TASK 2 – 2D ANIMATION ESSAY

Techniques & Development of 2D Animation

What is Animation

Animation is the general term used to describe the process of making a representation of movement; an illusion of motion. The very earliest examples of animation can be found in cave paintings from the Paleolithic period, and also include examples of early pottery decoration.

5200 year old Pottery decoration

What we now consider to be 2D animation is the traditional animation method that has existed since the late 1800s. The basic method uses a series of static images and shows them to the viewer one after the other in a smooth and rapid sequence. In its most basic form, it is one drawing followed by another in a slightly different pose with very minimal difference, followed by another again in a slightly different pose. When we think of classic animation, Walt Disney comes to mind. He used 2D animation to make films like Snow White and characters like Mickey Mouse.

This is an image of Mickey Mouse who is an iconic Disney character to millions of people; he first appeared in Walt’s first ever animated short film `Steamboat Willie` 1928.

To the viewer, the series of drawings presented to them in this way creates the illusion of movement. This is called the Phi Phenomenon which is an optical illusion which causes the viewer to see the series of still images as continuous movement (this is also true of live action films).

Classic Animation of a Bouncing Ball

An Early Zoetrope

Phi Phenomenon Motion Image

History of Animation and Early Animation Techniques

As we can see, 2D animation has been developing over a long period of time; and there are many time consuming traditional techniques such as Flip/Flick Book, Phenakistoscope (1832), Zoetrope (1834), Praxinoscope (1877) but 2D animation did not really start to develop until Motion Picture Films became popular in the 1890s.

Max Wertheimer & Phi Phenomenon

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943), the founder of the Gestalt School of Psychology, published a very influential monograph on the perception of apparent motion in 1912. This influenced perceptual theory and research into motion. Wertheimer's research was inspired by a lucky observation of a pure apparent movement, which he called the phi-phenomenon to distinguish it from optimal apparent movement (beta), which resembles real movement. Wertheimer called his observation 'pure' because it was perceived in the absence of any object being seen to change its position in space.

The Phenakistoscope

The Phenakistoscope uses the persistence of vision principal to create the illusion of motion; it uses a spinning disk with the drawings equally spaced around the outside. The viewer looks through a mirror through spinning viewing slits and sees the drawings seemingly moving. This uses the Phi Phenomenon.

The Zoetrope

For the Phi Phenomenon to work in its most basic sense, two or more stimuli that are switched on and off in alternation which produces two different motion percepts (i.e. the focus of perception). The first is Beta movement, often used in billboard displays, in which an object is perceived as moving when, in fact, a series of stationary images is being presented. This is also called "apparent motion" and is the basis of movies and television. When the alternation rates are faster between the images you can see an object moving between the two stimuli and alternately blocking them out. This is the phi phenomenon. This is an example of uncontaminated "pure" motion

detection. A phi phenomenon in action is the Zoetrope. The Zoetrope is a revolving cylinder with vertical slits with drawings on the inside of the cylinder. When the

cylinder revolves, the images look like they are in continuous motion. The way the Zoetrope messes

A Phenakistoscope by Eadweard Muybridge (1893)

with your mind is the same process through which humans and other animals orient themselves to their own or others’ physical movements.

Thomas A. Edison and the Kinetoscope

In 1888 Thomas A. Edison, inventor of the electric light bulb and the phonograph, designed machines for making and showing moving pictures. Edison began experimenting with adapting the phonograph and tried to make rows of tiny photographs on similar cylinders, this technique was called the Kinetoscope.

In 1893 Blacksmith Scene, a film produced at Edison studio, was the first to be shown in public on the Kinetoscope at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences. It became very popular and the first kinetoscope parlor was opened in 1894. Edison did not have the invention’s patent rights and so it was copied which resulted in significant developments in the movie industry at the end of the 19th century.

The Invention of the kinetoscope had made film making simpler. The first film that used this technique was called Monkeyshines. The films that we see today have developed this technique to make films like The Gooney and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These films are different to the ones that were made in 1888 because the ones made in 1888 used 12 frames per second and the newer ones used 24 frames per second.

The Lumiere Brothers and the Cinematographe

The Cinematographe was a camera, printer, and even a projector designed by the Lumière brothers and was introduced in 1895. The invention of the Cinematographe paved the way for early animated sequences and films such as The Enchanted Drawing (1900) and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906).

Unlike Edison’s camera that was electrically powered, the Cinematographe used a hand crank which it meant it could be used outside. Significantly, the most important development was that it projected the image on to a screen large enough for everyone to see.

Muybridge’s Photographic Studies

In 1872, the former governor of California Leland Stanford, a race-horse owner, hired Eadweard Muybridge to undertake some photographic studies. Stanford had reputedly taken a bet on whether all four of a racehorse's hooves are off the ground simultaneously. On 15 June 1878, Muybridge set up a line of cameras with tripwires, each of which would trigger a picture for a split second as the horse ran past. The results, as shown in this plate, settled the debate. This is the first example of

Thomas Edison Kinetoscope

Cinématographe Lumière at the Institut Lumière, France

someone using still images, and show how people where becoming more and more interested in the sequence of movement.

Advances in Early Annimation Films

In the early 1920s animation was really starting to take off. At this point animation was a fairly individual activity to do, with no larger companies working together to create films. John Bray made the first step into evolving the animation process by devising a technique which would take less time to make. The technique involved making zinc etchings of backgrounds allowing for easy identical backgrounds for each frame. This technique cuts out the time it takes to trace the background onto a new piece of paper. The character was drawn on separately on the foreground.

John Bray also develops yet another machine process that will help animators, this time with the Rotoscope. The Rotoscope is a white board that gets live film projected onto it; the animator then traces the projected image to create the animation. With this he made his “Felix the Cat” cartoon famous. Due to this success Bray hired a team of artists, tracers and anchors to help him with his work which meant he was able to make one film every two weeks. John Bray chose to use the Rotoscope because you can trace over the image or video to make it look like is animated. The movement of Rotoscoping is smooth so you can see the image/video move without any jumps, for example in the animated movie of Gulliver’s Travels (1939). In the scene where the clown was dancing they used Rotoscoping because Rotoscoping was the easiest technique to use and the dance would have been too complicated otherwise.

Max Fleischer

Max Fleischer was a Polish animator, who was also an inventor, film director and producer. Fleischer was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and was the head of Fleischer Studios. He brought animated characters such as Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye and Superman to the movie screen and was responsible for a number of technological inventions including the Rotoscope which lead to Betty Boop overtaking “Felix the cat” in 1930, with Betty Boop soon becoming a highly influential character in the animation world.

Fleischer devised a concept to simplify the process of animating movement by tracing frames of live action film. His patent for the Rotoscope was granted in 1915, although Max and his brother Dave Fleischer made their first cartoon using the system in 1914. Extensive use of this technique was made in Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series, which started in 1919, and starred Koko the Clown and Fitz the Dog.

1Galloping Horse by Edward Muybridge 1879

Cel Animation

Earl Hurd made another advance in cutting drawing time. This system was called the Cell system. It involved drawing characters on the plastic transparent sheets (plastic was called “cell” at this time.) and placing them over a background, allowing for them to be easily moved, and eventually photographed. Earl Hurd made films such as Bobby Bumps' Pup gets the Flea-Enza and Bobby Bumps Puts a Beanery on the Bum.

Cel (short for Celluloid) Animation is a process which involves using a static background and overlaying transparent sheets with drawings on them. The films that use this technique uses between 12 and 24 frames per second, this is because anything below 12 frames per second will make your eyes see still images like photographs. In-betweens are used to fill in the gaps in the frames so the footage or films will flow fluidly. Animator, Joanna Quinn used this technique to make films like Britannia. Cel animation means that the animator doesn’t need to keep drawing the background which speeds up the process and make it more commercially viable. This process was patented by Earl Hurd in 1914 and became the de-facto method used for commercial animation. An example of this is in Snow White in the woods scene, where she is being tormented by the trees by tugging on to her dress and then a cave looks like it has a scary face. It was then developed further in the 1980s with Animation Photo Transfer Process (used on Disney films such as The Black Cauldron, 1985) which allowed the colouring - normally done by hand painting on the back – to be controlled better and multiple versions could be made. It also meant that the outline of a figure could be in colour rather than black, making them look more realistic.

Stop Motion

Stop Motion technique developed alongside 2D animation with the earliest film to use the technique The Humpty Dumpty Circus in 1898. Stop Motion physically moves an object in small steps and photographs each step. When photographs are played in a continuous sequence it creates the illusion of movement. Anything can be used but clay figures are often used because it is easy to mold. Stop Motion was very popular in the early 20th century with films like King Kong (1933). Stop motion is still popular today with films such as Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit.

A good example of Stop motion animation is Morph; a TV character first seen in 1977 in at TV series with Tony Heart called Take Heart. Take Heart introduced Morph to the world. Morph was a clay-mation character that did not disguise that he was made of clay and used the properties of the clay as his characteristics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Der9xbuVJs

2D cel animation and stop-motion animation both fall under the category of traditional animation, even though both now use digital methods of filming. What matters is the method of producing the animation itself; cel animation generally involves hand-drawing, hand-inking, and hand-painting each frame on physical paper and cels, while stop-motion involves working with physical models and objects captured on a camera one frame at a time.

Drawn-on-Film Animation

Drawn-on-film animation or animation without a camera is an animation technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on film standard, as opposed to any other form of animation where the images or objects are photographed frame by frame with an animation camera. There are two basic techniques to produce animation directly on film. The first one starts with blank film stock and the other uses black already developed film. On the black film the artist can draw, paint, stamp or even glue objects on the blank film. Black film or any footage can be scratched,

etched, sanded or punched. Any tool the artist finds useful may be used for this.

Lye Len was an early influential Drawn-on-Film artist. These are some of his short films that he did.

Tusalava 10 min (1929)The Peanut Vendor 3 min (1933)A Colour Box 4 min (1935) in DufaycolorKaleidoscope (1935) 4 min in DufaycolorThe Birth of The Robot 7 min (1936) in GasparcolorRainbow Dance 5 min (1936) in Gasparcolor

Walt Disney

Walt Disney left Kansas after the Alice Comedies show, and went to holly wood to produce Oswald the Rabbit. This cartoon looked like an early Mickey Mouse. Oswald hit the big time and became one of America’s most watched TV shows. But soon after Disney had the cartoon taken away from him as he did not own the rights. With this in mind Walt Disney left and began his own company and created his own cartoons and characters. One of the early creations was called Mickey Mouse.

Walt Disney said “If you can dream it, you can do it”. This is a very inspirational quote because Walt Disney has made so many films and characters.

Mickey Mouse was one of the first animations to start using sound and was a massive hit. In 1934 Walt Disney started producing Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was set to be the first animated feature film, with a budget of £250,000. Three years later, with his house sold and loans taken out, Disney had at last finished the film, with a budget of £2.5 million dollars - an insanely high budget back in 1937. Still the film was released on the 24th December 1937 and made $8M at the box office.

Disney said, “Animation offers a medium of storytelling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world”.

Drawn on film

Walt Disney went on to become one of the most influential animators of all time with extremely popular feature length animation in the 20th century with movies like Cinderella, (1950) Sleeping Beauty (1959) and the Little Mermaid (1989).

Norman McLaren

Noman McLaren in his time pioneered in a number of areas of animation and filmmaking, including hand-drawn animation, drawn-on-film animation, visual music, abstract film, pixilation and graphical sound. Norman McLaren is similar to Lye Len which used the drawn-on-film technique to do his films just like Norman McLaren. One of the films that Norman McLaren made using this technique was called Dots in 1940. Norman McLaren commented on animation, “Animation is not the art of drawings that move but the art of movements that are drawn”.

Warner Bros

During this time another big company started making their way in the animation world. Warner Bros was founded in 1923 and started off with their `Funny Gags`. This might be solely down to Walt Disney avoiding this type of humor. Warner Bros still became a well-known and profitable company despite Walt Disney dominating with his short films. In 1949 Warner Bros created Looney Tunes.

This is when all the characters such as Road Runner, Speedy Gonzales, The Tasmanian Devil and even Martin the Martian all became huge successive hits. By 1937 All the Looney Tunes shows made mainstream television, an incredible achievement for a

cartoon company. History was made. In 1944 Warner Bros brought Schlesinger, they decided to rename the company to Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc.

Hanna Barbera

Hanna Barbera started off in 1959 with the ultimately famous cartoon The Flintstones. The Flintstones was made to battle with the success of Looney Tunes as it was produced directly for television. As Hanna Barbera steadily made more and more cartoons, Looney Tunes became less popular, as did other animation companies.

During this time the quality of most cartoons lowered and became a children’s only type of viewing instead of its active adult audience. Hanna Barbera formed into “Cartoon Network” in 1970, and the golden era was over. Hanna Barbera made animation an important field in the TV industry. In 1973 Hanna Barbera released `Charlotte Web based on the children’s book. This is the first of only 3 films that Hanna Barbera made that is not based on one of their shows, the other 2 films that Hanna Barbera made was Heidi’s song and Once Upon a Forest. Digital Animation

What is Digital Animation?

With the advances in computing in the 1980’s and onwards, today, there are many new digital techniques used in animation such as CGI, Animated Gifs, and Flash; and there is now a large variety of effects and techniques that can be used. Comparing flash animation to cell animation is virtual vs physical; traditional animation uses physical materials and activities, while computer animation uses virtual materials in a digital space.

Computer animation can be either 2D or 3D. 2D computer animation often involves a virtualization of the traditional 2D animation workspace, bringing traditional artistic methods into the digital environment to recreate cartoon animation workflows and styles. 3D computer animation tends to involve a hybrid of digital techniques adapted to working in a virtual 3D space.

The Link Between 2D Animation and Digital Animation

In the 1980s computers started to be used in all areas of life from offices, to the home and even movie making. With the creation of more powerful computers and programmes, animators started to use digital techniques alongside tradtional methods. This link between 2D and digital animation can be seen in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast (1992). The scene where Bell and the beast are dancing is animated with both digital and traditional tecniques. As the camera pans up from Belle and Beast dancing to the celling, the perspective of the hanging chandelier changes constently which could not of been achieved withought digital animation.

Pixar

Pixar first started creating animation in 1986. The animation company made an animation called Lamp Luxo Jr, and was the first short film produced by the newly formed Pixar Animation Studios, the first animation after Ed Catmull and John Lasseter left ILM's computer division. It debuted at the 1986 SIGGRAPH conference in Dallas, Texas. In the animation the only characters are two Angle-poise desk lamps, inspired by a Luxo brand task-light on John Lasseter's desk. The small lamp, Luxo, Jr. plays with a small inflated rubber ball, chasing it and trying to balance on it as Luxo, Sr.

When this short premiered at SIGGRAPH, as soon as the audience first saw the ball come in and the lamp move, they applauded throughout the whole short. Luxo Jr. was the first computer-animated short film to be nominated for an Academy award.

On the technical level, the film uses shadow maps to create the 3D modelling and simulate the shifting light and shadow. The animation is created using the RenderMan software and its surface shader feature. The articulation of "limbs" is carefully coordinated, and the lamp’s power cords trail

believably behind the moving lamps. On the cinematic level, it demonstrates a simple and entertaining story, including effectively expressive individual characters.

Luxo, Jr. sent shock waves through the digital and traditional animation industries. Most traditional animators were unsure

of the computer, and did not realise it was simply a different tool. This attitude changed dramatically in the early '80s with the use of personal computers in the home.

In 1995 Toy Story was released by Pixar and distributed, ironically, by Disney Studios. Toy story was the first ever digital 3D animated full feature length movie. The animations were made using computer programs that gave the characters motion controls. The characters would be made with their motion for the scene, and then added onto a background. Each character had many motion controls; Woody had over 700 with 200 for his face and 60 for his mouth. The characters would then be synced with the audio. This took up to a week just for 8 seconds of animation! As the film was made using an early form of computer, it took 300 processors to render the film, and it took up to to 30 hours for one frame to be rendered. It grossed £361 Million and now has two squeals. Toy story paved the way for other animated films which now are a popular genre.

Contemporary Artists

2D animation today is very different, due to the fact that there are cheaper, easier and better looking ways to animate. In 2013 there was a high profile 2D animated advert by John Lewis called The Bear & Hare, which was 2D drawn animation with 3D backgrounds. Compared to

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

how 2D animation used to be done, today it’s done mainly using computers, even drawings are scanned into a computer. Apart from the odd advert and TV show, 2D animation is much more popular as a starting point for amature animatiors as CGI requires much more expensive technology to create, so 2D is considered a good alternative for people who animate as a hobby, not a career. A good example of a contemporary 2D animator is Ross Bollinger, an animator who creates 2D animation using flash. He uploads his short animation funny films to his YouTube channel ‘Pencilmation Cartoons’ which has over fifty-two million views. His animations are very literal but created to be entertaining; a good example is “A-Door-Able”

Music videos

In the music video of Aha `Take on Me` rotoscoping was used throughout the video. In the video Aha uses a range of still images and movie film to create the rotoscoping effect. This technique was effective because Aha used rotoscope to create a comic book syle music video which was never used before.

Artic Monkeys’ Do I want to Know, simply uses a line thoughout the video which moves to the music and vocals like a heartbeat monitor. The technique that the Artic monkeys used in the music video is white board animation. The white board animation technique is where you draw on a whiteboard a frame at a time and take individual photographs which are loaded into a software programme, so when the animation is finished you get a smooth transition between each animated scene.

Another example of animation in a music video is Go with the Flow by Queens of the Stone Age. The song is featured in the video games Freestyle Street Soccer, Juiced 2, Gran Turismo 4, Asphalt 8: Airborne and MotorStorm: Arctic Edge. Röyksopp's remix is featured in ATV Offroad Fury 4. It appears in SingStar Rocks!, SingStar Amped, Rock Band and Rocksmith as a playable track.

Video games

Video games have certainly come a long way since the days when video game where just developing in the gaming industry. The 80’s was the era of arcades; for example in the game Donkey Kong, the animation consisted of a few poses that would switch out for Donkey Kong’s barrel throw, and his chest thumping. Video games are no longer a few pixels on the screen making a basic regular shape; they are complex pieces of art that take years and years to create. Most video games has a story behind them, just like what you would see in any movie, and as the technology advances the game developers are constantly pushing the limits on the graphics that can be rendered in real-time.

For example, 14 years ago it would be impossible to see dynamic hair simulated in real-time, but nowadays games like Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition makes dynamic hair convincingly real, without sacrificing the gaming experience.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3PgxbTi3OA

Another very impressive aspect of video game era advances come in the form of movement. Not too long ago, the character animation consisted of very rigid movements, because a complex structure couldn’t be built

without sacrificing the game experience, but that’s starting to change as we get into the next generation of games.

As the graphics improve with each new video game, the character animation also gets better. The animation needs to be fluid and believable to help push the complexity of the characters, whether that’s with hand-keyed animation or motion- capture. The expectations of gamers are increasing as graphics improve and the level of character animation they expect is rising.

Nowadays video games are made more simply as the technology advances the more realistic the game feature are to the viewer, some of the games that have changed over the years are Sonic the Hedgehog vs. Sonic Generations, The Legend of Zelda vs. The Legend of Zelda, Skyward SwordMike Tyson’s Punch Out vs. Fight Night Round 3.

Animated Films

Animated films are now a popular theme of film culture. Hayao Miyazaki a Japanese film director, producer, screenwriter, animator, author and manga artist. Miyazaki is known as a masterful storyteller and as a maker of anime feature films, as well as Isao Takahata who co-founded Studio Ghibli. The success of his films has invited comparisons with Walt Disney and American directors Steven Spielberg and Orson Welles.

Miyazaki’s films often contain themes for example humanity’s relationship with nature and technology. The protagonist in his films tends to be strong and independent girls or women. ‘The castle of cagliostro’ and ‘castle in the sky’ include traditional violent his other films like ‘Princess Mononoke’ present antagonists with redeeming qualities.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McM0_YHDm5A

Contemporary artists increasing use animation in their art .in 2012 the Tate modern had an exhibition called 941 horse and 4 zebras looking at how artist apply animation in their work and featured artist like Yu Araki.

https://vimeo.com/67466150

Flash animation in TV

Flash animation on TV has been around since 1977 starting with KaBlam! Kablam was an American animated sketch comedy that ran on Nickelodeon from 1996 to 2000. The show was developed as a fully animated showcase for alternative forms of animation that were more common in indie films and commercials.

Each episode thus features a collection of short films in multiple innovative styles of animation, bridged by the characters Henry and June, who introduce the shorts and have adventures of their own in between. Although SNICK aired many Nicktoons it was not part of its block, KaBlam! Was the only Nicktoon created for SNICK. The show became TV-Y in 1997.Then in 1998 Blue's Clues was aired. The third to sixth seasons of this show were produced with Flash. The most recent flash animation TV series are The Tom and Jerry Show which was

produced by the Warner Bros in 2014 and then in 2015 Wussywat and the Clumsy Cat was aired.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DJHE1wovio

Conclusion

In conclusion I think that 2D animation is very interesting because by doing this essay I have understood how important 2D animation has been to the development of motion pictures and graphics, and what affect it has had on the world. I think that it shows that 2D animation is still important and will survive the modern world of CGI because there are still music videos, adverts, artworks, and many animated films that use a form of 2D animation today.

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https://vimeo.com/67466150