Animation Techniques

Animation Techniques 

Animation is a simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures or frames.

throughout the years there have been different types of techniques that were used to create animations.

Zortrope 

The Zortrope was created in the 1830's by a bristish mathematician names Willam George Horner. The Zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically on the sides. On the inner suface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set from a squenced pictures.

As the cylinder spins, when looks through the slits at the pictures. The slits keep the pictures from blurring together and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.

Kinetoscope

 The kinetoscope was an early montion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscpe was designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time, through a peephole viewer window at the top of the device

Kinetoscope was invented by Thomas A. Edison and William Dickson of the United States in 1891. This technique works by passing a film strip rapidly between a lens and an electric light bulb while the viewer peer through a peephole.

 Flick Book

A flip book or a flick book is a booklet with a series of pictures or drawings that vary gradually from one page to the next, so when the page are turned rapidly, the pictures or drawing appear o animate by simulating montion. 

The first flip book become known on September 1868, when it was patented by John Barnes Linnett under the name of Kineograph (Lantin for Moving pictures.) 

Cel animation

Cel-animation also known as classical animation or hand-drawn animation. This technique is a traditional form of animation and it usually consists of 24 frames per second, each frame is usually drawn by hand on a transparent celluloid sheet on which a character, scene, is drawn or painted ans it usually constitutes of many layers to create one scene.

  

This technique was invented by Earl Hurd in 1910. The translucent sheets of celluloid were used to composite differnet moving parts upon a static background, drastically reducing the number id drawings required.

 Rotoscoping

 Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trac over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films. This technique is originally recorded as a live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope. Although this device was eventually replaced by computers, the process is still referred to as rotoscoping.

This technique was invented by cartoonist/illustrator/writer/inventor Max Fleischer. This technique made its debut in  1915 in Fleischer groundbreaking animated series Out of the Inkwell.

 

 Drawn on film

 Draw on film animation is an amination technique where the footage is produced by creating the images directly on  a film stock. There are two ways in which the techniques can be created, first way is by starting with a blank film stock, on this blank film the artist can draw, paint, stamp or even glue or tape objects, on to the film stock. The second way is using a black film stock which can be scratched, etched, sanded or punched.  

The first people the are known to have used this technique were, Len Lye, Norman Mclaren, Stan Brakhage. 

Digital applications 

 Digital application are any techniques that where used after the 1960's for example Toy Story was one of the first feature-length animation that was computer animated. The early digital computer animation was developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1960's by Edward E. Zajac, Frank W. Sinden, Kennethh C. Knowlton and A. Michael Noll. 

The first know computer animation was a sequel to the 1973 movie Westworld, which was a science fiction filn about a society in which robots live and work amongs humans the name of the sequel was called FutureWorld and it came out in 1976.

Claymation

 Claymation is one of the many forms of stop montion. Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material such as Plasticine, which is usually created by using a wire skeleton called armture and covered in Plasticine and is then arranged on set where it will be photographed once before and then begin slightly moved by hand to prepare for the next scene. After the animator has all it desired film, upon playback at the a rapid speed the images will simuplate motion.

Claymation flims were first produced in the United States as early as 1908. Edison Manufacturing was one of the first to release and claymation film called The Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream. It was only in 1916 when claymation become popular when an artist called Helena Smith Dayton and an animator called Willie Hopkin came together to produce a claymation flims using a wide range of subjects.