12 principles of animation

Squash and Stretch

The most important thing is "Squash and Stretch", the purpose of which is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects, this prepares the audience for the action that is about to happen.




 An example of what squash and stretch can do.

Anticipation

Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action , and to make the action appear more realistic.




 Showing an example of 'anticipation', showing the different actions of bugs bunny throwing a punch at a bull dog.

Staging

This principle is parallel to staging as it is known in theater and film . Its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is of greatest importance in a scene. whether it is an action, expression or mood. This can be the placement of the character within the frame, the use of light and shadow or the angle of the camera.
  an example of staging from the film 'ratatouille'

Straight ahead action and pose to pose

These are two different approaches to the actual drawing process. "straight ahead action" means drawing out a scene frame from beginning to end , while "pose to pose" involves starting with drawing a few key frames, and then filling in the intervals later. "straight ahead action" creates a more fluid , dynamic illusion of movement, and is better for producing realistic action sequences.
 
An example of what 'straight ahead action and pose to pose' does.

Follow through and overlapping action

Helps to render movement more realistically, and help to give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics. "follow through  means that separate parts of a body will continue moving after the character has stopped. "overlapping action" is the tendency for parts of the body to move at different rates.



An example of 'follow through and overlapping action'.

Slow in and Slow out

The movement of the human body , and most other objects, needs time to accelerate and slow down. for this reason, animation looks more realistic if it has more drawings near the beginning and end of an action, emphasizing the extreme poses, and fewer in the middle. this principle goes for characters moving between two extreme poses, such as sitting down and standing up, but also for inanimate, moving objects, like the bouncing ball.
 

 An example of 'slow in and slow out'.

Arcs

Most natural action tends to follow an arched path , and animation should stick to this principle by following implied "arcs" for greater realism. This can apply to a limb moving by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic path. the exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves straight lines.

 An example of what you can do with an arc, shown(on top) on the guys wrist's

Secondary action 

Main actions added by secondary actions give a scene more life, and can help to support the main action.

 An example of secondary action which helps support its main action.

Timing

Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film.

 An example of 'timing', using the bouncing ball and with each keyframe  you draw out the ball and once it bounces once , it starts to get lower and lower, lesser key-frames to lesser key-frames, all to bring out the realism.

Exaggeration

Is a effect especially useful for animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons.

An example of exaggeration,(were you make your character or scenes over the top in everything)

Solid Drawing

The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight. The animator needs to be a skilled drafter and has to understand the basics of 3D shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow, etc. for classical animators , this means taking art classes and doing sketches for life.




An example of solid drawing of 'homer Simpson'  and how he is measured and drawn out.

Appeal

Appeal in a cartoon character corresponds to what would be called charisma in an actor.

An example of 'Appeal' from the character bugs bunny, who has that charisma in him.

STOP MOTION

 Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence(could be done with dolls,clay, Plasticine,effects,photos) its terminology is"a device for automatically stopping a machine or engine when something has gone wrong" written in The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary done in 1993.

An example showing how stop motion is done in the industry

A standard animation for a movie would take probably takes approximately 1240 frames a minute. People also usually storyboard these animations first. Because 24 frames make a second it is clear that you need 24 photos x 60 to get 1240 to get 1 minute worth of stop motion animation, how much more TV shows and feature length films which are over the 10 minute mark.

 Example of different types of lip syncs

Animated characters appear to speak in a prerecorded track of dialogue. The lip sync technique to make an animated character appear to speak involves figuring out the timings of the speech as well as the actual animating of the lips/mouth to match the dialogue track. 

Planning

This is my opinion on how people planned out there stop motion works

• First thing you do is brainstorm your visuals

Applying plenty of ideas for what you want to do.

• Secondly you create your storyboard and script for stop motion 

Using you script to give you ideas for your storyboard

• Thirdly Take correct shots so you don't have to edit them

One of the ways camera shots are used in stop motion

• Fourthly add audio to give emotion and connect a story

Using audio in final cut pro

• Lastly consider an output

To transfer your stop motion video onto

ARTISTS

 It was often used to show objects moving as if by magic. The first instance of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for The Humpty Dumpty Circus which began at 1897, in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life.




The first animated piece created in 1878 of a race horse which was done using a linear camera, which was done by Eadweard Muybridge. He made this horse in motion by using a zoopraxiscope that he had invented, This device was later regarded as an early movie projector, and the process as an intermediate stage toward motion pictures or cinematography which gave an impression of someone horse racing. What i liked about this was how accurate the movement was, too get that illusion o animation, i generally thought it was genius because the animator made several photos and combined them all in one altogether to get fluent stop motion animation.this was done so well that audiences such as myself would believe it was actual film recorded instead of different photos combined into one. 


 
1907 haunted hotel made by Stuart Blackton (he uses natural objects and moves them about with a camera). What I liked about this gives me an impression that a ghost is moving the objects around, however i felt the music doesn't fit in well with the video and needed to be more deeper toned, but no the less i felt this was a early demonstration of creating illusions on screen, it was presented in a tight close-up that allowed budding animators to study it for technique. even though i felt the music was kind of misleading i would presume the audience what be amazed at how these items were moving by itself, because this has never been portrayed before at that time on screen. this is used to keep the audience intrigued of items moving by them self.



 Wladyslaw Starewicz 1911(the ant and the grasshopper puppet animation using dead animals). What i liked particularly about this was the story telling, of the two creatures(grasshopper and ant) communicating with each other which looked casually, where I think would be difficult during the early 20th century, with the story telling and the puppets it gave the animation a sort of purpose to watch from start to finish,instead of watching something in amazement on how the objects were moving. 
the audience at that time would have thought it was amazing for insects to move about in human ways and attributes (of an averages persons lifestyle). The objects(backdrops) used in this scene were used to match the nature environment of insects.

 

Example of the Humpty Dumpty Circus

 In 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used the stop trick technique in the "lightning sculpting" sequence using clay models, they did this to ease its re-positioning. French trick film maestro Georges Melies used true stop motion to produce moving title-card letters for one of his short films, but never exploited the process for any of his other films.the sort of material they would have used may be armeture models or puppets, i don't necessary like this particular piece however i respect the early development of it. The circus objects and models surrounding other objects, really set up the mood for fun.

An example of a Stop Trick From the Film Sherlock Holmes Baffled,  this was done to depict a sort of magic trick, this was done through a Microscope which worked in a similar process as a mutoscope so that the director could remove the frame were the dark figure appears in, then make the person disappear however the man stays the same.What i have liked about it was it was an early stop motion trick which was done in a different way(a cheap was to display magic) to how i would portray stop motion with just normal camera. this is ironically used to 'Baffle' the audience into saying 'how is that possible'.

One of the earliest clay animations was the  "Modeling Extraordinary ", which dazzled audiences in 1912. December 1916 brought the first of Willie Hopkins' 54 episodes of "Miracles in Mud" to the big screen. 

Example of the clay animation Modeling Extraordinary

what i liked about this image in particular was how Hopkins combined painting and real life with stop motion altogether.i believe it does what it does to shock the audience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdYDdm3fZiM

Example of clay animation Miracles in Mud 'Suzy Snowflake'

is were a moving female clay model is moving about with backdrops, with snow flakes floating around the front screen, then music is played over it, what I liked about this is that the music Suzy snowflake therefore creating the story altogether.it was created by 'Wah Ming Chang'.

Willis O'Brien

In the turn of the century, there was another well known animator known as Willis O' Brien,  he is most admired for his work on the lost world done in 1925 and King Kong  done in 1933 , a milestone of his films made possible by stop motion animation. what i liked about both works done by O'Brien, was that he separated what was real , and what wasn't real(models through sculting and applied with effects) and combined them together.

An Example Of King Kong
what i liked about king kong was how william separated the scale(shown here)of the backdrops and included armeture models together.(uses chroma keying) 

An Example of The Lost World (uses chroma keying and armeture clay models).

William o Brien  uses chroma keying with blue screening so that the stop motion of the models were done separate to the people acting. why this was done is to get a sense of real material to keep it looking real and believable. what i liked about williams work is that 'black and white' made things harder to spot the difference if you thought it was real or fake and william did a great job portraying.Objects used(backdrops) in William O Brien's were heavily focused on displaying adventure and fantasy when it came to creating his stop motion pieces

Ray Harry Hausen

O'Brien's protege and eventual successor in Hollywood was Ray Harry Hausen. After learning under O'Brien,  Harry hausen would go on to create the effects for a string of successful and memorable films over the next three decades. These included It came from Beneath the Sea done in 1955, Jason and the Argonauts in 1963, The Golden Voyage of Sinbad in 1974 and clash of the Titans in 1981. What i personaly liked about Ray Harry Hausens works is like O'brien he separated what was real, and what wasent real(models through sculpting and then applied them with effects) and combined them together and transferred it onto film in both black and white and colour.

 An Example of "It came From Beneath The Sea"usage of armeture models

An Example of "Jason and the Argonauts" done by Ray Harryhausen (usage of armeture clay models with blue screening)

An Example of "the voyage of simbad"1974 done by Ray Harryhausen(usage of armeture clay models with blue screening) 

An  Example Clash Of The Titans 1981 done by Ray Harryhausen (he used armeture clay models and chroma keying with blue screening)

Similar to William O Brien, Ray harry Hausen uses using chroma keying with blue screening so that the stop motion of the models were done separate to the people acting. why this was done is to get a sense of real material to keep it looking real and believable. i in particularly liked how the models looked more believable in physical form and not computer generated as we see things today. by using metal work and Armeture, it makes the audiences believe that creatures of any shape will have a firm body. The objects used in his films were majority very 'sea' based and gave a setting for ancient stories.

Nick Park's wallace and gromet- A Grand Day Out(1989) 

This was one of the first stop motion animations Nick Park did for Wallace and Gromet which he did using Claymation models.the models were formed with plaster cine with metal skeleton. why they do this ? is so the hands and joints and legs move in a fluent manner. this is also one of my influences for my stop motion because it shows the pathway of using clay models effectively. the objects used in this scene( referring to metal tough objects) gives me the impression of tough work in the job place.

Works done by Henry Strick


Coraline made in 2009(blend of stop motion and CGI which helps it flow better)what i liked about this was The CGI combined with clay models helped the voice acting work extremely well it also helps the audience look at the characters  and  relate to them more because of this. This brings out the illusion of true fluent stop motion animation combined with its solid material.The CGI also helps the flow of lip syncing with the stop motion models. the objects in this films backdrops display a genre of 'children's literature' due to the mellow colour of the grass.




  Nightmare before Christmas made in 1993(full stop motion) what i liked about this was a sense of animation being improved over the late 20th century, were movements seem a lot more solid with it clay animation, I love the objects in this scene especially the moon and clouds at night, it gives a sense of dark colours, for example this image ,  were it is a combination of black and blues to create this fitting  scene due to the Gothic approach of the characters, due the themes of this film people can relate towards the clay models(look dead) in the film. lip syncing for the models would have been used  remodeled for each shot taken
 
Paranorman made in 2012,(uses a blend of stop motion with CGI) like the film Coraline what i liked about this animation was how fluid that animation was, you could tell it was Stop-motion but it had actions which were more CGI orientated and flowed well with voice acting. in terms of the models are firstly made into clay then the animator creates a computer generated field, yet still depicting the look of clay models, this brings out the illusion of true fluent stop motion animation.with combination of solid material. The CGI also helps the flow of lip syncing with the stop motion models(like Coraline). the objects around him or backdrops display haunting mood, do to the dim light showed applied with long wooded trees.

Examples of my Stop motion

The music video inspired to creating my stop motion 'vanessa carlton' 1000 miles

Some images of stop motion , i had created

  In these as shown in the images of what i did using plasticine to create models(with failed paint skin) +fabric and stings, for clothing and looks, also paper to create the mouth movements, I have included photography for my sky and clouds, then created buildings using cardboard,then using pen to draw out each building shape.

I created a car (shown on this fourth image) were it includes elements of cardboard which is a shoebox with two rubber wheels which are supported with 2 wooden barbecue sticks , then all stuck together with tape and glue.

I also created a 2d stop motion using flash(one of the examples in the last image) were i scanned related pieces to my stop motion onto the scanner and world them up in photoshop , then imported them onto adobe flash , were i mainly used Tweens to get the animation process quicker. the objects i have used for this are a blend of hand drawn, modeling and pictures which i wanted to create to display a genre called 'childrens literature' however it uses mature themes.

HISTORY OF ANIMATION

12'000 years - paleolithic cave paintings showing showing multi-legged animals,clearly trying to depict images of the movement.

An example of a early cave painting of an animal

The history of animation started in the early 19th century and has been inextricably linked with the development of still photography. Early animations were made from a series of still images shown in sequential order, most commonly the 24 frame_per second of projected film. which were still images which appear to move because of a  phenomenon known as persistence of vision, in which the eye refrains the projected image for a fraction of a second before it is replaced by the next one. the brain is then tricked into seeing the rapid sequences in the way most familiar to it. 

      

An Example of  24 frames per Second

                                  

The earliest example of moving pictures started to appear in the 19th century,which was created from a belgian physicist joseph plateau who created the device called the Phenkakistiscope, this was a disk with a sequence of eight drawings that were viewed through slots and reflected in the mirror. The phenkakistiscope was made in 1832 also during the the 19 century. 

                                                                                          

                          

Example of a Phenkakistiscope

Next step was the Zoetrape invented by Britons "william George Horner". This too used images viewed through slots, except this time they were drawn on the inside of a spining drum. the sequences were short and repetive, but still managed to captivate viewers. it made its first apearance in china 180 AD.

  

Example of a Zoetrape




The Praxinoscope was invented by french scientist Charles-Emile Reynaud , it combines the cylindrical design of the Zoetrope with the viewing mirror of the Phenakistoscope. the mirrors are mounted still in the centre of the spinning ring of slots and drawings so that the image can be more clearly seen no matter what the device's radius are.

Example of a Praxinoscope




The Kinetoscope was made in 1984, which was an early motion picture exhibition device. the Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one person at a time through a peephole viewer window at the top of he device, its creates illusions of movements by passing on a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over the light source with a high-speed shutter.

Example of a Kinetoscope

The Mutoscope was an early motion picture device, patented by Herman Casler on 1884, the mutoscope doesn't project on a screen, and provided viewing to only one person at a time,what i like about it is that it also works with same principles as a flip book.

Example of a mutoscope

Vitascope

The Vita-scope was an early film projector first demonstrated in 895 by Charles Francis Jenkins, They had made modifications to Jenkins patented "Phantoscope", which cast images of film & electric light onto a wall or screen.

Phi Phenomenon

The Phi Phenomenon is the optical illusion of perceiving continuous motion between separate objects viewed rapidly in succession.

beta movement

The beta movement is a optical that is fixed images seem to move, even though of course the image does not change. it might be considered similar to the effects of animation.

Optic nerve registers light at 10 cycles per second 

Persistence of vision - physical eye function

Persistence of motion - mental brain function

Silent Era

Example of both fantasmagorie on the left and humpty dumpty circus on the right

lumiere brothers

Charles-Emile Reynaud's Theatre Optique is the earliest known example of projected animation. It predates even photographic video devices such as Thomas Edison's 1883 invention, the Kinetoscope, and the 'Lumiere brothers' 1884 invention, the cinematograph. Reynaud exhibited three of his animations on October 28, 1892 at Musée Grévin in Paris, France. The only surviving example of these three is Pauvre Pierrot which was 500 frames long.

After the cinematograph popularized the motion picture, the endless possibilities of animation began to be explored in much greater depth. A short stop-motion animation was produced in 1908 by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton called The Humpty Dumpty Circus.Stop motion is a video technique in which real objects are moved around in the time between their images being recorded so that when the images are viewed as a video, they appear to be moving by some invisible force.

Fantasmagorie, by the French director Emile Courtet, is also noteworthy. It was screened for the first time on August 17, 1908 at Théâtre du Gymnase in Paris. Cohl later went to Fort Lee,New Jersey near New York City in 1912, where he worked for French studio Éclair and spread its animation technique to the US.

The Golden Age of Animation

In 1923 a studio called Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt and its owner Walt Disney opened a new studio in Los Angeles. Disney's first project was the Alice Comedies Series which featured a live action girl who interacted with numerous cartoon characters. Some of the first animated sound films with recorded sound synchronized with the animation were the Song Car-Tunes films 1924-1927 and Dinner Time 1928. The earliest sound Song Car-Tunes films were Oh Mabel May 1924 and Mother, mother pin and A Rose on Me and  Goodbye my lady love both from June 1924. Disney's first notable breakthrough was 1928's Steamboat Willie , the third of the Mickey Mouse series, which was the first cartoon to include a fully post-produced soundtrack, featuring voice and sound effects printed on the film itself "sound on film . The short film showed an anthropomorphic mouse named Mickey neglecting his work on a steamboat to instead make music using the animals aboard the boat. 

The Television Era

Terrytoons, Tom terrific and the Flintstones

Colour television was introduced to the US Market in 1951. In 1958 Hanna-Barbera released Huckleberry Hound, the first half-hour television program to feature only animation. Terrytoons release Tom Terrific the same year. In 1960 Hanna - Barbera released another monumental animated television show, The Flintstones, which was the first animated series on prime time television. Television significantly decreased public attention to the animated shorts being shown theatres. 

 What i liked about these eras, is that it was very similar to stop motion animation and filming, in terms of how music,picture,sound were all linked together from old to new age. They were created drawing on layered see through paper , in modern days some people yous animation software's, like flash, anime studio etc.