A.N. Pritzker School: Intro to Video&Animation
VIDEO PRODUCTION BASICS
Video production involves a lot of time, effort, and finesse. To produce a successful video, you’ll need to:
- Come up with a concept. Before you can do anything, you’ll need to decide on a concept for your video. What do you want to accomplish with the video? Who is your audience? What message do you want to get across? Without this crucial first step, you run the risk of making a video that fails to speak to your audience.
- Write a script. With the concept dialed in, it’s time to sit down and write a script. Your script should be easy to understand, fit within your target video time, and include any changes in camera angle, wardrobe, or background.
- Perform pre-production planning. At a minimum, pre-production planning consists of scouting a location, getting permits if required, procuring all of the equipment you need, reviewing your script, speaking with actors about their roles, deciding on a budget, and choosing a time and day for the shoot. As I said, the above list is very basic. There are seemingly endless other details—camera batteries, make-up, wardrobe, etc.—that need to be addressed before a shoot.
- Shoot the video. The big day! Just like the pre-production planning, there are a million details to get right on the day of the shoot. If you’ve done the required work from the first three steps, things should go smoothly. If not, you’re in for a day of frustration.
- Edit the video. Editing software has gotten easier to use. However, for anything more than basic editing, it’s wise to get professional help. A good editor has a critical eye and can help you produce an effective video.
- Code the video. In order to be successful, your video should be coded properly. This will allow maximum distribution and watchability on a variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets, and desktops.
There are three stages to film-making: pre-production, production
and post-production.
PRE PRODUCTION
Development — The first stage in which the ideas for the film are created, rights to books/plays are bought etc., and the screenplay is written. Financing for the project has to be sought and greenlit
The most important part of the video production workflow is what happens before the camera starts rolling. Pre-production, or the planning and logistics phase of a video project, is where most of the magic happens before it gets recorded. And while poor pre-production may not break your video, it willbreak your budget if you don’t do your due diligence.
Once you have an idea for a great video project, you need to:
1. Define your audience
Whether you want better insights from Google Adwords or a better, more targeted video, defining your audience is the first step in the pre-production process.
2. Define your message
While the importance of knowing your audience has never been understated, knowing your message is just as important.
3. Define your budget
Once you’ve define your audience and your message, you need to define your budget. Without a guiding budget at the beginning of pre-production, it’s impossible to manage expectations. You’re going to end up overpromising but under-delivering.
Knowing your budget ahead of time also frees you up to narrow down what you can and cannot do for any given project, and eliminates a lot of second-guessing.
4. Write and revise a script
The original script may have been forgotten by the time post-production rolls around, but it will determine in large part the course of your production and post-production schedules. Taking the time to get professional input at this stage of pre-production is an extremely worthwhile investment.
5. Beginnings and Endings
In order to fully leverage average attention spans and get the most out of your pitch a brief synopsis of the beginnings and end of your story/greetings and sign-offs should be included in the script.
6. Use your first eight seconds to qualify
The first eight seconds of video are just enough to include a brief flavor what is a head, Anyone who wouldn’t have been interested to begin with will drop off after the tiles, but interested viewers will stay engaged.
7. Determine your ideal video length
While conversion and completion metrics shouldn’t be the end-all when it comes to determining the length of your video (hint: your message should make that determination), the final timemark will affect your overall completion rate. As you might expect, there’s a direct correlation between video length and viewer drop-off in the first few minutes that begins to taper off after the 5-minute mark.
8. Be transparent and authentic
The last step and guideline for effective scriptwriting is to be transparent and authentic. .
9. Take your time storyboarding
No, storyboarding is not only for cartoons. Just as a script is indispensable, a storyboard is invaluable as a cheap way to visualize the shoot before it happens and to pivot and make adjustments as necessary based on insights gleaned from the storyboarding process.
10. Make a shot list
Just as a storyboard is the scene-by-scene breakdown of a video, a shot list is the shot-by-shot breakdown of each scene. Shot lists include more specifics, like camera placement and lighting direction. Figuring out a storyboard and then a shot list in advance with your producer and videographer will save you tons of time during production.
11. Create a production schedule
Also called a shooting schedule, this is the document you need to have in order to make any kind of judgment call on whether your video project is going according to plan and to manage the time expectations of stakeholders. It’s important to always keep track of the following:
- Location
- Scene/shot
- Equipment
- People needed
- Contact info
- Date and time
A production schedule is a one-stop-shop for all your production questions and concerns, and should be updated regularly. The next few steps will all go over how to create a practical production schedule and other things to consider.
12. Overestimate the time you’ll need
Generously. As a rule of thumb (and particularly when stakeholders are involved), it’s always best to under-promise but overdeliver. One of the best ways you can do that is by not giving yourself a razor-thin window of completion, especially if you aren’t very familiar with video production workflows. Underestimating production time is just as bad as overestimating resource capacity.
There are so many moving parts to even short video projects with live actors. If this is your first time working on a video project, or if you still feel you aren’t very experienced – give yourself more time to work with. So many unforeseen scheduling, shooting, and post-production conflicts could occur outside your control. Not to mention it’s never a good idea to rush things.
13. Decide between studio versus location
There are few decisions you can make with more resounding impact on the production schedule than whether you want to do your shoot at a studio or on location. While it may not seem like a huge deal at a glance, it certainly is for your budget. Studios will already have everything in place for you to work with, and all you’ll need to do is show up and bring your actors. Shooting on location, on the other hand, involves travel and equipment transportation costs.
14. Visit all locations ahead of time
Even if you do decide to shoot in a studio, you should still visit it beforehand. One of the best ways to arrive at an accurate production schedule is by determining which locations will be problematic and scheduling them into your day based on availability. Outdoor shots, for example, should be done as early as possible to avoid inclement weather, while office shots should be conducted after hours for the best sound and flexibility. When it comes to location-scouting, there are many other factors to consider as well.
Visiting locations ahead of time also gives you the chance to preview each “scene” and update your shot list with actual pictures. But if visiting ahead of time is infeasible, then do your best to get in touch with someone who can provide those pictures for you.
15. Determine your equipment needs
Knowing exactly what equipment you’ll need for each and every single shot in your shot list is complicated, but it should be something that you have set in stone long before the first camera starts rolling. But while understanding the basics of a script, storyboard, shot list, and even production schedule are easy, knowing why a Canon 5D wide angle lens steady camera is the best choice for a specific 3-second shot is not so intuitive. Ideally, equipment needs will be managed directly by a production manager. For smaller projects, the videographer should be the one making the call.
16. Inventory equipment you already have
Once you’ve worked with your producer to list out the equipment you’ll need for all your shots, take a moment to double check what you already have in-house (because your producer certainly won’t know). Larger companies with multiple departments could literally have viable equipment anywhere and everywhere. Maybe there’s a certain type of microphone that HR uses to make their recruiting videos, or a high-tech camera lying somewhere in Product. Checking could save you hundreds to thousands of dollars in rentals.
17. Select your Crew
Each company has its fair share of interesting characters, and any one of them might just fit a given production position perfectly.
18. Have a call sheet
Regardless of whether you decide to go with professional actors, one of the last spreadsheets you’ll want to prepare is the call sheet. This all-important companion sheet to the production schedule includes the contact information of every member of the film production crew as well as actors. A good call sheet is will answer all the basic “who, what, where, when, and why” questions at a glance, and is practically invaluable when it comes to calming nerves and, again – managing expectations.
19. Line up your talent
Once you have your script, storyboard, shot list, production schedule and call sheet lined up, it’s time to put your talent on set. As any actor will tell you, the importance of line-readings and rehearsals cannot be understated (and not just for film!). It’s just a good idea to get your talent familiar with locations, dress, directions – the whole nine yards – before they show up for the actual shoot and you realize that one of your actresses is dangerously allergic to pollen.
It’s also wise to get your actors to come in ahead of time just so you know what you’re getting yourself into. Pre-production is the best time to recast if necessary.
PRODCUTION
In production, the video production/film is created and shot. More crew will be recruited at this stage, such as the property master, script supervisor, assistant directors, stills photographer, picture editor, and sound editors. These are just the most common roles in filmmaking; the production office will be free to create any unique blend of roles to suit the various responsibilities possible during the production of a film.
A typical day’s shooting begins with the crew arriving on the set/location by their call time. Actors usually have their own separate call times. Since set construction, dressing and lighting can take many hours or even days, they are often set up in advance.
The grip, electric and production design crews are typically a step ahead of the camera and sound departments: for efficiency’s sake, while a scene is being filmed, they are already preparing the next one.
While the crew prepare their equipment, the actors are wardrobed in their costumes and attend the hair and make-up departments. The actors rehearse thescript and blocking with the director, and the camera and sound crews rehearse with them and make final tweaks. Finally, the action is shot in as many takes as the director wishes. Most American productions follow a specific procedure:
The assistant director (AD) calls “picture is up!” to inform everyone that a take is about to be recorded, and then “quiet, everyone!” Once everyone is ready to shoot, the AD calls “roll sound” (if the take involves sound), and the production sound mixer will start their equipment, record a verbal slate of the take’s information, and announce “sound speed”, or just “speed”, when they are ready. The AD follows with “roll camera”, answered by “speed!” by the camera operator once the camera is recording. The clapper, who is already in front of the camera with the clapperboard, calls “marker!” and slaps it shut. If the take involves extras or background action, the AD will cue them (“action background!”), and last is the director, telling the actors “action!”. The AD may echo “action” louder on large sets.
A take is over when the director calls “cut!”, and camera and sound stop recording. The script supervisor will note any continuity issues and the sound and camera teams log technical notes for the take on their respective report sheets. If the director decides additional takes are required, the whole process repeats. Once satisfied, the crew moves on to the next camera angle or “setup,” until the whole scene is “covered.” When shooting is finished for the scene, the assistant director declares a “wrap” or “moving on,” and the crew will “strike,” or dismantle, the set for that scene.
At the end of the day, the director approves the next day’s shooting schedule and a daily progress report is sent to the production office. This includes the report sheets from continuity, sound, and camera teams. Call sheets are distributed to the cast and crew to tell them when and where to turn up the next shooting day. Later on, the director, producer, other department heads, and, sometimes, the cast, may gather to watch that day or yesterday’s footage, called dailies, and review their work.
With workdays often lasting 14 or 18 hours in remote locations, film production tends to create a team spirit. When the entire film is in the can, or in the completion of the production phase, it is customary for the production office to arrange awrap party, to thank all the cast and crew for their efforts.
For the production phase on live-action films, synchronizing work schedules of key cast and crew members is very important, since for many scenes, several cast members and most of the crew must be physically present at the same place at the same time (and bankable stars may need to rush from one project to another). Animated films have different workflow at the production phase, in that voice talent can record their takes in the recording studio at different times and may not see one another until the film’s premiere, while most physical live-action tasks are either unnecessary or are simulated by various types of animators.
POST PRODUCTION
Many filmmakers are in a perpetual pre-production stage. Pre-production is the stage where you try and convince everyone that your film is about to start shooting. It’s the nerve wracking stage where you wait for financial commitments to materialize in your bank, and for cast and crew to agree that they will definitely turn up.
‘Real’ pre-production is when you’re spending money on script development, casting, scouting and securing crew. Bottom line — pre-production is not difficult.
The second stage, production, is right after you get financing. Now you quickly get everyone together and spend nine to eighteen days of 14-18 hours each, shooting from dawn to dusk. Production is a ball buster.
During production everything happens at once. The actors, lights, camera, props, schedule, film stock, egos, temper tantrums, and all the rest. Production, although typically presented as being fun and joyous, will probably be the worst two or three weeks of your life. But you persevere. Somehow you get that Martini Shot. Your film is in the can. You bring out the flat beer and celebrate. Everyone hugs everyone (except you, the skinflint producer) and goes home. You pass out and wake up approximately two days later.
When you do wake up, you find twenty hours of tape, or the equivalent in film stock by the foot of your bed. You’re all alone. What do you do now? The answer, of course, is simple. You begin post-production.
Post-production, somehow, is the part of the process that intimidates people most. Remember, it is not difficult. Production is massively difficult. Post-production is not, as long as you take it step by step. Your first phone call will probably be to your cinematographer who, although he/she hates you, will be able to introduce you to several good editors. All you need to know about post-production and finishing your film is the thirteen steps listed below. Just take them one step at a time, in the order they appear. There will be no eighteen hour days. Your function will be to hire people and oversee them by dropping in for half an hour here and there.
Film Crew Positions and Their Responsibilities
- The director is responsible for overseeing the creative aspects of a film, including controlling the content and flow of the film’s plot, directing the performances of actors, organizing and selecting the locations in which the film will be shot, and managing technical details such as the positioning of cameras, the use of lighting, and the timing and content of the film’s soundtrack. Though directors wield a great deal of power, they are ultimately subordinate to the film’s producer or producers. Some directors, especially more established ones, take on many of the roles of a producer, and the distinction between the two roles is sometimes blurred.
- A film producer creates the conditions for film-making. The producer initiates, coordinates, supervises, and controls matters such as raising funding, hiring key personnel, and arranging for distributors. The producer is involved throughout all phases of the film making process from development to completion of a project. There may be several producers on a film who may take a role in a number of areas, such as development, financing or production. Producers must be able to identify commercial, marketable projects. They need a keen business sense, and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of film production, financing, marketing and distribution. Producers are responsible for the overall quality control of productions.
- Production assistant
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- Production assistants, referred to as PAs, assist in the production office or in various departments with general tasks, such as assisting the first assistant director with set operations.
- The production manager supervises the physical aspects of the production (not the creative aspects) including personnel, technology, budget, and scheduling. It is the production manager’s responsibility to make sure the filming stays on schedule and within its budget. The PM also helps manage the day-to-day budget by managing operating costs such as salaries, production costs, and everyday equipment rental costs. The PM often works under the supervision of a line producer and directly supervises the production coordinator.
- The director of photography, DoP or DP, is the chief of the camera and lighting crew of the film. The DoP makes decisions on lighting and framing of shots in conjunction with the film’s director. Typically, the director tells the DoP how he or she wants a shot to look, and the DoP chooses the correct lens, filter, lighting and composition to achieve the desired aesthetic effect. The DoP is the senior creative crew member after the director.
- The term Cinematographer is usually synonymous with director of photography, though some professionals insist this only applies when the director of photography and camera operator are the same person.
Within the overall art department is a sub-department, also called the art department—which can be confusing. This consists of the people who design the sets and create the graphic art.
- The art director reports to the production designer, and more directly oversees artists and craftspeople, such as the set designers, graphic artists, and illustrators who give form to the production design as it develops. The art director works closely with the construction coordinator and key scenic artist to oversee the aesthetic and textural details of sets as they are realized. Typically, the art director oversees the budget and schedule of the overall art department. On large-budget productions with numerous sets and several art directors, one might be credited as supervising art director or senior art director.
- The set designer is the draftsman, often an architect, who realizes the structures or interior spaces called for by the production designer.
- The set decorator is in charge of the decorating of a film set, which includes the furnishings and all the other objects that will be seen in the film. They work closely with the production designer and coordinate with the art director. In recognition of the set decorator’s importance, the Academy Award for art direction is given jointly to both the production designer and the set decorator.
- Buyer
- The buyer works with, and reports to, the set decorator. The buyer locates, and then purchases or rents the set dressing.
- Lead man
- The lead man (or leadsman) is the foreman of the set dressing crew, often referred to as the swing gang. He or she also assists the set decorator.
- Set dresser
- The set dressers apply and remove the “dressing”; i.e., furniture, drapery, carpets, wall signs, vinyl decals—everything one would find in a location, (even doorknobs and wall sockets, when such items do not fall under the purview of construction.) Most of the swing gang’s work occurs before and after the shooting crew arrives, but one set dresser remains with the shooting crew and is known as the on-set dresser. In some countries, such as Irelandor the United Kingdom, the set dressing department is referred to as dressing props department. Informally, in the U.S., the department is often referred to simply as set dec.
- The costume designer is responsible for all the clothing and costumes worn by all the actors that appear on screen. They are also responsible for designing, planning, and organizing the construction of the garments down to the fabric, colors, and sizes. The costume designer works closely with the director to understand and interpret “character”, and counsels with the production designer to achieve an overall tone of the film. In large productions, the costume designer will usually have one or more assistant costume designers.
- Costume supervisor
- The costume supervisor works closely with the designer. In addition to helping with the design of the costumes, they manage the wardrobe workspace. They supervise construction or sourcing of garments, hiring and firing of support staff, budget, paperwork, and department logistics. Also called the wardrobe supervisor, although this term is used less and less.
- The gaffer is the head of the lighting department, responsible for the design of the lighting plan for a production. Sometimes the gaffer is credited as chief lighting technician.
- Best boy (lighting)
- The best boy is the chief assistant to the gaffer. He or she is not usually on set, but dealing with the electric truck, rentals, manpower, and other logistics.
Grip
Grips are trained lighting and rigging technicians. Their main responsibility is to work closely with the electrical department to put in the non-electrical components of lighting set-ups required for a shot, such as flags, overheads, and bounces. On the sound stage, they move and adjust major set pieces when something needs to be moved to get a camera into position. In the US and Canada they may belong to the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees.
- The key grip is the chief grip on a set, and is the head of the set operations department. The key grip works with the director of photography to help set up the set and to achieve correct lighting and blocking.
- Best boy (grip)
- The best boy is chief assistant to the key grip. They are also responsible for organizing the grip truck throughout the day.
- The production designer is responsible for creating the visual appearance of the film – settings, costumes, character makeup, all taken as a unit. The production designer works closely with the director and the director of photography to achieve the look of the film.
- The set decorator is in charge of the decorating of a film set, which includes the furnishings and all the other objects that will be seen in the film. They work closely with the production designer and coordinate with the art director. In recognition of the set decorator’s importance, the Academy Award for art direction is given jointly to both the production designer and the set decorator.
- The costume designer is responsible for all the clothing and costumes worn by all the actors that appear on screen. They are also responsible for designing, planning, and organizing the construction of the garments down to the fabric, colors, and sizes. The costume designer works closely with the director to understand and interpret “character”, and counsels with the production designer to achieve an overall tone of the film. In large productions, the costume designer will usually have one or more assistant costume designers.
Property
- The property master is in charge of finding and managing all the props that appear in the film. These include any item handled by an actor that is not part of the scenery or costumes, and all consumable food items that appear on screen. Job responsibilities include purchasing, renting, and manufacturing anything an actor handles or touches. In period works, it is the property master’s job to ensure that all the props provided are accurate to the time period. The propmaster usually has several assistants. The Assistant Propmaster generally is the person running the set and in charge of working directly with the actors, director and on set crew.
- The key makeup artist is the department head that answers directly to the director and production designer. They are responsible for planning makeup designs for all leading and supporting cast. Their department includes all cosmetic makeup, body makeup and if special effects are involved, the key make-up artist will consult with a special effects makeup team to create all prosthetics and SFX makeup in a production. It is common that the key makeup artist performs makeup applications on lead cast, with assistance, and allows other crew members to work with supporting and minor roles. The key makeup artist will normally execute especially complicated or important makeup processes that are to be featured on camera.
- Special make-up effects Artist (SFX makeup)
- A special effects make-up artist works with live models or structures in the entertainment industry, applying make-up effects and/or prosthetics. May be own department that answers directly to the director and production designer or report to Key make-up artist.
- The key hair is the department head that answers directly to the director and production designer. The key hair will normally design and style the hair of lead actors.
- Hair stylist
- The hair stylist, is responsible for maintaining and styling the hair, including wigs and extensions, of anyone appearing on screen. They assist and report to the key hair.
- The production sound mixer is head of the sound department on set, responsible for recording all sound during filming. This involves the choice and deployment of microphones, operation of a sound recording device, and the mixing of audio signals in real time.
- The boom operator is an assistant to the production sound mixer, responsible for microphone placement and movement during filming. The boom operator uses a boom pole, a long pole made of light aluminum or carbon fiber that allows precise positioning of the microphone above or below the actors, just out of the camera’s frame. The boom operator may also place radio microphones and hidden set microphones. In France, the boom operator is called the Perchman.
- The sound designer, or supervising sound editor, is in charge of the post-production sound of a movie. Sometimes this may involve great creative license, and other times it may simply mean working with the director and editor to balance the sound to their liking.
Special effect
This department oversees the mechanical effects—also called practical or physical effects—that create optical illusions during live-action shooting. It is not to be confused with the Visual effects department, which adds photographic effects during filming to be altered later duringvideo editing in the post-production process.
- The special effects supervisor instructs the Special effects crew on how to design moving set elements and props that will safely break, explode, burn, collapse and implode without destroying the film set. S/he is also responsible for reproducing weather conditions and other on-camera magic.
- Special effects assistant
- The SFX assistants carry out the instructions of the special effects supervisor, building set pieces like breakaway furniture and cities in miniature, lighting pyrotechnics, and setting up rigging equipment for stunts.
- Post-production supervisor
- Post-production supervisors are responsible for the post-production process, during which they maintain clarity of information and good channels of communication between the producer, editor, supervising sound editor, the facilities companies (such as film labs, CGI studios and negative cutters) and the production accountant. Although this is not a creative role, it is pivotal in ensuring that the film’s post-production budget is manageable and achievable, and that all deadlines are met. Because large amounts of money are involved, and most of a film’s budget is spent during production, the post-production period can often be difficult and challenging.
Editorial[edit]
- The film editor is the person who assembles the various shots into a coherent film, with the help of the director. There are usually several assistant editors.
Making a Movie on iPad
StopMotion Studio Demo
Animation Desk Demo
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANIMATION
12 Principles of Animation
The History of Animation
Forging The Frame The Roots Of Animation
Creating Cartoons & Animation
Irreverent Imagination: The Golden Age of Looney Tunes
The Inkwell :The Fleischer Story
Chuck Jones: Extremes and In-Betweens
This biography, shown on American television as part of the PBS “Great Performances” series, examines the life works of one of Hollywood’s most celebrated animators, Chuck (Charles M.) Jones. He is best known for Warner Brothers cartoons featuring Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Elmer Fudd, Porky Pig, Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, and Pepe LePew. Included are plenty of behind-the-scenes descriptions of how an animated film is made, and (best of all) many clips from Chuck’s cartoons.
King-Size Comedy: Tex Avery and the Looney Tunes Revolution
Drawn to Life: The Art of Robert McKimson
Monster Road
Brothers Quay : De Artificiali Perspectiva, or Anamorphosis
Ralph Bakshi The Wizard of Animation
The Craftsmen : Bob Godfrey Documentary
Animating Art
Imagine From Pencils To Pixels
What makes a pencil line become a character? The year is 2003, Disney were about to release Pixar’s ‘Finding Nemo’, and broadcaster Alan Yentob sets his task of celebrating the phenomena of the animated feature film on his arts show ‘Imagine’, and attempts to evaluate the argument set by Pixar’s “Toy Story”, of whether there was a future for traditional animated techniques in the age of computer and digital imaging.
How It’s Made: Animation
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) – World’s 1st Keyframe Animation Cartoon – Winsor McCay
Released on September 15th, 2014. Sometimes called the world’s oldest cartoon (erroneously), it is still the first to be created using keyframe animation. This movie required Winsor McCay and his assistant John A. Fitzsimmons (who traced the backgrounds) to create 10,000 drawings, which they inked on rice paper and mounted on cardboard.
Gertie is a dinosaur based on the Brontosaurus (nowadays known as Apatosaurus) skeleton in the American Museum of Natural History. McCay’s employer, William Randolph Hearst, was displeased with McCay’s success outside of the newspapers, and used his contractual power to reduce McCay’s stage activities.
Norman McLaren – Dots (1940)
An experimental film of dots animated by being drawn directly on filmstock.
Rhythmus 21 (1921) By Hans Richter (Early Abstract And Experimental Films)
Hans Richter (April 6, 1888 — February 1, 1976) was a painter, graphic artist, avant-gardist, film-experimenter and producer.
Science Friction (1959)
HORN DOG by Bill Plympton
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygHqzsrQ_Jw
Sand Animation : Making of the Hunter
A Dog made out of Sand – Stop Motion
Sand Animation
Happy Birthday Endi (stop-motion)
Waking Life
The Making of The Nightmare Before Christmas
Brought It To Life
How they brought it to life’ is a documentary about how 6 films were made during animation workshops for Canterbury Anifest’07.
All Creative Work Is Derivative
Walk Cycle Animation Tutorial
NOTES:
Animation precedes the invention of photography and the cine camera by several decades. It is an art form in which a world of dynamic image and sound may be synthesised completely out of nothing but a thought (see Peter Greenaway quote, right).
Animation is 100% artifice, and as such, the synthesis of movement through the sequential use of small fragments of time, which gives rise to this wondrous illusion, is open to manipulation in extraordinary ways.
Animation is the most nimble of mediums. It has survived the mechanical ‘persistence of vision’ toys popular in the 19th century; found expression as an art form in cinema; it was the means by which to experiment with time-based art and cinematic forms to present new visual vocabularies; it was brilliantly positioned to pioneer the use of computers to create moving images from numbers; it has demystified complex processes; visualised scientific phenomena and provided simulation models to help us understand the world; it has become an essential ingredient in multimedia content; it is imbedded in the control interface display of multi-million dollar jet fighter planes, it is integral to the computer games industry; it increasingly underpins all special effects in motion picture production; and it has provided content in an ideal form to distribute across a bandwidth poor networked environment.
Animation is an art form which can come from anywhere and which can go to anywhere – from a large production team working in a highly specialised studio or a lone individual working out of a bedroom, to an Imax Cinema screen several metres wide or a mobile phone screen a few centimetres across.
Animation can be as intimate and personal as a stick figure doodle jiggling in the corner of a dog-eared school exercise book cum flip book, or as expansive and public as animated laser lights splashed upon a cityscape (see Hong Kong’s Harbour ‘Symphony Of Lights’ project – Lloyd Weir, Art Director, Laservision NSW and AIM graduate 1996).
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| Laservision’s Hong Kong Harbour ‘Symphony Of Lights’ project. Art Director, AIM 1996 graduate, Lloyd Weir. |
Animation has the capacity to: entertain, exaggerate, simplify, abstract, reveal complex processes, clarify difficult-to-understand concepts, visualise data, be a vehicle for humorous writing, sell product, be an art form, create slapstick sight gags, be a vehicle for insightful social comment, portray the human condition, and tackle difficult and uncomfortable subject manner.
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| ‘Hello’ – a multi award winning animated film by 2003 AIM graduate, Jonathan Nix. |
| ANIMATION IS… |
The amplification of an idea through simplification and abstraction; a sight gag timed to perfection; a visual poem; a moving painting; extraordinary sublime moments in the orchestration of moving image and sound; throw-away sick slapstick humour designed for the moment; stories that remain with you forever; time-based imagery that can be fantastically surreal because of its unique process of realisation; a journey through the human body and other datascapes; the invisible made visible; informative dynamic graphics that monitor critical processes; an animated neon sign. At its best, animation is an exquisite character performance synthesised at the end of a pencil, or increasingly through the sweep and click of a computer mouse, that would otherwise win an award for best acting.
Little else compares with the thrill of breathing life into characters that might never have existed but for your imagination, or to move a large audience of strangers to laugh out loud at their antics, or to keep a person interactively engaged with them and the worlds you have invented, for hours on end.
Almost anything can be brought to life and be imbued with personality, twigs, clay, drawings, objects, computer meshes, and, of course, anything becomes possible in the world of animation. It can entertain, explain and fascinate. In all its wondrous forms from the traditional ‘bonk ’em on the head’ cartoon styles, to TV commercials, sophisticated narrative works and simulations, to experimental, digitally composited, special effects driven and art films, animation is a powerful vehicle for ideas.
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| Annemarie Szeleczky used sticks of macaroni and torn paper (left) and the Aussie breakfast spread, ‘Vegiemite’ for the experimental animation in her research project – “The Development of Experimental Animation Techniques Using Mixed Media, Spatial Layering and Gestural Artwork.” | ||
| The word ‘animation’ is derived from anima, the Latin word for soul or spirit. The verb ‘to animate’ literally means ‘to give life to‘.From his earliest artworks, hunting scenes sketched in ochre on a cave wall, to highly refined Greek sculptures, mankind has always attempted to imbue his art with expressions of life by depicting his subjects as if caught in a frozen moment in time suggestive of broader preceding and following actions.Egotistical man placed himself at the centre of the universe. He has always believed in the possibility of creating life – of playing god. Man has used his technology as an agent to help realise this desire in order to become ruler of all nature. |
| AUTOMATA |
History is rich with descriptions of attempts to imitate life by mechanical means in the form of hydraulic, pneumatic, or clockwork operated biological automata. Automata (or automatons – a machine which is relatively self-operating and capable of performing multiple complex movements on its own without the need for human control) had its greatest period of development following the rise of mechanicism with the revival of Greek culture during the Renaissance. There were, for example, isolated descriptions of talking heads claimed to have been constructed by Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Gerbert, and Robert Grosseteste. Perhaps of greater significance was the mechanical lion of da Vinci and the two automata created by Johannes Muller, called Regiomontanus (1436-1476). One of these was the fabled eagle which was claimed to have escorted the Emperor Maximilian to the city gates of Nuremberg.
The first android, a completely mechanical figure which simulated a living human or animal, operating with apparently responsive action, is believed to have been constructed by Hans Bullmann of Nuremberg (?-1535). Bullmann reportedly produced a number of extremely ingenious figures of men and women that moved and played musical instruments.
These early automata were mechanical devices that seemed to demonstrate lifelike behaviour. They took advantage not only of gears, but also of gravity, hydraulics, pulleys and sunlight – the effect could be dazzling, as with the extraordinary clock of Berne created in 1530. This massive timepiece hourly disgorged a dazzling pageantry of automata figures.
One of the most famous waterworks of the seventeenth century was that constructed at the chateau at Heilbrunn in about 1646. It featured various animated hydromechanical devices. A mechanical theatre was installed here in 1725 by Lorenz Rosenegge, a craftsman of Nuremberg. It featured 256 figures, 119 of which were animated by means of a single water turbine. A horizontal axis operating a series of cams regulated the movements of the figures by means of copper wires. The wheelwork consists of wooden wheels with iron teeth and pinions. A powerful hydraulic organ provides background music and covers the noise of the mechanism.
Just as the waterworks and grottoes of the Renaissance gardens were tangible revivals of the hydraulic and pneumatic devices of the ancient Greek culture, some of the same influence filtered into the field of clockmaking. The first conversion from the hydraulic and pneumatic to the purely mechanical automata, occurred in Europe with the advent of the clockmaker who made public and astronomical clocks with moving figurines.
It was a short step to a combination of the pinned cylinder and the spring-driven clockwork to provide the sound of living things and of musical instruments in automata. This combination made possible a great variety of developments in the late seventeenth and during the eighteenth centuries. The most notable of these were the androids constructed in the mid-eighteenth century by Jacques Vaucanson (1709-1782), who brought the production of automata to its highest point of development. Vaucanson is unquestionably the most import inventor in the history of automata, as well as one of the most important figures in the history of machine technology. Although he was responsible for pioneering in the development of machine tools and later inspired the work of Sir Henry Maudslay and others, it was, ironically enough, his automata — which occupied the briefest interlude in his life — which brought him permanent fame and fortune.
Born in 1709 in Grenoble, France, Vaucanson exhibited great mechanical ability at a very early age. After having attended the oratory college at Juilly he studied with the Jesuits at Grenoble, and in 1725 joined the order of Minims of Lyon. During his training period, however, Vaucanson indulged his mechanical interests by creating automatically flying angels. This impelled the provincial of the order to destroy his makeshift workshop, and Vaucanson used the incident as an excuse to to be relieved of his clerical vows.
Vaucanson moved to Paris and, in direct contrast with his recent religious life, gave himself up to a life of debauchery while he undertook the studies of mechanics, music, and anatomy. He developed an interest in the study of medicine and attempted to construct a “moving anatomy” which reproduced the principal organic functions. Debts, illness, and eventually boredom caused him to abandon the project. He went on to the construct his famous androids, which made him wealthy and famous throughout Europe.
In 1735 Vaucanson began to formulate plans for the construction of the first android, which was to be a life-sized figure of a musician, dressed in a rustic fashion and playing eleven melodies on its flute, moving the levers realistically by its fingers and blowing into the instrument with its mouth. In October 1737 the automaton was completed and exhibited first at the fair of Saint-Germain and later at Longueville. All Paris flocked to see the mechanical masterpiece with the human spirit; the press was extremely favorable, and Vaucanson was launched upon his career.
Vaucanson’s third and most famous automaton was “an artificial duck of gilt brass which drinks, eats, flounders in water, digests and excretes like a live duck” (see figure top right). It was Vaucanson’s intention to create in this duck the “moving anatomy” that he had visualized once before. Accordingly, the figure of the duck was produced full size of gilt brass in a simplified form, the body pierced with openings to permit the public to observe the process of digestion. The complexity of this duck was enormous – there were over four hundred moving pieces in a single wing.
Just as spring-wound clockwork made possible mechanical music for automata, it also made possible the reproduction of the sound of words by mechanical means. In the seventeenth century Kircher had affirmed that it was possible to produce a head which moved the eyes, lips, and tongue, and, by means of the sounds which it emitted, appeared to be alive. A similar project was attempted in 1705 by Valentin Merbitz, rector of the Kreuzschule of Dresden, who devoted five years to it. The next major advance in this field was made in about 1770 by Friedrich von Knauss of Vienna, who constructed four speaking heads. That his project was not completely successful is attested to by the fact that in 1779 the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg used the production of a successful speaking head as the theme for a contest for mechanicians and organ manufacturers, specifying that the machine be capable of speaking the five vowels. – The Turing Test of its day for clocksmiths and mechanical engineers?
The most spectacular of all automata that have survived until the present day are The Writer, The Artist, and The Musician produced by Pierre Jacquet-Droz (1771-1790) and his son Henry-Louis (1753-1791) of Geneva. Father and son combined all the technical developments known in their time in an effort to produce a machine that faithfully imitated a human being, and their efforts were as successful as any have ever been. The Writer, a life-size and lifelike figure of a boy seated as a desk, is capable of writing any message of up to 40 letters in length (above right).
“On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends” – Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism, 1895.
Boilerplate Man and Steam Man – Amazing Robots of the Victorian Era – fact or fiction? You decide:http://www.bigredhair.com/robots/index.html
With a public fascination for the newly discovered force of electricity, fictional writing suggested that pieces of dead flesh sewn together could be ‘animated’ into life just as severed frog legs could be kicked into a reflex action by a crude battery in a science laboratory demonstration.
Having discarded the earlier technologies of hydraulics, pneumatics, clockwork, which where thought to hold the key, man continues his quest to create life through robotics and electronics, and with more abstract notions of life using computers to create artificial life (AI), autonomous systems, Celluar Automata and nanotechnology. Man now plays directly with the building blocks of life itself via genetic engineering
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AIBO – Sony’s Artificial Intelligence roBOt. AIBO means ‘love’ or ‘attachment’ in Japanese. Many AIBO owners enjoyed teaching their pets new behaviors by reprogramming them in Sony’s ‘R-CODE’ language. However, in October 2001, Sony sent a cease-and-desist notice to the webmaster of of a programming hack site demanding that he stop distributing code that bypassed the copy prevention mechanisms of the robot. Whose life is it anyway? Read the protest: <click here> The AIBO was killed off by Sony in 2006. |
Nowhere is this obsession to play god and create worlds and to populate them with artificial autonomous life forms more in evidence than in computer games such as “World of War Craft” and “Second Life”.
Animators are also engaged in this same elusive quest.
Animation – as we might understand it as a technical process of synthesising motion from a series of static images – precedes the invention of the cinematograph by several decades. It has its roots in the numerous parlour-game toys popular in the early 1800s which experimented with persistence of vision effect known as the Phiphenomenon.One device of the times which demonstrated this effect was theThaumatrope accredited to three different people, Dr Fitton of London, Peter Roget and/or London physicist John Ayrton Paris. However it is known that Paris used his device to show the Phi phenomenon to the Royal College of Physicians in 1824. Its consisted of a disc with an image painted on each side. When the disc was spun by pulling on a twisted pair of strings, the images seemed to be combined – a bird on one side of the disc would appear in the empty cage on the other side. ‘Trope’ comes from the Greek word for ‘things that turn’. ‘Thauma’ means wondrous, therefore a thaumatrope is a ‘turning marvel’ or ‘wonder turner’.
Two important novelties of the day which harnessed the persistence of vision effect were invented simultaneously and independently during 1832. Joseph Plateau (Ghent, Belgium) who coined his toy the Phenakistiscope (Greek for ‘deceptive view’), while Professor Simon Ritter von Stampfer of the Polytechnical Institute (Vienna, Austria) called his invention the Stroboscope (‘apparition-box-viewer’). These devices were also known under other names such as: Fantascope, Phantamascope, Magic Disc or Kaleidorama.These toys had a disc carrying a sequence of images set in a ring around the circumference. When the disc was spun, the drawings were viewed through small slits cut into the disc which provided the visual interruptions needed for the eye to meld the images together thus creating the impression of motion. The Phenakistiscope disc is mounted on a spindle and viewed through the slots with the images facing a mirror. A person looking through the slits from the back of the disc would see a moving image reflected in the mirror. TheStroboscope (not illustrated here) had a separate counter spinning disc for the viewing slots and it was possible to see the movement without the use of a mirror. The discs of the day were either abstract patterns or performers such as jugglers or acrobats.
The Zoetrope was invented by William George Horner in 1834. He named his device Daedalum or ‘wheel of the devil’. This optical toy was forgotten for about 30 years until it was discovered and almost simultaneously patented in 1867 by William F. Lincoln, USA and in England by Milton Bradley. It was from Lincoln that the device received its new name Zoetrope, meaning ‘wheel of life’ from the Greek word ‘zoo’ for animal life and ‘trope’ for ‘things that turn’. Horner’s Zoetrope was an adaptation of the principles of the Phenakistoscope. However it was more convenient than Plateau’s invention in that it eliminated the need for a mirror and allowed several people to view the motion at one time. It was constructed of an open-top drum into which was placed a hand drawn sequence of pictures on a strip of paper facing inwards. The outside of the drum had slits cut into the cylindrical surface. When the drum was spun on a central axis, the images could be viewed through the slits giving rise to the illusion of movement. For the work of comtemporay artists working with modern Zoetrope, Versions of history often tend to be Western centric. It is also reported that an unknown Chinese inventor created a similar device around 180 – if true, that would push the history of synthesised motion back by 17 centuries! In 1877, Frenchman Charles Émile Reynaud, painter of lantern slides, refined the principle of the Zoetrope to use reflected light creating thePraxinoscope (patented December 1877). This was the first device to overcome the blurred distortion caused by viewing through narrow fast moving slots and it quickly replaced the Zoetrope in popularity. Like the Zoetrope, a paper strip of pictures is placed inside a shallow outer cylinder, so that each picture is reflected by the inner set of mirrors. The number of mirror facets equaled the number of pictures on the paper strip. When the outer cylinder rotates, the quick succession of images reflected in the mirrors gives the illusion of movement. This produced a image that was more brilliant and sharper than with any previous device. The following year Reynaud added a patent supplement for an improvement – the Praxinoscope Theatre. The mirror drum and cylinder were set in a wooden box with a glass-covered viewing aperture which reflected a card printed with a background. The moving subjects – a juggler, clowns, a steeple-chase – were printed on a black band, and appeared superimposed on a suitable scene. The background artwork could be changed (see below, right) Reynaud managed to adapt the principle behind his Praxinoscope to project a series of pictures onto a screen at a size suitable for presentation to a large audience. On 28 October 1892 Reynaud premièred ‘Pauvre Pierrot’ at his ‘Theatre Optique’ in Paris 1892 – the very first moving pictures shown publicly via projection onto a screen. To see a poster for this event, <click here> The standard Praxinoscope could only accommodate a second or two of animation because of the limited number of pictures contained on the paper strip. Reynaud, a painter of lantern slides, painted images on gelatine squares fastened between leather bands, with holes in metal strips between each picture. These holes engaged in pins on a revolving wheel, so that each picture was aligned with a facet of the mirror drum. This was the first commercial use of sprocket hole perforations that was to be so important for successful cinematography and anticipated other cinematic devices such as the spool of film. A background image from a separate magic lantern slide was projected over the animated figures (right). Reynaud set up this apparatus behind a translucent screen and gave most of the presentations himself, deftly manipulating the picture bands to and fro to extend the sequences, creating a twelve or fifteen minute performance from the 500 gelatine images. Other titles prepared for his ‘Theatre Optique’ ran to an astonishing 700 images.
Such shows as Charles Reynaud’s ‘Theatre Optique’ draw upon the earlier 17th century invention of the magic lantern. Presentations to a large gathering became an artform and fascinated audiences of the day with illusions of light and movement. The magic lantern or Laterna Magica was the ancestor of the modern slide projector. It was first described in Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae, by Athanasius Kircher in 1671. He may have been describing an already existing device rather than announcing a new invention. With an oil lamp and a lens, images painted on glass plates could be projected on to a suitable screen; the ancestor of the modern slide projector.
By the 19th century, there was a thriving trade of itinerant projectionists, who would travel the country with their magic lanterns, and a large number of slides, putting on shows in towns and villages. Some of the slides came with special effects, by means of extra sections that could slide or rotate across the main plate. One of the most famous of these, very popular with children, was the ‘rat-swallower’, where a series of rats would be seen leaping into a sleeping man’s mouth. Such elaborate hand-coloured glass slides had articulated levers which allowed parts of one image to be moved against another or with a twin lens projector, be dissolved together.
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| A horse painted on the walls of Lascaux caves, northern slopes of the Pyrenees , South central France | |
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| A horse and wild cattle painted on the walls of Lascaux | |
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| A bison painted on the rock walls of the Upper Paleolithic Altamira caves in Cantabria, Spain | |
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| An ancient Egyptian frieze depicting an apparent sequence of images illustrating the dynamic poses as used by wrestlers. | |
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| String operated figure kneading dough, Egypt, 2000 BC. | |
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| Dancing dwarfs in ivory – Egypt – Middle Kingdom – 12th Dynasty. The figures move through the use of strings and a pulley. Found at Lisht during excavations in 1934 | |
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| A mechanical Duck by Jacques Vaucanson circa 1730s “an artificial duck of gilt brass which drinks, eats, flounders in water, digests and excretes like a live duck” |
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| The Writer – a mechanical doll made in carved wood by Jaquet-Droz in 1772 which had the ability to write. At 28 inches tall, it gave an unusual impression of life and was presented to every court in Europe. Some argue that it is the most perfectly developed automaton writer in the world. |
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| Waltzing Couple – circa 1850 by Frenchman Alexandre Nicolas Theroude. Theroude started a wholesale toyselling company but after the 1830 Revolution which affected Parisian luxury industries, he shifted his focus away from making ordinary toys to become one of the foremost mechanical toy-makers in Paris applying his skill to the making of many large and magnificent automata. |
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| The Modern Compendium of Miniature Automata by the Lycette Bros, Melbourne, Australia. http://www.lycettebros.com/automata/ |
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| Mechanical automata is alive and kicking all over the Internet in the form of various kinetic artworks as well as cardboard and wooden kits and private automata commissions. The above is just one example of a cardboard kit which can produce sophisticated like-like movement.Flying Pig Paper Animation Kits http://www.flying-pig.co.uk/index.php Make your own Automata http://automata.co.uk/ |
12 Principals of Animation
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1. SQUASH AND STRETCH |
This action gives the illusion of weight and volume to a character as it moves. Also squash and stretch is useful in animating dialogue and doing facial expressions. How extreme the use of squash and stretch is, depends on what is required in animating the scene. Usually it’s broader in a short style of picture and subtler in a feature. It is used in all forms of character animation from a bouncing ball to the body weight of a person walking. This is the most important element you will be required to master and will be used often.
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2. ANTICIPATION |
This movement prepares the audience for a major action the character is about to perform, such as, starting to run, jump or change expression. A dancer does not just leap off the floor. A backwards motion occurs before the forward action is executed. The backward motion is the anticipation. A comic effect can be done by not using anticipation after a series of gags that used anticipation. Almost all real action has major or minor anticipation such as a pitcher’s wind-up or a golfers’ back swing. Feature animation is often less broad than short animation unless a scene requires it to develop a characters personality.
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3. STAGING |
A pose or action should clearly communicate to the audience the attitude, mood, reaction or idea of the character as it relates to the story and continuity of the story line. The effective use of long, medium, or close up shots, as well as camera angles also helps in telling the story. There is a limited amount of time in a film, so each sequence, scene and frame of film must relate to the overall story. Do not confuse the audience with too many actions at once. Use one action clearly stated to get the idea across, unless you are animating a scene that is to depict clutter and confusion. Staging directs the audience’s attention to the story or idea being told. Care must be taken in background design so it isn’t obscuring the animation or competing with it due to excess detail behind the animation. Background and animation should work together as a pictorial unit in a scene.
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4. STRAIGHT AHEAD AND POSE TO POSE ANIMATION |
Straight ahead animation starts at the first drawing and works drawing to drawing to the end of a scene. You can lose size, volume, and proportions with this method, but it does have spontaneity and freshness. Fast, wild action scenes are done this way. Pose to Pose is more planned out and charted with key drawings done at intervals throughout the scene. Size, volumes, and proportions are controlled better this way, as is the action. The lead animator will turn charting and keys over to his assistant. An assistant can be better used with this method so that the animator doesn’t have to draw every drawing in a scene. An animator can do more scenes this way and concentrate on the planning of the animation. Many scenes use a bit of both methods of animation.
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5. FOLLOW THROUGH AND OVERLAPPING ACTION |
When the main body of the character stops all other parts continue to catch up to the main mass of the character, such as arms, long hair, clothing, coat tails or a dress, floppy ears or a long tail (these follow the path of action). Nothing stops all at once. This is follow through. Overlapping action is when the character changes direction while his clothes or hair continues forward. The character is going in a new direction, to be followed, a number of frames later, by his clothes in the new direction. “DRAG,” in animation, for example, would be when Goofy starts to run, but his head, ears, upper body, and clothes do not keep up with his legs. In features, this type of action is done more subtly. Example: When Snow White starts to dance, her dress does not begin to move with her immediately but catches up a few frames later. Long hair and animal tail will also be handled in the same manner. Timing becomes critical to the effectiveness of drag and the overlapping action.
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6. SLOW-OUT AND SLOW-IN |
As action starts, we have more drawings near the starting pose, one or two in the middle, and more drawings near the next pose. Fewer drawings make the action faster and more drawings make the action slower. Slow-ins and slow-outs soften the action, making it more life-like. For a gag action, we may omit some slow-out or slow-ins for shock appeal or the surprise element. This will give more snap to the scene.
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7. ARCS |
All actions, with few exceptions (such as the animation of a mechanical device), follow an arc or slightly circular path. This is especially true of the human figure and the action of animals. Arcs give animation a more natural action and better flow. Think of natural movements in the terms of a pendulum swinging. All arm movement, head turns and even eye movements are executed on an arcs.
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8. SECONDARY ACTION |
This action adds to and enriches the main action and adds more dimension to the character animation, supplementing and/or re-enforcing the main action. Example: A character is angrily walking toward another character. The walk is forceful, aggressive, and forward leaning. The leg action is just short of a stomping walk. The secondary action is a few strong gestures of the arms working with the walk. Also, the possibility of dialogue being delivered at the same time with tilts and turns of the head to accentuate the walk and dialogue, but not so much as to distract from the walk action. All of these actions should work together in support of one another. Think of the walk as the primary action and arm swings, head bounce and all other actions of the body as secondary or supporting action.
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9. TIMING |
Expertise in timing comes best with experience and personal experimentation, using the trial and error method in refining technique. The basics are: more drawings between poses slow and smooth the action. Fewer drawings make the action faster and crisper. A variety of slow and fast timing within a scene adds texture and interest to the movement. Most animation is done on twos (one drawing photographed on two frames of film) or on ones (one drawing photographed on each frame of film). Twos are used most of the time, and ones are used during camera moves such as trucks, pans and occasionally for subtle and quick dialogue animation. Also, there is timing in the acting of a character to establish mood, emotion, and reaction to another character or to a situation. Studying movement of actors and performers on stage and in films is useful when animating human or animal characters. This frame by frame examination of film footage will aid you in understanding timing for animation. This is a great way to learn from the others.
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10. EXAGGERATION |
Exaggeration is not extreme distortion of a drawing or extremely broad, violent action all the time. Its like a caricature of facial features, expressions, poses, attitudes and actions. Action traced from live action film can be accurate, but stiff and mechanical. In feature animation, a character must move more broadly to look natural. The same is true of facial expressions, but the action should not be as broad as in a short cartoon style. Exaggeration in a walk or an eye movement or even a head turn will give your film more appeal. Use good taste and common sense to keep from becoming too theatrical and excessively animated.
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11. SOLID DRAWING |
The basic principles of drawing form, weight, volume solidity and the illusion of three dimension apply to animation as it does to academic drawing. The way you draw cartoons, you draw in the classical sense, using pencil sketches and drawings for reproduction of life. You transform these into color and movement giving the characters the illusion of three-and four-dimensional life. Three dimensional is movement in space. The fourth dimension is movement in time.
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12. APPEAL |
A live performer has charisma. An animated character has appeal. Appealing animation does not mean just being cute and cuddly. All characters have to have appeal whether they are heroic, villainous, comic or cute. Appeal, as you will use it, includes an easy to read design, clear drawing, and personality development that will capture and involve the audience’s interest. Early cartoons were basically a series of gags strung together on a main theme. Over the years, the artists have learned that to produce a feature there was a need for story continuity, character development and a higher quality of artwork throughout the entire production. Like all forms of story telling, the feature has to appeal to the mind as well as to the eye.
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THE DELIGHT OF VISUAL RHYTHMS
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Human beings find aural and visual rhythms immensely satisfying. In fact we are pattern seekers and take great pleasure in notions of ‘return’ and the familiar. Animators have taken advantage of this human disposition.
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CYCLES – CUTTING DOWN THE WORK
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There are lots of tricks that animators constantly use to cut down the amount of work to be done. Cycles of repeating action are just one of these ways – and whenever animators find an opportunity to include a cycle in a sequence, you can bet they will seize upon it.
Some of the very early cartoons were almost entirely based on cyclic actions, especially when it was discovered that animation could echo the rhythmic patterns found in music. Walt Disney’s 1928 ‘Steamboat Willie’ was the first sound cartoon to amaze audiences of the day with its close synchronism between image and sound. This relationship was exploited to the hilt, (giving rise to the term ‘Mickey Mousing’ – a sound track which follows exactly what the image is doing) as was the use of cyclic animation which took its cues from the repeated phases and beats of the musical score.
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TYPES OF CYCLIC ACTION
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Cycles can be cyclic in nature, that is, the artwork is used in order 1,2,3,4 followed by exact repeats of that order again 1,2,3,4 etc. This type of cycle is useful for representing things like a wheel spinning.Cycles may also oscillate. That is the artwork is used in order 1,2,3,4 but then the artwork is used in reverse order 4,3,2,1 to return to the start position again etc – like the motion of a clock pendulum. Or indeed cycles can be random, 1,4,3,1,2,4,3,1,2, etc – to mimic a flag fluttering wildly in a stiff breeze. Using the technique of cycle animation, it is possible for the animator to reuse such a sequence of drawings over and over again to build up screen time without any additional effort. Some cycles may consist of only two drawings, while others may be involve several tens of complex actions.
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| Above: an oscillating cycle. Fairings at each end of the above movement, give the illusion of acceleration and deceleration, resulting in a smooth change of direction. |
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| Above: a cyclic cycle. Again, fairings are used to make the blob dwell slightly at the top of its rotation. In other words, the inbetweens are closer together here and are spaced further apart at the bottom of the rotation. | Above: a random cycle. A set of drawings and images are shot in any order at the whim of the camera operator. |
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SOME EXAMPLES
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Roll over the man on the bike to the right to make him ride. There are two cycles here. A ‘resting’ pant cycle consisting of only 2 drawings with asymmetrical timing, the breath-in pose being held slightly longer, and the riding cycle consisting of 5 drawings. Note the way the bicycle wheels are treated. Lots of fussy spoke detail simply would not work (heavens! the wheels might even appear to go backwards as cart wheels always do in the Westerns – but that’s another story). There is however a distinct smudgy blur which helps the eye follow the rotational movement of each wheel. |
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 An Endless Road – Roll over this road with your mouse to travel down it endlessly. |
This simple 4 drawing cycle can fill the screen with rich motion. It only needs a small number of drawings because of the patternistic repeating elements in its design. One telephone pole, tree, or road line only has to animate into its immediate neighbour, not be animated all the way from infinity. We need to obey the laws of perspective, however. As the elements recede into the distance, not only do they get smaller, but the apparent distance between them also gets progressively smaller. All we need is a foreground element of a truck wobbling about, and the illusion is very strong even though the solution is so simple. |
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Parts of this machine cycle also work for the same reason as the road example. Each tooth on the large gear animates into the tooth of the next. Because there are many teeth on the big gear, it appears to move slower than the smaller gear. Besides these rotational movements, there are also translational motions as well distortions involving squash and stretch. Some parts move smoothly, while others like the rocker thingo at the back, which has an oscillating arc movements, has a thumpto it courtesy of the arrangement of its fairings. An amazing richness and variety of motion is coming from just 6 drawings. |
 Roll over this machine to activate it.
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 A minimum of 3 drawings are needed to establish a direction of rotation as in the fan example (right) and will keep it spinning forever. Two drawings create a back and forth oscillating motion which can be ambiguous when used for rotation. |
4 drawings keep this lady’s hair blow’n in the wind of the fan. The tips of her hair is a collection of wild shapes, while the decorative line work starting at her forehead has ripples running through them to give the wind a sense of direction.
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OFFSET CYCLES
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Grass bobbing in the wind, waves lapping on the shore, repetitive human or animal actions and the workings of machines are just some examples of motion which can be convincingly represented by a repeating series of drawings. These complex movements can be represented through forms of abstraction. Rhythmic visual patterns are also very meditative to look at.
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There are also two cycles involved in the movement of these reeds in the wind (left). One cycle picks up the reed as the wind blows stronger, while a second cycle sustains the action as though fluttering in a constant breeze. Exactly the same animation is used for the 5 reeds, but each is out of phase by a couple of frames not only to make the animation far richer to look at, but to suggest that the wind blows from the left and affects each reed at a slightly different moment in time – the Mexican wave effect. The sparkle on the moonlit lake is also a cycle – an effect which was created automatically by pulling one piece of artwork across some randomly placed holes in another. By the way, there are only 8 colours in this scene.
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A 3D version of a rich patternistic cycle (right). The apparent complexity of motion within this sequence comes largely through the cloning of one red frond and one green stemand the way the staggered timing of these elements move across each other. This test was made in 1985 during research into 3D computer animation.
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THE WALK
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Of course, walking is also a rhythmic cyclic action which can be described using a handful of drawings which can be repeated over and over again. For more about walk cycles, <click here>
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WHAT ARE INBETWEENS?
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‘Inbetweens’ are those drawings which define the type of movement and the time that passes between each key pose drawing or position. How you arrange their spacing greatly influences the look of the resulting movement. These intermediate drawings are called ‘tweens’ in USA cartoon animation studio jargon which makes an invented verb, ‘tweening’.
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SMOOTHING OUT THE ACTION
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One of the questions I’m most frequently asked by students is “Why is my animation so jerky?”Students often spend a lot of time creating drawings only to be disappointed by the results. Smooth animation is not necessarily a result of doing lots of inbetweens, although as we know, this will slow down the action so that it may appear smoother.
It is more to do with the considered placement of inbetweens upon a path of action or ‘motion arc’. It can even be greatly aided by strong intelligently worked out key poses in which two drawings account for how the various forms, masses and shapes will animate in a way that has some logic behind it.
Figure 1 shows the key poses or ‘extremes’ of action involved in the following example.
Figure 2 is an example of ill-considered inbetweening. Students with a background in fine art, design or graphic art often have no problem in drawing great looking characters. As a set of static drawings, every thing seems to work fine. But it is how a sequence of drawings work together across time which is important to the illusion of animation. Within a sequence, the forms and shapes need to be impelled with a sense of purposeful direction. The chaotic quality of the example in Figure 2could be useful in some circumstances, however. For example when a frail old lady reaches out for a glass of water with an unsteady hand. Or for animating Peter Sellers’ extraordinary performance of Dr Strangelove and his errant uncontrollable arm. The example of Figure 3seeks to use more logic in the arrangement of inbetweens.
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TIMING AND SPACING INBETWEENS
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Broadly, inbetweens which are closely spaced will move slower than those spaced further apart. If you space most of these drawings close to the start of an action and progressively space them further and further apart towards the end, the action will start slowly and build to a punch. The opposite will be true if most of the inbetweens are spaced close to the end – the action will come to a gentle halt. This variation in spacing is called ‘fairing’ the movement, or ‘slow in’ and ‘slow out’ or ‘ease in’ and ‘ease out’ and became one of the 12 principles of animationdeveloped by Disney studios.
Fast or slow, straight or curved, smooth or jerky, more than any other factor, timing via the placement of inbetweens defines the weight of an object and the inertia required to get it moving or to slow it down. Two objects of identical size and shape can appear to have vastly different weights simply by manipulating the spacing of their inbetweens. A heavy goods train with massive inertia, might take several kilometers of railway track to build up to its final running speed. This acceleration is long and slow. A mash mellow on the other hand, with practically no weight at all, might be shot from a gun and attain full speed within a few micro seconds. We can artificially represent these two types of movement through the way we use slow-in and slow-out.
The default setting for most time-based software packages designed to manipulate visual elements is to create strict mathematically even divisions between key positions. The result is very unnatural motion in that all objects instantaneously achieve full speed, or stop instantaneously. This works against almost everything we observe in nature and we read this type of motion as a ‘bump’ when its starts and a ‘bump’ when it finishes. This also applies to digital camera moves which can look particularly unnatural when no fairings have been used to start and stop the movement.
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MOTION ARCS – PATHS OF ACTION
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Machines may move in straight lines but animal or human characters rarely do. Their inbetweens are very often placed along a paths of action that describe curves or arcs. In fact moving things in arcs was considered so important to the look of naturalistic animation that it became one of the 12 guiding principles of Disney Studios. Motion arcs describe the path of action (travel) that things plot out when they move. When an animal moves, various parts of its body will move in sweeping arced paths of motion rather than in straight lines. When animating from one pose to another it is vitally important that we consider how the inbetween action is arranged in order to create a sense of flow, which is at the heart of all good animation.
Figure 3 has used both a ‘path of action’, (see Figure 4), and a considered arrangement of the inbetween drawing to produce smooth action. Since there is exactly the same number of drawings in both examples, smooth animation does not necessarily mean more work. There was just a little bit of thinking required to create a path of action for the hand, which gave it a purposeful direction, and the arrangement of inbetweens to depict the forces of acceleration and deceleration.
While key poses describe WHAT happens, inbetweens describe HOW it happens – the nature and qualities of the movement between the key poses or the ‘extremes’ of an action.
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figure 1
Roll back and forth over the above image to see the two key poses or ‘extremes’ animate. |
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figure 2
An example of inbetweening which has no logic behind it. |
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figure 3
Thoughtful inbetweening. This has exactly the same number of drawings as the above example, but they are arranged in such a way as to produce smooth movement. |
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figure 4
This is the ‘path of action’ (or motion arc) and arrangement of inbetweens used in the above example. Note the fairings used at either end of the path to accelerate and decelerate the action which progressively slows down the movement towards the end. |
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figure 5
These are the three keys involved in the following example. |
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figure 6
Inbetweening is used here to convey the notion that the club is very heavy. The action of the club lags behind the character’s body giving the impression that it takes considerable effort to raise it above his head. Once the club is at its maximum height, gravity starts to work in its favour and its descent to earth is very quick. |
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‘Pixillation‘ was the term coined by animation pioneer Norman McLaren in the 1950s for his technique of photographing human subjects with stop-motion frame by frame animation techniques rather than by live-action recording. He described the process as“applying the principles normally used in the photographing of animated and cartoon movies to the shooting of actors: that is, instead of placing drawings, cartoons or puppets in front of the animation camera, we place real human beings.” The actor becomes a kind of living stop-motion puppet. Live subjects shot in this way have a strange stilted surreal quality imparted to their movements as if they were bewitched puppets manipulated by an unseen force. The normal physical laws and forces which act upon ‘realtime’ movement, such as inertia, weight and gravity, are dispensed with as the apparent movement is entirely contrived and constructed with deliberate discrete manipulation.
The ability of the animation process to ‘edit’ time and action can also set in train a series of magical events which defy normal logic. Objects can move of their own accord or appear and disappear. Human subjects can be made to move about the set in the most extraordinary way. Norman McLaren’s inventive film, ‘Neighbours’ (right) made at the Canadian Film Board in 1952 is the quintessential example of the pixillation technique and was shot with variable-speed photography often using sped-up motion (shooting at 12 frames per second to be played back at 24) in combination with stop-frame techniques. Engaging pixillated sequences will always exploit the ‘magical’ time-manipulation possibilities which are characteristic of stop-motion recording – the impossible made possible because of the ability to distort and edit time, and play tricks with logical expectations. Pixillation can also playfully explore the possibilities of human interaction with inanimate objects and props which can take on a life and performance all their own. A woolen jumper can animate off a human subject and go for a crawl around the floor all by itself. Czech animator, Jan Svankmayer, has been called a “militant surrealist.” He began making films in the mid 1960s but by 1972 the Communist Party became so alarmed by the nihilistic and anti-authoritarian tone of his films, that it banned him from moviemaking. Although many of his films which involve human subjects are presented in conventional cinematic structures, the filming methods he uses within each shot are anything but ordinary. Svankmayer works with great ingenuity back and forth across the threshold of live-action shooting and stop-motion animation techniques to convey astonishing visual ideas and metaphors, that at times, can be psychologically disturbing.
Pixillation is a technique which also has great potential for use in interactives where it is yet to be fully exploited. A library of ‘poses’ digitised from video can be stored in computer memory and called upon in various order to produce all kinds of different scenarios. If you shoot your actors against a strongly coloured wall, (green screen) you will be able to use this colour to create a mask so that you can pull your subject out of its background. Because of the stilted, jerky nature of the action inherent in the technique, it works beautifully in a computer environment where the poses you chose to digitise can be designed and directed so that they work well with the prod and poke of the user’s mouse in a highly interactive and reactive fashion. Such interaction is very satisfying for the user.
‘Neighbours’ (1952) by Norman McLaren, National Film Board of Canada. An eloquent plea for peace, McLaren’s Oscar-winning film, ‘Neighbours’ shows how a lust for ownership escalates into genocide. ‘Neighbours’ can be found on YouTube: <click here> ‘A Chairy Tale‘ (1957) by Norman McLaren, ‘Gisele Kerozene‘ (1989) by Jan Kounen, a French film director born in Holland. Three `proto punk’ witches mount their broomsticks and indulge in a wild pesuit around a modern city to try and retrieve their stolen idol. This excellent example of pixillation was directly inspired by the floating jumps inNeighbours. To view this film on YouTube:<click here> ‘Sledgehammer‘ (1986) a Music Video Clip produced by Aardman Animation for singer/songwriter, Peter Gabriel. ‘Food‘ (1992) by Jan Svankmayer is a surreal movie trilogy combining live action, pixillation and claymation. These films can be found on YouTube: ‘The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb‘ (1993) by Dave Borthwick of Bolex Brothers. A boy born the size of a small doll is kidnapped by a genetic lab and must find a way back to his father in this inventive adventure filmed using stop motion animation techniques. Tom meets a variety of strange creatures and eventually discovers a race of miniature humans like himself. ‘Puppenhead‘ (1990) by David Cox |
LINKS
http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_contents.html
LEA 