Making Drawings Move: The Early Years
From the simple flip book
To the ambitious yet clunky phenakistoscope and zoetrope
Zoetrope
These devices did not allow for very much narrative
Once the technology for recording and projecting moving pictures was invented, animators everywhere drew on their storytelling instincts to thrill audiences.
At the rate of 24 frames per second, did animators have to draw every single frame individually.
Saving Time: Cels, Twos, and limited animation.
Each frame is drawn by hand.
Film runs at 24 frames per second (fps).
That’s 1440 pictures to draw per minute.
Artistic Issues
Artistic vision has to be converter into a sequence of still frames.
Not enough to get the stills right – must look right at full speed.
Hard to “see” the motion given the stills.
Hard to “see” the motion at the wrong frame rate.
Storyboard
Sequence of drawings with descriptions.
Story-based description.
Voice Recording
Preliminary soundtrack or “scratch track” is recorded.
To synchronise animation later.
Animatic Story Reel
Pictures of the storyboard synchronised with the soundtrack.
To work our timing issues.
Design
Design and draw characters from different angles.
Statues and maquettes can be produced.
Key frames
Draw a few important frames in pencil.
Beginning of jump, end of jump and a frame in the air.
Inbetweens
Draw the rest of the frames
Painting
Redraw onto a cel, colour them in.
Use one layer for background, one for object.
Draw each separately.
Stack them together on a copy stand.
Transfer onto film by taking a photograph of the stack.
Can have multiple animators working simultaneously on different layers.
Two’s
Animating in “twos” meant that a drawn frame was re-used for two consecutive frames.
The motion depicted is certainly clunky, but still fluid enough.
Limited animation = Limiting the amount of animation at any given frame to the absolute minimum.
If the character was speaking, perhaps only her mouth would be re-drawn for every frame.
The Alexeieff-parker pinscreen – Mindscape
Unique Depth
Scratching – animating without film, working directly onto the film
Norman Mcclaren 09 begone dulcare
Stop Motion = The use of inanimate objects, puppets
The mascot
The rise of the Computer
Digital technologies did not begin to significantly influence the work of animation until the late 1970’s and early 1980’s
A computer animated hand
Computer cel painting
Digitize the line drawing, colour it using digital paint
Widely used in production ( little hand Painting any more)
e.g Lion King
Graphics Tablet
For outline drawing
Cartoon Inbetweening
Automatically interpolate between two drawings to produce in-betweens
hard to get right
3D computer Animation
Generate the images by rending a 3D model
Vary the parameters to produce the animation
Brute Force
Manually set the parameter for each and every frame
For an n parameter model: 60 x 24 x n = 1440n values per minute
Traditional Key framing
Lead animators draw the important features
Assistant animators draw the in-betweens
Computer Key framing
Lead animators create the important frames wit h3D computer models
Computer’s draw the in-betweens.