Dancing animation

Dancing Animation

To create this animation, I first took a video of a girl doing a dance, converted this video to a flv. for web video on a website called zamzar.com and then uploaded the video to Adobe Flash CC. I dragged this video on to the screen and the videos frames were shown along the bottom. I added a new layer and inserted a new frame. On this new frame I added a key fame to the same size as the video. I then used the brush tool and traced over the first frame and then skipped a rame and pressed the F6 key to create a new frame. This allowed me to save half of my time as i only had to draw over half the frames, and the animation still looked smooth as i only skipped every other frame. After i drew over all the frames i deleted the initial video and exported the animation as a video.

Bouncing Ball Animation

Bouncing Ball Animation

I created this animation on Adobe Flash CC. To create these bouncing balls i first drew the ball and coloured it with a gradient to make it look more 3D. After this i inserted a shape tween and dragged this to frame 20 for the smaller ball and 30 for the larger ball to show the difference in weight and then added a new keyframe. In this new key frame i first made the balls shrink and then I dragged the ball again to off the screen where i wanted it to be. This meant that the animation would show the balls bouncing down to the ground and then fly of the screen after.

Matt Groening

http://www.slideshare.net/PULLEN11/people-of-animation-matt-groening-presentation

Famous Animators

The Gorillaz

The Gorillaz were formed in 1998, by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. Jamie Hewlett was the original animator. Jamie studied at North Brook college. By 1992 Hewlett had become a major creator in the comic industry. At the beginning the Gorillaz started as a 2-D band. However as technology advanced they were able to animate their characters in 3-D. Gorillaz are the most well known animated band and have been put in the Guinness book of world records as the most successful virtual band. An example of “secondary action” where a ghosted image repeats the actions of the main body. This is also an example if slow in and slow out. This scene exaggerates the time he is in the air compared to the time he is on the ground while he s running. ( character slows down in mid-air and speeds up when stepping on the ground. Reviews about the Gorillaz are "It's always exciting to see a new Gorillaz video" and "Always intriguing to watch a Gorillaz song".

Hanna Barbera

Hanna – Barbera Productions was founded in 1957 by William Hannah and Joseph Barbera. William Hanna was born in New Mexico and Joseph Barbera was born in New York. The two first paired whilst working at the Metro Goldwyn Mayer cartoon centre in 1939. Their first project was called ‘Puss Gets the Boot’ in 1940. Their first major success was the Huckleberry Hound show in 1958.  The company used many limited animation techniques such as ‘ring around the collar.’ This allowed them to produce cartoons on a low-budget, quickly enough to meet the television schedule. Ring around the collar is a low budget animation technique which shows the character wearing a simple item of clothing around their neck such as a tie or scarf. They were influenced by older animations – such as those by Walt Disney. E.G, Dumbo, Snow White, Pinocchio.

Walt Disney

Walter Elias “Walt” Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966) was an American cartoonist, filmmaker, voice actor and many more. He is a ‘cultural icon’. He influenced many and contributed to entertainment during the 20th century. Walt Disney was influenced by artist and educator, Louis Grell, as he was taught by him at The Chicago Academy of Fine Art. He also met a cartoonist named Ubbe lwerks, who also inspired him. Walt Disney’s animations have similar styles. The drawings and sketches are similar to each other. For example, the facial expressions have a lot of detail and the body structure of all the characters is realistic. Some techniques that Walk Disney used are as follows:

The dreamer: Spins fantasies, wishes, outrageous hunches, bold and absurd ideas without limits or judgment.
Realist: Imagineers the dreamer’s ideas into something realistic and feasible. Working out ideas into meaningful orders.
The critic: reviews all the ideas and punch holes in them by playing the devil’s advocate. If things make sense and how it looks to a customer.
The purpose of Walt Disney’s animation was too entertain audiences. The main audience was young people.Most animations are used for positive purposes. All of Walt Disney’s stories had morals and that is why these animations would be aimed at younger audiences.

some reviews:
The Lion King- Rotten Tomatoes – “Emotionally stirring, richly drawn, and beautifully animated, The Lion King stands tall within Disney's pantheon of classic family films.”
Beauty and the Beast – Roger Ebert - “Beauty and the Beast reaches back to an older and healthier Hollywood tradition in which the best writers, musicians and filmmakers are gathered for a project on the assumption that a family audience deserves great entertainment.” 

The 12 Principles of Animation were introduced by Disney animators, Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in 1981. They used the basic laws of physics and created them.

Yellow Submarine

The Yellow Submarine’s animation was directed by Bob Balser and Jack Stokes.
Jack Stokes, born on the 2nd of April 1920, was an English animator and animation director.

He trained at the South end College of Art. By the early 60s he had his own studio, called Stokes Cartoons where he produced work for cinema and television. The most famous example of Jack Stokes work was the animated film, The Yellow Submarine. In this animation they used Rotoscoping. Rotoscoping is when animators draw over footage frame by frame, it is usually used in live action and animated films. Live action films were taken and projected onto a frosted glass panel, which animators would draw over to add their own style of drawing and accentuate movements and expressions. The Beatles created the animation in attempt to finish a contract with United Artists, in which they had to create three separate films. The band was uninterested in creating more films, especially after the lack of appeal to their TV special, Magical Mystery Tour. The animation influences The Simpsons, South Park, Toy Story and Shrek as they contain many references to the film. For example: Lisa's dentist dream sequence turns into a missing scene from the Yellow Submarine film. "Look, it's Lisa in the sky", "No diamonds though."

Car Race Animation

Car Race Animation

In this animation i first inserted a picture of an already saved image of a car. I dragged this image from the side of the screen in to the frame and drew over it using the brush tool. I then selected the drawing and converted it into a symbol so when i moved it it would all move together, rather than the individual brush strokes. After I finished this I deleted the initial image of a car and then duplicated the image of the car and placed it into a different layer so that i could make them move at different speeds, and placed it above the first car. I then added a motion tween, where i dragged the image of the car across to where i wanted it to end up and decided how long i wanted it to take to get there. I did this again for the second car, and chose to give it more time to move across the screen, making it seem like the first car was faster than the second car. Then on another layer i added a background for the cars so they looked like they were on a road rather than just floating in mid air. I did achieve persistence of vision in this because the motion tween allowed the cars to move smoothly through the screen. The motion tween is not always the right thing to use though, because it makes the object move smoothly whereas a human for example would not move smoothly and would move there arms and legs around more.

stickman walking

To create this stick man walking along the screen, I first opened Flash and drew out the initial figure. I then pressed the 'F6' key to create a new frame and pressed the onion skin button. This button shows the previous frame, but more faded, this meant I was able to draw over the previous figure but just slightly across, so that the figure started moving, without having to try and remember exactly where the stick man was in the previous frame. I kept doing this until the figure had walked across the entire screen, moving each of the different parts of the stick man each time to ensure it looked like the stick man was walking across the screen, rather than just floating across. To stop the stick figure from moving across the screen too quickly, I added a blank keyframe after every frame, which is just an empty frame, meaning that the movement would be slower. In another layer, I drew out a background for the scene. I created it in another layer so I didn't have to draw it out for every single frame. This type of animation is called frame by frame animation and is where you draw each frame separately. This allows you to have full control over what happens, but it does mean it takes a lot of time to create even a short length animation. In this animation I think I did achieve persistence of vision at some points in this animation. The parts that I didn't were because I drew the frames too far apart so the transition wasn't smooth enough and it looked like the stick man was jolting across. In this animation i did not use the twelve principles of animation, but they could be used to make the animation better by subtly helping the viewers understand all aspects of the animation, like by using squash and stretch to indicate how much the stick man weighed.

Pioneers of Animation Timeline

Pioneers of Animation Timeline 

1824: Peter Roget presented his paper on the persistence of vision.

1831: Joseph Plateau created the phenakistoscope.

1872: Eadweard Muybridge started his work on animals in motion.

1889: Thomas Edison created the kinetoscope.

1896: Thoma Armat designed the vitascope - to project Thomas Edison's films.

1906: J. Stuart Blackton created the first animated film.

1910: Emile Cohl made the first cut out animation called En Route.

1914: Winsor McCay created a cartoon consisting of 10,000 drawings.

1926: In Argentina, the first feature-length film is created called "El Apostol".

1923: Walt and Roy Disney created Disney brothers Cartoon Studio.

1927: Warner Brothers introduced combined sound and images in "The Jazz Singer".

1934: Urb Irwek created the multi-plane camera - used to give a three dimensional look.

1945: Harry Smith produces an animation by drawing directly on to the film.

1961: John Whitney created the film title sequence using differential gear mechanisms.

1987: John Lasseter at Pixar published a paper on the traditional animation principles.

1988: Willow used morphing in live action film.

1993: Jurassic Park used CG  to create the realising living creatures.

1995: Toy Story was the first full-length 3D feature film.