see animation as a video but it's the moving images that makes us think it's video when it's not. Moving images are when every image has been took after single move you make and it has to be accurate and entertaining at the same time. It should be just as creative and unrealistic as a cartoon because that's what animation is about by doing this creates a good animation.

Animation are one of the things of entertainment that has existed for hundreds of years and it has changed overtime. Now 3d animations are more complicated and longer than ever some have become one of the highest grossing films of the year.

The early types of are:

Persistence Of Vision.
Zoetrope.
Phenakitoscope.
Kinetoscope.
Mutoscope.

Persistence of vision is relevant to animation like Eadweard Muybridge, who did early studies in photography that led animation and motion pictures.

The concept is simple, he used flying images so he can create the illusion of motion from still images only. The images are presented at an average rate of 18-24 frames per second.

Here is an example of one:

Zoetrope is a 19th century optical toy that is in a cylinder shape with loads of pictures of the inner surface that if you rotate it or spin it the images on it look like their moving animation.

Below is an example:

Phenakistoscope is one of my favorite early type of animation because is it like persistence of vision where the animation uses an illusion of movement. A great example of someone who made Phenakistoscopes as early as 1893 was Eadweard Muybridge.

An example of his work below:

A few other examples of Phenakistoscope that I found on the internet:

This is really cool I like the faces on it I would like to make one like that.

This one has been made into a gif.

Kinetoscope - this I'm definitely familiar with because I had a look at one in a museum before and I really liked it but it can get annoying when you look at it too much well it is for me anyways.

Kinetoscope it's quiet complicated how this is been made but it's a motion picture device that people can only see if they are seen it through a peephole. It is an early motion picture device that was mainly designed for one individual at a time to view a film.

It wasn't a movie projector but the idea of a projector came from this and the images show from a strip of images over a light source with a high-speed shutter. It was first invented by Thomas Edison as early as 1888 and then alot of others at that time were making Kinetoscope movies.

Examples of Kinetoscope below:

Some museums still have this but it's very rare to find now.

Mutoscope is an interesting one because I never knew something like this even existed it's like Kinetoscope that Thomas Edison made in 1888 but this one came after it was made by Herman Casler in 1894.

Mutoscope is an early picture motion device and only one person can view it at a time but it didn't project on a screen it's cheaper and simpler than the Kinetoscope. It worked like a flip book and played movies such as Charlie Chaplin etc.

It quickly became popular and then developed in to a coin in the slot machine as some people call it or even a (peep-show).

This was more popular than the Kinetoscope because more were around at the time places where it attracts families in such as the park, the beach and museums.

Examples of Mutoscope below: