What is animation?

As Paul Wells describes in his book Understanding Animation. Wells describes animation as the artificial creation of movement through means of which was previously inanimate. The word animation is derived from the latin verb, animare, which translates as ‘to give life to’.

Animation is rooted in the technique that an animator uses to creation motion and simulate movement that was not achievable by conventional recording. This involves frame-by-frame dictation and other techniques such as keyframe to make the unmoving subject to appear move on its own accord (Wells, 1998).

In a literal sense of the word, an animator gives life to their subjects.

Different types of animation

As animation is the process of giving movement to a previously inanimate subject, there are many different techniques and processes to make this happen. As there are too many to describe and refer to, I am going to look four I feel are the most prominent.

Traditional Animation

Traditional animation is the process of drawing out animations frame-by-frame and creating a 2D result, this technique is very famous with Disney animated films. Most notably the animated films created in the 20th Century such as Sleeping Beauty, Pinocchio and Snow White.

Although digital art has now simplified the technique through the use of graphics tablets and digital layers in photo manipulation software, the traditional technique of drawing out each frame is by layering paper above each other using a light table to see the previous frame. By drawing out the next movement on the separate page, when played back by quickly displaying the frames continuously, movement is shown.

A very common technique to create traditional animation is to use sheets of celluloid. Using celluloid was a common practice in order to separate the animation from the background and speed up production. Here is a picture example of an animated character separate from it’s background.

Limitations of the technique include the static background, as there isn’t movement in the background, it is clear that there isn’t depth to the background and lacks a certain layer of realism as if the objects and characters aren’t really apart of the world. An invention that counteracted this was the “multiplane camera”which was originally created by Lotte Reniniger around the 1926, however, it was made famous by the refined version that Walt Disney had created and patented in 1936 for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. The multiplane was a rig that allowed layers of celluloid to be shot separately to create depth and show parallax within the scene. The way they did this was by pointing a camera down and moving the separate layers of cels  in conjunction to the position and movement of the scene. This allowed realistic shots involving the environment and created a much more immersive atmosphere for the animated features.

Here is a video published by Disney and narrated by Walt Disney himself, documenting the multiplane camera and its uses.

These techniques were the staple process for traditional animation throughout the 20th century. Towards the backend of the 20th century, digitalisation started to occur and these old fashioned techniques were started to be phased out and as of today, are no longer used as the go-to-technique. The last fully traditional technique of painted cels by Disney was in 1989 with the production of The Little Mermaid. From here on techniques adopted the use of digitally painting characters and backgrounds and scanning line work of characters. This indefinitely sped up production and made it more efficient. Digitisation of traditional animation then moved on with the introduction of programs that allowed the use of layers such as Photoshop and Flash. The use of layers allowed artists to separate frames on to different layers within the same file which saved time and spared the manual composition of frames.

The digital age of art had completely overhauled the technique that is used for traditional animation, especially with the conception of such devices such as graphics tablets which allow artists to control the cursor just like a pencil using a touch sensitive tablet, which simulated pen and paper drawing on screen. This completely made the old methods much less reliable than the new ones. http://www.tested.com/art/movies/442545-2d-animation-digital-era-interview-japanese-director-makoto-shinkai/

Usually in todays usage of traditional techniques, the old fashioned methods are only used predominantly as a nostalgic tool or when paying homage to the craft. An example of this is the 2017 video-game Cuphead. Cuphead uses the technique of hand-drawn animation for each frame for the elements and characters in the game to create an old fashioned and retro style to it.

 

Digital Animation/ Motion Graphics

Digital animation and motion graphics are a lot different from digitalised traditional animation as they don’t tend to use frame by frame techniques to achieve the movement for the piece. These animations generally have the computer calculate the position of the objects that are being animated in order to create movement.

A program that uses this process is Adobe After Effects, this program uses keyframes as a tool to create movement. Keyframes are a marker that records the properties of the layer that you intend to move whether this be its position, rotation, opacity etc. The way this works is if you make a new frame with the properties holding different values, if it is in a different place on the timeline than the previous keyframe, the computer will then calculate movement between the two keyframe points and automatically create movement between the two, if there are one or more frames between the two.

This is essentially the main principle behind motion graphics and digital animation. These graphics are generally created as digital assets which are then animated through the use of keyframes. Using digital programs for animation mean for a lot more accuracy and less mistakes in a much smaller time frame then doing it manually without a computer. Due to the automatic calculations, a lot of inaccuracies that were once prominent such as centring and having each frame match up.

Motion graphics are mainly used as a tool display information whether this be for commercials or as web elements. They normally show visually interesting animation for the presentation of whatever is being shown on screen whether this be icons, statistics etc. The main basis for this style of animation is to find the most stylistic and creative way to show the elements on screen.

Here is an example of motion graphics in action:

 

Stop-Motion 

Stop- Motion animation is one of the most time consuming techniques of animation and still continues to be today. Stop-Motion is the process of taking a series of still pictures and lining them together to create motion by moving an object within each frame. This means every single frame of a film needs to be personally dictated and managed, in a similar fashion to hand-drawn animation. This means if a character moves in every frame for a 5 minute video at 25 frames per second (UK frame rate standard), this means 7500 frames need to be personally adjusted for just 5 minutes of footage.

This technique was first created in the very late 1800s by James Stuart Blackton and Albert E. Smith. The technique was born after the conception of the film camera which allowed artists to project image on strips of film in a fast sequence to create a motion picture. The predecessor to this was named lightning-sketch animation a process in which the artist stopped the camera, changed the image featured in the frame and then rolled the camera again.

Example of lightning sketch animation.

The stop-motion practice was a very popular method especially for visual effects in order to create larger than life effects for a lower cost than actually creating the physical models to use in set. Examples of this include Star Wars, King Kong, Godzilla etc. This technique was eventually outdated for use in cinema with the rise of CGI. CGI generally gives a much more natural look to the animation, especially when partnered with motion capture, than stop-motion did.

3D Animation

3D animation is now the largest and most popular form of animation. 3D animation is as simple as it’s name suggests, animation in 3 dimensions.

Within 3D modelling and animation programs on computers, animators can see the character within 3D space within its environment and can interact as if it were a real being. This means rather than being a flat surface and only appearing to have depth, the depth is real, and the objects in the background are in fact real.

The first feature-length 3D computer animated film was Toy Story in 1995 by now-Disney subsidiary studio, Pixar. This groundbreaking film was so well received that it kicked off the most popular type of animation since traditional cartoons.

This technique allows studios to very easy create a realistic looking animated films which don’t require full-photorealism. This means it can show properties from environments and physics that match our own world though still have their own style that separates it apart from other animated movies.