Josh animation

Animation is a very quick display of images in either 2d or 3d which produces an illusion of movement. It has been round for thousands of years, as we can tell by a picture that has been round for around 4000 years. It is a picture that shows wrestlers in action and although it doesn't show motion it does show the intention of the artist trying to show motion.

There are many animation techniques that i will be discussing.
Firstly there is the magic lantern also known as the Zoetrope, which was created by Ting Huan. The way the Zoetrope works is that it produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures.
The cylinder has slits in the side and has a band on the inside which has either individual frames from a video or images from sequenced drawings of photographs. The earliest Zoetrope was invented in China around 180AD.

Englishman William George Horner was the inventor of the modern Zoetrope which was made around 1833 and took over from the Phenakistoscope after 2 years as it didn't require a viewing mirror and more than one person could view the moving pictures at the same time.

Then there was the Bird in a Cage illusion which came about during the 16th Century.
This is where there is two images (the bird and cage) backed onto one another with string going through them. You then wind up the string and let it go, then you should see the bird in the cage.

This is a very simple and easy way to create animation, so this would be very appealing to young children. At the time this would be very entertaining and a good toy.

Next was the Flip Book, which in my opinion was a very simple but good way to create annimation. The first Flip Book was made in 1868 by a French man named Pierre- Hubert Desvignes, but Englishman John Barnes Linnett was the first to patent it under the name 'Kineograph' which means 'Moving Picture'. This was generally aimed at chlildren and the book contained drawings of cartoons, but could also be aimed towards adults

Nowadays, flip books are not always seperate books and can been found in magazines or books as on page corner.

There are websites that can create flip books from your digital photograph and video files, which is a really good idea as it has been taken from the late 1800's as a simple book with drawings in and now, in the 21st century is still being used and has been adapted to the advanced technology we have today.

In 1832 the Phenakistoscope was invented by Belgian Joseph Plateau and at the same time by Austrian Simon Von Stampfer. This device would work by having the same image but slightly different everytime so when it was spinning around at speed, it would look like the picture was moving. This invention only stayed around for about 2 years because of the more advanced Zoetrope.

In 1906 Blackton done a chalk animation called Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. This is often referred to as one of the worlds first cartoons. Blackton drew characters on a board with chalk.

The ideal audience for this cartoon would be children as it is silly and entertaining. For example there is a bit with a dog jumping over a clown

In 1928 Disney's sychronised sound cartoon Steamboat Willie was realeased starring Mickey Mouse. The mouse was bought about by Walt and his wife whilst on a train ride from New York to Los Angeles. Walt had lost Olwold the rabbit, but he had an idea in the back of his mind, a mouse. Mickey wasn't the original name given to the mouse, it was Mortimer, but by the time the train arrived at the station in Los Angeles they decided to agree on the name Mickey. This wasn't the first cartoon Mickey was in, it was his third but the two before didn't have sound. Walt couldn't record the soundtrack to his film on the West Coast as no one had the equipment to. He had to travel all the way to New York to have the soundtrack recorded and then had to synchronise it with the film. The cartoon animation was mostly targeted towards children because of the humor it had in it. Everyone was astonished by this cartoon as it was the first of its kind with sound and vision together.
These days Mickey Mouse is still very popular and has made many appearances on television.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was released by Disney in 1937 and is one of the most memorable full length animated features made by Disney.
This animated film was the first one to have sound and in colour. It was financed due to Disney's earlier animated short The Three Little Pigs which was in 1933.
As Disney didn't have a music publishing company when the earlier animated films were produced, all the rights to publish the music and songs in the film are still controlled by Bourne Co. Years later Disney could aquire back all of the rights to the music in their other films, except this one.
Snow White required more than 1,500,000 individual pen and ink drawings.

1940 was the year that Disney released Pinocchio and Fantasia, which both failed.
In my opnion i think Fantasia failed because of it being set to classical music and had no dialogue. As this film was mostly aimed at young children i think that the film Fantasia would have been much more succesful if it had dialogue in and not classical music. Films before Fantasia did have dialogue so i don't no why Disney didn't carry it over to this film so it would be more appealing.

Fantasound was a steriophonic sound process developed for Fantasia. When the film was showing in theatres, only 12 theatres got the full lengh Fantasound version shown and because of the films extremely large budget, it was unable to turn a profit on its initial realease.

Then Disney released Pinocchio in the same year which was also a flop.

1953 came and Duck Amuck was released which is a animated short. Chuck Jones the director of this short wanted to see if the audience could still tell if they knew who Daffy was when he done things to him, like mute his 'voice' or rub him out and just have his voice. Also, it was like Daffy was in control of the animator and could tell him what to do. We can see this when Daffy says things like 'give me a close up shot' but the animator doesn't do that and just blacks the screen out only showing Daffy's face. When this happens Daffy is not to pleased and shouts at the animator. At the end of short the shot pulls away from the book that the animator was 'drawing' and shows us what he wants us to believe is the real animator and who has been drawing all of the story. Who we see is Bugs Bunny with a pen in his hand next to a book, making us think for a split second that he was down to all of this, but he wasn't as it is only another drawing.

In 1982 Warner Bros released The Flight of Dragons, as they were looking for a more maturer audience and thought this could get them. The story was loosely based on the novel 'The Dragon and the George'. This film in my opinion is most memorable because of its dialogue, but mostly because of its creatures. It takes the audience away from the reality and takes them to a world of fiction and fantasy. The Flight of Dragons even has its own unique creatures in it, like a giant worm. This also adds to its success i think, because it didn't just take creatures that are already around or mythical creatures, it invented its own and created new ones.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind was released in 1988 and is a Japanese animated film. This was based on his Manga, which also had the same name. Based in a post apocalyptic world 1000 years on after human civilisation has been destroyed. Miyazaki took around 13 years to finish the manga.

In 1988 The Simpsons grew from 30 second segments on the Tracey Ullman Show . This was the debut of The Simpsons. When they first started, The Simpsons' voice over didn't go in time with the mouth movements but this didn't matter, as over the years it got more in time and they became more sucessful.
This is longest runing spin-of series.

I have used a few animations techniqus in class during this term and last. These have been The Bird inthe Cage, using Flash and Stop Frame. The one that i like the most is using Flash, this is because it is a quick way to produce a animation and you have no limits on what to do.

We used the Stop Motion animation technique for our Hula Hoop animation.We had to create a advert like the one shown on TV to advertise Dorito's.