Task 1b:   Techniques

Zoetrope

Zoetrope is a technique along with a few others of pre-cinema animation devices that produce an illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of the same motion.

A Zoetrope is a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides, while on the inside of the cylinder there is a band of images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, whoever looks in trough the slits will see the pictures moving across. The slits keep the pictures from blurring together, and the person sees a rapid succession of images, making an illusion of motion.

Since the late 20th century, devices which work on similar principles have been made, named analogously as linear zoetropes and 3D zoetropes, which makes the traditional zoetropes referred to as "cylindrical zoetropes".

Below is a picture of a Zoetrope, showing exactly what one looks like and also what goes inside the cylinder which in this case is a picture of a lion jumping through some sort of box and then landing on the horse and as it spins you can see the lion jumping and landing on the horse.

Victorian Zoetrope

Kinetoscope

The Kinetoscope is an early motion-picture device, which viewers would be able to watch movies through a peephole but only one person at a time.

On the left you will see a picture of what a Kinetoscope looked like, and also you can see the struggle that people had when they wanted to watch a movie since they would have to stand up and stay in the same position throughout the whole thing.

The main idea for the creation of the Kinetoscope came from  Thomas Edison in 1888 and one year later it was largely developed by his employee William Kennedy Laurie Dickson until 1892.

The Kinetoscope premiered at the Brooklyn institute of Arts and Sciences on May 9th, 1893. The first publicly shown film was the 'Blacksmith scene'.

Flip book

A flip book is a book with a series of pictures that changes gradually so as you turn the pages rapidly the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion. 

Above is a video which was made by a Cristiano Ronaldo fan in drawing with real past footage of Ronaldos career at Manchester United and his current club Real Madrid. The flip book includes Ronaldo scoring a free kick and getting past the oppositions players by taking them on.

The first flip book appeared in 1868, it was under the name Kineograph (moving picture). It was the first form of animation to employ a linear sequence of images rather than circular.

Cel animation

    

In this Animator vs Animation video, the animator starts by creating his own cel animation in Adobe Fireworks, he starts by drawing a stickman in one spot, and then he carries on drawing the same one again but 3cm to the left and changes the position of his hands and legs to create an illusion of movement. As the Animator leaves the room, the Animation comes to life and starts causing mayhem around the computer screen.

Cel animation also known as classical animation, traditioal animation or hand-drawn animation is a technique where each frame is drawn by hand. Cel animation was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the introduction of computer animation. In cel animations the characters are usually drawn on cells and laid over a static background drawing, by doing this it reduces the number of times an image has to be redrawn.  

Rotoscoping

  

I have chosen this video as an example because it has a range of frames and it's well animated. The opening scene is in a toilet, where you see a teenager looking in the mirror as he is shaking, he opens up the cabinet and starts looking through his pills only to find he ran out. The next scene is him sitting in the living room and turning on the tv, but none of the channels are working. His condition starts getting worse due to the lack of pills, as the phone starts ringing he grabs it along with the alarm which is also going off and puts it inside the oven and turns it on; he runs outside and it ends after the explosion which is repsented by the white noise.

Rotoscoping can either be done by hand or digitally, when it's done digitally it's quicker to complete the project you're trying to finish. Rotoscoping is simply the act of isolating an image from a video and removing/isolating them from the background. When making a Rotoscoping sequence digitally there are programs which you can dowload to help you for example Adobe After Effects CS5 has tools like the Roto brush which basically allows you to draw an outline around the image you want and also the stuff you don't want.   

         Drawn on film

In this video,  a tutorial is shown of how drawn on film is carried out, the animator starts with a blank film stock and puts it on a light beam and starts drawing a cat head for his first scene. He then puts another blank film stock above the one he drew the cat face on and he basically traces the face once again and adds a small adjustment by making him blink in the second scene. He then goes onto make other scenes until his animation is complete.

Drawn on film is directly drawn on the film reel using a number of tools, techniques and methods. The annimator does this by laying the film reel across his working surface and fixes it into place, he then works on his project frame to frame to create his image on each individual frame adjusting it wit each sequential frame to show progression of motion. This animation requires a great deal of precision and talent.

Digital applications

This CGI (computer generated image) is about a hairdressers, and this woman who wants to get a haircut but her husband doesn't want her to get just any haircut and while his wife is choosing what to get, her husband brings out an old photo of how her used to be so that the hairdresser knows what haircut to give his wife.

  

Claymation

Clay animation is basically another form of stop motion animation. Every animated piece, character or background, is deformable which means that it is made of a malleable substance which is usually plasticine clay.

Animators

Walt Disney

Walt Disney most commonly known as Disney is one of the biggest multinational company, they are known around the world for their kids TV channels, movies, and attraction parks located in Paris, France and Florida, USA.