Growth of experimental animation

When animation was starting out it was mostly a representational form of art such as classical paintings but as the options of animation opened up, filmakers realised that the limits of live action could be breached by using animation. Therefore animations which are not classical is the sense that they are not a set progressive story such as the Disney animations which all had varying stories but the story concepts of Disney films never even scratched the surface of what animation could be or what it could acomplish. Short animation films started becoming more popular and animation was being used for all sorts of stories and ideas. Some experimental animations to list are 'Sita Sings the Blues', 'Soma' and 'Paradise'. 'Paradise' is an animation created by Ishu Patel who was an abstract animator that used lots of different experimental techniques that played with light, materials and exposure.

Use of rotoscoping in traditional animation

Rotoscoping is a process where a live action video is traced over frame by frame. This process can be used not just to copy live action videos put to implement the authentic natural movement into characters. Lots of animated films have used rotoscoping as a way of tackling difficult movements, Anastasia(1997) used rotoscoping quite extensively and many other animations used rotoscoping for a few scenes or so. The downside of using rotoscoping in hand drawn animation is that it can be used as a crutch instead of a tool and people who think they are producing animations are merely copying the live action. This gives the animation ironically a stale feel because the point of animation is self expression and with just copying a live action movement, that self expression is limited.

Cell Animation

The colouring of animations is generally pretty set in the style of cell painted animation, for example there is a consistent style of colouring in cell animation because this has been the set style for cell animation in the early Disney years up until 'The Little Mermaid’, which was the last Disney animation to use cell colouring. The process of painted cell animation included lots of workers, who were usually women at the time cell painted animation was popular, each worker has sheets of acetate that they painted over. This process took place after the animators had drawn the frames to paper. The reason the frames were traced onto acetate was because acetate is transparent and this meant that other foreground objects such as other characters, objects and the background could be layered above or behind the character.

The other side background

For the first scene i created a background describing the setting which is a cave. i tried creating the background in photoshop first of all and then i decided that it wold be more cnosistant with the visual theme of my animation if i created the backgrounds by hand with pencil. I drew the character in with the background because he is stationary in this scene and i thought that would make more sense.

The Other Side Linetest

This is a linetest for the opening sequence of my animation for the other side brief, I like how to chest feels to have some weight to it, I made sure I did this by having the arms extended and my character taking short long steps to exaggerate the situation. Also I made sure to include some anticipation before he puts the chest down, this really makes the animation more human and realistic. There is also some overlapping action with the padlock; I tried to make the motion of the padlock as realistic as possible to complement the different motions in the scene. This relates to the animation skills module when I learnt to animate a pendulum swing, the padlock is essentially a pendulum swing. Although I think this linetest is overall positive there are a few mistakes and things to work on, for example the face of my character is not as consistent as it should be throughout the frames. This is due to poor character design I think because I hadn't developed this character very much so I should have payed more attention to character development in the pre-production stage.

Lilo model sheet

This is a character sheet of Lilo from Lilo and Stitch, this model sheet shows Lilo rom different angles and in different positions, this is important to get a feel for the character and the way she acts. There are also notes written on the model sheet to make sure the animators that are animating Lilo know what are her distinctive features and to keep them consistent throughout.

Aladdin character design

This is a character design sheet from Aladdin where the initial shapes are shown and then these shapes are built upon to form the features and clothing of the characters. The basic structure of the characters is important because it holds the form of the characters together, it can be compared to the armature of a stop motion puppet as it has the same function. Also using basic shapes for the structure of the character adds an aesthetic appeal to the shape of the character.

 

Atlantis character sheet

This is a charcter sheet for Atlantis showing how the character is defined in terms of basic shapes and angles and the scale of the character. I think this is really useful because it gives the animator reference which will help keep the character consistant. Although the character is contructed from basic shapes, there is still a very realistic feeling to the character. This will be due to the character artists knowledge and observational drawing skills.

Hercules model sheet

This is a model sheet for Hercules, the character design for Hercules is very dynamic and the underlying basic shapes are fairly clear. Because Hercules is a hero type character his chest is a v shape which implies he is strong. The clothing is suitable to the setting and the theme of the animation which is important because otherwise the character would look out of place.

use of CGI in animated and live action films

As technology has advanced, the options for filmakers and animators have opened up. This is demonstated by James Baxter in the ballroom scene in beauty and the beast where the romantic mood is enchanced by the use of perspective and the way the camera is moved around belle and the beast. This scene was created by drawing the characters over a computer generated background, This technique has been used in many animated films such as Sinbad and Treasure Planet. It allows a greater use of perspective and makes the animated world feel alot more realistic and immersive. CGI is heavily implemented in movies in the modern day, even seemingly live action movies have at least some CGI blended in with the real world, this allows the films to have a heavily realistic but a much more dynamic and exciting world. A film famous for CGI almost overtaking the live action content of the film is the film Avatar(2009) which used costumes that mapped the actors movements into a 3d computer generated program which then converted the actors movements into the computer generated characters. This certainly wasnt the first use of this technique as Happy Feet(2006) made use of this technology for all the tap dancing penguins.

 

Backgrounds in animation

Backgrounds in animation have always been important, this is because the illusion of the character in the animated world is incomplete without the use of effective backgrounds. Backgrounds however only really fully apply to 2d animation as 3d animation is the actual three-dimensional world and so it is treated as such, the background not being backgrounds but actual modeled landscapes. However some 3d movies use 2d planes that are painted as backgrounds simulation the process of using backgrounds in 2d animation. Studio Ghibi are known for their stunning, beautiful backgrounds that really complete the world Hayao Miyazaki has created. For most animated productions in the early Disney era of animation the backgrounds were hand painted with watercolours and the hand crafted aura of the films really resonated through the backgrounds.

 

Background from 'Spirited Away'