12 Principles of Animation
Squash and Stretch: The most important principle is "squash and stretch", the purpose of this is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be applied to simple objects, like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions. Taken to an extreme point, a figure stretched or squashed to an exaggerated degree can have a comic like effect. In realistic animation, the most important aspect of this principle is the fact that an object's volume does not change when squashed or stretched.
Anticipation: Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic. A golfer making a swing has to swing the club back first. The technique can also be used for less physical actions, such as a character looking off-screen to anticipate someone's arrival, or attention focusing on an object that a character is about to pick up.
Staging: This principle is known as staging commonly known in theatre and film. Its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is going on in a scene; whether that idea is an action, a personality, an expression or a mood. This can be done by various means, such as the placement of a character in the frame, the use of light and shadow, and the angle and position of the camera. The priority of this principle is keeping focus on what is relevant, and avoiding unnecessary detail.
Straight Ahead Action & Pose to Pose: There are two different approaches to the actual technique. "Straight ahead action" means drawing out a scene frame by frame from beginning to end, while "pose to pose" involves starting with drawing a few frames, and then filling in the intervals later. "Straight ahead action" creates a dynamic illusion of movement, and is better for producing realistic sequences. It is hard to maintain and to create exact, convincing poses along the way. "Pose to pose" works better for dramatic or emotional scenes, a combination of the two techniques is often used. The use of computers facilitates this method, as computers can fill in the missing sequences in between poses automatically. It is, however, still important to oversee this process and apply the other principles discussed.
Follow through & Overlapping: Follow through and overlapping action is a general heading for two closely related techniques which help to render movement more realistically, and help to give the impression that characters have physics. "Follow through" means that loosely tied parts of a body should continue moving after the character has stopped and the parts should keep moving beyond the point where the character stopped to be "pulled back" only towards the centre of mass and/or exhibiting various degrees of oscillation damping. "Overlapping action" is for parts of the body to move at different rates. A third related technique is "drag", where a character starts to move and parts of him take a few frames to catch up. These parts can be inanimate objects like clothing or the antenna on a car, or parts of the body, such as arms or hair. On the human body, the torso is the core, with arms, legs, head and hair that normally follow the torso's movement. Body parts with much tissue, such as large stomachs and breasts, or the loose skin on a dog, are more possible to independent movement than bonier body parts. Again, exaggerated use of this can produce a comical effect, while more realistic animation must time the actions exactly, to produce a convincing result.
Slow in & Slow out: The movement of the human body, and most other objects, needs time to speed up and slow down. For this reason, animation looks more realistic if it has more drawings near the beginning and end of an action, emphasising the extreme poses, and fewer in the middle. This principle goes for characters moving between two extreme poses, such as sitting down and standing up, but also for inanimate, moving objects, like the pendulum in the above illustration.
Arc: Most natural action tends to follow an arched angle, and animation should use this principle by following implied "arcs" for greater realism. This can apply to a limb moving by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory. The exception is mechanical movement, which moves in straight lines. As an object's speed increases, arcs tend to flatten out in moving ahead and broaden in turns. In baseball, a fast ball would tend to move in a straighter line than other pitches; while a figure skater moving at top speed would be unable to turn as sharply as a slower skater, and would need to cover more ground to complete the turn.
Secondary Action: Adding secondary actions to an action gives a scene more life, and can help to support the main action. A person walking can swing his arms or keep them in his pockets, he can speak or whistle, or he can express emotions through facial expressions. The important thing about secondary actions is that they emphasise, rather than take attention away from, the main action. If that is the case, those actions are better left out. In the case of facial expressions, during a dramatic movement these will go unnoticed. In these cases it is better to include them at the beginning and the end of the movement.
Timing: Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, linked to the speed of the action on film. On a purely physical level, correct timing makes objects appear to follow the laws of physics; for instance, an object's weight is how it reacts, like a push. Timing is critical for establishing a character's mood, emotion, and reaction. It can also be a device to communicate to a character's personality.
Exaggeration: Exaggeration is an effect especially useful for animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons.The classical definition of exaggeration, employed by Disney, was to remain true to reality, just presenting it in a wilder, more extreme form. Other forms of exaggeration can involve the supernatural or unreal, alterations in the physical features of a character, or elements in the storyline itself. It is important to have a certain level of restraint when using exaggeration; if a scene contains several elements, there should be a balance in how those elements are exaggerated in relation to each other, to avoid confusing the audience.
Solid Drawing: The principle of drawing means taking in forms of three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight. The animator needs to be skilled in drawing and has to understand the basics of three-dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow, etc... Modern-day computer animators draw less because of the facilities computers give them, yet their work benefits greatly from a basic understanding of animation principles, and their additions to basic computer animation.
Appeal: Appeal in a cartoon character corresponds to what would be called charisma in an actor. A character who is appealing is not necessarily sympathetic, villains or monsters can also be appealing – the important thing is that the viewer feels the character is real and interesting. There are several tricks for making a character connect better with the audience; for likeable characters a symmetrical or baby-like face tends to be effective. A complicated or hard to read face will lack appeal, it may more accurately be described as 'captivation' in the composition of the pose, or the character design.
Illusion of Movement, Persistence of vision & Frame rates
When talking about television and film we usually talk about the programme or film that was on but ever wondered how it all works? Well in animation a basic animation is made up of different pictures or frames and a moving ‘image’ is actually an illusion what it is you really see is a process of neatly ordered still images being played in a time line and displayed in a fast sequence and it is because of this process that our eyes and brains perceive them as one smooth image.
When talking about television and film we usually talk about the programme or film that was on but ever wondered how it all works? Well in animation a basic animation is made up of different pictures or frames and a moving ‘image’ is actually an illusion what it is you really see is a process of neatly ordered still images being played in a time line and displayed in a fast sequence and it is because of this process that our eyes and brains perceive them as one smooth image.
[This still image gives the illusion of movement when stared at for too long]
In order to understand how motion works we need to know how our eyes work and so when we look at a picture or a scene it is the light that is reflected from the image that enters our vision and this light passes through the lens in front of the eye and this focuses the light on our retinas and the back surface of our eyes. The way the light travels the image and or scene reaches the retina upside down and the nerve cells in our retinas respond to the light and sends signals to the brain at which point the brains interprets the image from the signals given. Because of our perception the eye retains the image of what we can see for a moment after we see it and this is called ‘Visual Persistence’ and this occurs because of the chemical representation that forms in our eyes and this takes time to fade away. Alternately if a series of pictures process in our vision too slowly the pictures will not create the illusion that was first seen.
[Persistence of vision as exampled from the method of Thaumatrope]
There is a phenomenon known as the Phi Phenomenon and with the aid of visual persistence this creates the illusion of a single, still picture from fast repeating pictures, a film or television signal is really just a series of still images and this is displayed in rapid succession. If there are small changes from one picture to another our brain fills the gaps between the images movement.
[Different frames taken which when played in a loop formation will create a moving image]
Cinema and TV broadcast images are seemingly enough just one moving image but they are more than that, a collection of moving images composed of a series of still pictures and these are called ‘frames’ and the ‘frame rate’ is the number of frames played per second, this is commonly used when recording footage of a scene or capturing game play and for this to work by the phi phenomenon the ‘frame rate’ must be consistently rapid so that ‘visual persistence’ comes into play and can take effect and an example of this would be movies these are filmed and played back at around 24 frames per second and this frame rate is fast enough to produce the illusion of motion. This image is of Edison recording of a sneeze which he compiled using the frames and playing back at a rapid speed to make an animation
Animation Pioneers
Edward Muybridge
Edward Muybridge was born in 1830 and from then onwards during his lifetime he created a method of taking pictures of horses and the way he cleverly did this was by taking twelve sequence shots of a horse in motion and created with that data a moving image or animation and this is what defined the illusion of movement.
Edward left San Franciso in 1860 as a merchant and returned in 1867 as a professional photographer, with highly technical skills and a keen eye for art, He became really successful in photography focusing on landscapes and architectural subjects. When the West was the land of imagination Edward converted a lightweight train carriage into a portable darkroom to carry out his work, Edwards stereographs the popular format of the period were sold by many various galleries and photographic entrepreneurs in San Francisco. Muybridge took enormous physical risks to take his photographs by using a heavy view camera, An amazing image he took can be seen of him perched casually on top of a rock over the Yosemite Valley.
Edward Muybridge often travelled to England and Europe a lot to publicise his work and in 1882 he lectured at the Royal institution in London in front of a sell-out audience there he displayed his photographs on screen and showed moving pictures projected by his 'zoopraxiscope'
[Image of an zoopraxiscope, one of which used to project Edwards work upon screen]
After his work at the University of Pennsylvania, Muybridge travelled widely and gave tons of lectures and demonstrations of his still photography and locomotion picture sequences, Over 200,000 photographs were taken by Edward Muybridge and most were used for Phenakistoscope to add to the locomotion, One of which was of a couple waltzing.
Edward Muybridge returned to England permernantly in 1894, there he continued to lecture intensivly throughut Great Britain and only once returned to Pennsylvania to dispose of property related to his work at the University, Muybridge died in 1904, Since his death his work has forever changed the understanding and interpretation of the world and has inspired artists such as Marcel Duchamp and Francis Bacon.
George Melies
George was born in 1861 and during his lifetime George was the first person to discover that he could use stop motion as a render trick for visual effects.
He was also the first person to use fade in and out tools and dissolve to create the first real narrative films.
George began to shoot his first films in May of 1896 and then screening these films at the theatre by August that same year. At the end of the year George founded the Star Film Company where many of his earliest films were copies and remakes of the films by the Lumiere Brothers, these were made to compete with the two-thousand daily customers of the grand cafe and this included his first film known and titled as 'Playing Cards' which was similar to a Lumiere Brothers film.
In these early films George began to experiment with his special effects that were unique to his film making and this happened accidently when his camera jammed in the middle of a take and this caused a bus to change into a hearse and the women in the take to turn into men, A substituion trick called 'The Stop Trick' had been discovered. He first decided to use these newly discovered effects in a film he made called 'The Vanishing Lady'
In 1896, George decided to start work on building a film studio on his property in Montreuil, Just outside of Paris and the main stage building was made entirely of glass walls and ceilings this was because he was to allow in sunlight for film exposure and the dimensions of these walls and ceilings were identicle to that of the Robert-Houdin theatre, The theatre in which he screened his first films. During the time that George had this film studio he in total made 78 films in 1896 and 52 in 1897. By this time he had covered every single genre of film that he would then continue to film for the rest of his career and these types of films included Lumiere like documentaries, comedies and historical reconstructions and many, many more genres of film. Just one of these was made and titled 'The Haunted Castle' which can be considered a horror film, very early horror films.
In May of 1902 George made his most famous film yet, titled 'A Trip to the Moon' the film was an enormous success in France and around the world and George sold both black and white and coloured versions to keen exhibitor. The film made George famous in the United States where producers had pirated illegal copies of the film and thus profitted largely off its success.
George Melies died of cancer in 1938, shortly after the passing of his associate, whom worked along side George in his film making.
Lumiere Brothers
The Lumiere Brothers were born in Besancon, France and move to Lyon in 1970 where they both attended the largest technical school in Lyon; Martiniere. Their father ran a photographic firm where both the brothers had worked for him, Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a manager there, Louis had managed to improve the still-photograph process that was known as a 'dry-plate' process and this is the major step they needed towards moving images.
Once their father had retired the brothers began to create moving pictures as they patented a large number of amazing processes leading to their film camera with the film perforations which was implemented by Emile Reynaud as a means of pushing the film through the camera and projector, the brothers first footage ever to be recorded using cinematographe was in 1895 the first film shows the workers leaving the Lumiere factory
The Lumieres held their first private screening of theor projected motion pictures in 1895 and the first ever public screening of films at which people were charged without question was held in 1985 on December the 28th, This public screening included ten of their short films one of them being 'Exiting the Factory' and each film was 17 meters long in length and ran for around fifty seconds each short film.
The Lumieres went on tour with their cinematographe in 1896 by visiting such places like Brussels, Bombay, London, New York and Montreal. The moving images had altered an immediate and significant imfluence on popular culture with their film ' The Arrival of a train at La Ciotat '.
In 1909 the brothers received the 'Elliott Cresson Medal' for their work in cinematography and even though they weren't the first to invent or develop techniques used to create motion pictures they are widely known as one of the first inventors of this brilliant technology for CInema and are about the first that understood how it all works.
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Louis Lumiere sadly passed in 1948 at the age of 63 follow by his brother six years later who died in 1954, The Brothers managed to patent their techniques before anyone and it is the process like the dry-plate process that gave the cinematographe business a kick in the right direction.
Emile Reynaud
Emile Reynaud was born in 1844 and went on to become an inventor who was responsible for the first animated cartoons and he created the first Praxinoscope in 1877 and this machine was an animation device that used a strip of film placed around the inside of the cylinder. Someone who was to look inside at the mirriors would be seeing a rapid compilation of images that create the ilusion of movement which was much clearer than the zoetrope.
Reynaud was not only responsible for inventing the praxinoscope, he was also responsible for the creation of the theatre optique and this was a picture show that was presented by Emile Reynaud to present the projected moving images to an audience and this came before the first films by the Lumiere Brothers.
In 1888 Reynaud created a large scale proected version using his projection praxinoscope, Glass-plates were all painted individually by Reynaud and Reynaud was able to create a rapid series of moving images rather than just being restricted to the twelve images he had been using.
In 1892 Emile Reynaud gave his first ever public performance of a picture show in motion in Paris and this performance included three cartoons; 'Paurve Pierrot, Un bon bock and Le Clown et ses chiens. These cartoons included 500 to 600 hand painted images which in turn allowed the cartoon to last around fifteen minutes and he was the projectionist whilst he had a piano player by his side, let's have a look at some of these cartoons.
Reynauds later years were tragic for him especially after his creations became outmoded by the cinematograph. Emile became penniless and poor, he then decided to throw the greater part of his work into the Seine an the public by this time had forgotten about his Theatre optique shows which had been shown at the Musee Grevin in 1892 to 1900, Unfortunately Emile Reynaud died in a hospice on the bank of the Seine where he was cared for since 1917.
Contemporary Animation
TV: Matt Groening
Matt Groening was born in 1954 and made his first professional cartoon from 1977-1997 called Life in Hell, the cartoon was carried in 250 newspapers. Life in Hell caught the attention of James Brooks with the idea of working in animation for the Fox variety show The Tracey Ullman Show. Originally, Groening was asked to adapt his Life in Hell characters for the show. Fearing the loss of ownership rights, Groening decided to create something new and came up with a cartoon family, the Simpson family, and named the members after his own parents and sisters which has since aired 559 episodes. In 1997, Groening and writer David Cohen developed Futurama, an animated series about life in the year 3000, which premièred in 1999.
In 1987 Matt Groening feared the loss of his work, when he decided to come up with something completely new, he came up with the cartoon family we all know and love today called "The Simpson Family" and groening named each character after his mother and father and sister, and this beloved cartoon family has since been aired in 562 episodes during the year of 1999.
Around four years after the success of the Simpsons Matt Groening and a former writer of the Simpsons decided to develop a new cartoon which is today known as Futurama, a cartoon series that follows the life of a 20th century pizza delivery boy called 'Fry' as he roams about exactly a thousand years in the future, The year 3000.
The success of Groenings contributions with his cartoons have won him twelve primetime Emmy awards, ten for the Simpsons and two for Futurama as well as that he also received the British Comedy Award for his outstanding contributions to the comedy genre in 2004.
Groening had specific intentions for his cartoon family 'The Simpsons' he wanted a adult themed cartoon that would be aired on late night telelvision just like the Modern Family Guy cartoon is, however over the years the cartoon has been watched by millions and has appealed to more younger audiences which has been picked up by Matt and ever since then the Simpsons has been redesigned for a younger audience and is usually aired around 6pm on telelvision.
Not only did Groening want to create this Adult themed cartoon, but he did return to that idea again after the SImspons when he came to creating Futurama but he never managed to make a artoon that appealed to the adult audience, instead he kept to his younger audiences with these cartoons and has since been creating merchandise based off of these telelvision cartoons.
To this day Matt Groening still works on his cartoons and releases them to be shown in the primetime slot every day in many countries.
FILM: Seth Macfarlane
Seth Macfarlane was born in 1973 and has become an actor, animator, comedian, writer, producer, director and much more and is famously known for his creation of Family Guy in 1999 and as the co-creator in another cartoon series called American Dad, These are the two cartoons that kicked Seth into the film making business and from these cartoons he made a success off of one particular film, Ted.
Seth Macfarlane made his movie ted in the direction of a live action film in 2012 and he, along with directing the film wrote the screenplay for this live action and animated cross-over he also voiced and produced this film.
To summarise the film tells the story about a man named Mark Wahlberg and his teddy, voiced by Seth, This teddy keeps Mark and his Girlfriend from moving on with their lives and along the way contains alot of R rated content.
The movie Ted is a live-action effort with computer animation that is handled by visual effects and inspiration for this live-action/animation cross-over came from his cartoon ' Family Guy', voices and references were used heavily in the film, you just have to find them, the most notable being the voice of Peter Griffin used for the teddy 'Ted' who is basically a drink and drug taking teddy bear.
The intentions that Seth Macfarlane had for this film was he wanted to create a feature length film full of sexual, drug and drink references and to his surprise the film was reviewed and given an R -Rating, after this it was all because of this talking teddy bear that it became a box office success and the movie has become the highest grossing R-rating comedy of all time, beating that of the Hangover Part 2.
The audience for this movie was clear to Seth, a Adult themed movie, but this movie turned out to be very popular amongst younger audiences and the purpose of this movie was clear, to provide a good few laughs here and there, the genre being comedy Seth Macfarlane has a unique talent for comedy and has provided good comedy since 1999.
In terms of Seth's animation techniques i think that the combination between live action and visual effects has really given the comedy aspect a good kick in this film and since the time of earlier Live action & Animation crossovers with Disneys 'Space Jam' which was one of the first times that this was ever done.
Seth has received many awards for his efforts and contributions to the comedy genre especially in the year 2000 when he received the award for 'Outstanding Voice-over performance' with Family Guy and again in 2002 for his musical aspects to the Family guy cartoon by receiving the award for 'outstanding Music and Lyrics'.
As of present day, Seth Macfarlane continues to create classic comedy and pushing out new episodes of Family Guy and American Dad and he has influenced other animators like Matt Groening to take animating with a pinch of salt as every animator has a style and that of Matt Groenings is making animations like the Simpsons and aiming it at a younger audience, whereas for Seth making Adult themed and controversial cartoons that are American Dad and Family Guy.
2D GAME: Terraria
Terraria is a 2D side-scrolling game developed by Re-Logic games, the aim of the game is to gather resources, build a base, cook these materials and defeat bosses and explore!, you could almost say that it is pretty much a two-dimensional minecraft, but no! the thing that makes this game a real success is the platforms it was released on, more platforms means more fans and more fans means more motive, the game was released at the end of mark 2013 on home consoles. Terraria is a very open ended game, it's tailored by the player heavily, the way the animation was created for terraria really gives it a cartooney feel and a much more fun feel like titles such a Metroid and if we take a look at the images that have been developed for the animations in Terraria you'll see that alot of frames have been created to give the characters and game a smoother look and feel, remember more images means a smoother animation.
Take a look at the picture above, it shows the process of still images being used to create the illustion of movement or more modernly known as creating of a 'gif' and this process you see in the image is the process of creating an animation for a characters attack, the more images that are used or frames then the the animation will be much smoother, i can only assume there are more than five frames in this animation as the in game representation is really smooth when attacking.
The style and layout of the animation is a cartoon like format with a survival aspect to the animations, every animation has a role in the character you play whether that be mining, killing off monster or smelting some ore and drinking potions or firing a weapon, each animation has a particular style and the one above is done in a cel-shady type style with a attacking animation done in a still image sequence.
Since the early days of animation pioneers there is no longer need for praxinscoping or zoetroping to get animations with all the computer software and technology at our disposal, making an animation is as simple as clicking a button nowadays, There hasn't been any real influence on the rest of the contemporary animation world in terraria as this game is too recent, however if i were to point out that Super Mario Brothers, a very old and classic 2D animated game did indeed influence the works of many different 2D games that use the process of still image animations, such as Metroid for example.
Traditional Animation
Some traditional methods of animation are simple versions of animation that we see today. For example above you will see a YouTube video on Flip Booking, the method of flip booking involves drawing images on each page of a book and changing it slightly each time, a bit like stop motion camera work where you take a picture each time, it’s virtually that without the need for taking pictures, the way it works it you flip through the book really fast to reveal the moving picture and this method uses the illusion of movement to trick your brain into thinking that it is seeing one moving image.
Cel-Animation
In very early cartoons made before the use of cell, The entire frame including the background and all character and items were drawn on a single sheet of paper, then photographed everything had to be redrawn for each frame containing movements a perfect example of this would be the very first animations of the South Park episodes, I watched a documentary on the making of South Park and discovered this Cel-Animation technique, Just take a look at the image below and just look at the simplicity and hand drawn piece of the very first south park shorts in 1992, This is what they had to do.
Digital Animation
Rotoscoping: Rotoscoping is an animation technique which animators go ahead and trace over footage, tracing frame by frame it is mostly used in live action and animated films, in the past live action film images were projected onto a sheet of frosted glass and re-drawn by the animator and the projection equipment is called a rotoscope and this device was later replaced by computers.
The technique of rotoscoping was made by an illustrator called Max Fleischer and he used this technique in his animated series “Out of the inkwell”. Max used rotoscoping in many of his later cartoons in the 1930's and animation studios hopped on board with the idea of rotoscoping and their most effective use of rotoscoping was in their series of short length noir styled Superman cartoons.
2D Bitmap & Vector Graphics
2D bitmap and vector graphics, similar to each other in a way, however one is better than the other. Bitmap images are made up of pixels in a large grid, Pixels are elements of a picture or tiny dots of individual colour in which come together to form the images you see, Television uses this for example, Most computer monitors display around 70 – 100 pixels per inch. Bitmap images are resolution dependant and because of this it is difficult to increase or decrease their size without it affecting the quality of the image.
Vector images are one of the two major graphic types in 2D render and these vector graphics are made up of many individual objects. Each of these objects have individual properties assigned to them, Like colour for example, Vector graphics are resolution dependant too, because they can go to the highest quality on any scale.
Conclusion
Well, There you have it the History of Animation from the Past to the Present, I've learnt quite alot about the Animation pioneers who revolutionised the animating world we know today, It is unfortunate that they didn't receive the full recognition they deserved, However i think that they made great progress and steps to bring the forms of entertainment we have today closer to the future.
