pictures flashed in sequence very quickly. If the pictures are properly designed to flow from one to the

next, the eye sees the series as one continuous, smooth motion: movement.

animation. These include: paper cut-outs, clay models, puppets, computer-generated 3-D art and

traditional cel animation.

•

•

•

stream.

sequence, our minds “fill in the blanks” and logical motion or action is perceived.

desired cinematic, emotional or pedagogical effects.

•

•

PAL video is displayed at 25 fps (actually 50 interlaced fields per second).

paintings. Animals in these paintings were often depicted with multiple sets of legs in superimposed

positions. Because these paintings are prehistoric they could be explained a number of ways, such as the

artist simply changing their mind about the leg’s position with no means of erasing, but it’s very likely that

they are early attempts to convey motion.

five images painted along the sides, showing phases of a goat leaping up to nip at a tree.

includes a sequence of images in temporal succession. The paintings are approximately 4000 years old

and show scenes of young soldiers being trained in wrestling and combat.

Collection, Anatomical Studies of the Muscles of the Neck, Shoulder, Chest, and Arm, show detailed

drawings of the upper body with a less-detailed facial image. The sequence shows multiple angles of the

figure as it rotates and the arm extends. Because the drawings show only small changes from one image

to the next, the drawings imply motion in a single figure.

lack of equipment to show them in motion causes them to fall short of being true animation. The process

of illustrating the passing of time by putting images in a chronological series is one of the most important

steps in creating animation so historic instances of this practice are definitely notable.

of the motion picture. These devices were used to entertain, amaze and sometimes even frighten people.

The majority of these devices didn’t project their images and accordingly could only be viewed by a single

person at any one time. For this reason they were considered toys rather than being a large

scale entertainment industry like later animation. Many of these devices are still built by and for film

students being taught the basic principles of animation.

painting and a simple lamp. In a darkened room, the image would appear projected onto an adjacent flat

surface. It was often used to project demonic, frightening images in order to convince people that they

were witnessing the supernatural. Some slides for the lanterns contained moving parts which makes the

magic lantern the earliest known example of projected animation. The origin of the magic lantern is

debated, but in the 15th century the Venetian inventor Giovanni Fontana published an illustration of a

device which projected the image of a demon in his Liber Instrumentorum. The earliest known actual

magic lanterns are usually credited to Christiaan Huygens or Athanasius Kircher.

with two different pictures on each side that was attached to a piece of string or a pair of strings running

through the centre. When the string is twirled quickly between the fingers, the two pictures appear to

combine into a single image. The thaumatrope demonstrates the Phi phenomenon, the brain’s ability to

persistently perceive an image. Its invention is often credited to Sir John Herschel. John A.

Paris popularized the invention when he used one to illustrate the Phi phenomenon in 1824 to the Royal

College of Physicians.

Belgian Joseph Plateau and the Austrian Simon von Stampfer. It consists of a disk with a series of

images, drawn on radii evenly spaced around the center of the disk. Slots are cut out of the disk on the

same radii as the drawings, but at a different distance from the center. The device would be placed in

front of a mirror and spun. As the phenakistoscope is spun, a viewer would looks through the slots at the

This created the illusion of animation.

phenakistoscope. It was a cylindrical spinning device with several frames of animation printed along the

interior circumference. There are vertical slits around the sides through which an observer can view the

moving images on the opposite side when the cylinder spins. As it spins the material between the viewing

slits moves in the opposite direction of the images on the other side and in doing so serves as a

rudimentary shutter. The zoetrope had several advantages over the phenakistoscope. It didn’t require the

use of a mirror to view the illusion, and because of its cylindrical shape it could be viewed by several

people at once.

so that vanes at the top would rotate as they came in contact with the warm air currents rising from the

lamp. This rotation, if it reached the ideal speed triggered the same illusion of quick animation as a more

modern zoetrope.

book with particularly springy pages that have an animated series of images printed near the unbound

edge. A viewer bends the pages back and then rapidly releases them one at a time so that each image

viewed springs out of view to momentarily reveal the next image just before it does the same. They

operate on the same principle as the phenakistoscope and the zoetrope what with the rapid replacement

of images with others, but they create the illusion without any thing serving as a flickering shutter as the

slits had in the previous devices. They accomplish this because of the simple physiological fact that the

eye can focus more easily on stationary objects than on moving ones. Flip books were more often cited

as inspiration by early animated filmmakers than the previously discussed devices which didn’t reach

meant diameter of the circles physically limited just how many images could reasonably be displayed.

While the book format still brings about something of a physical limit to the length of the animation, this

limit is significantly longer than the round devices. Even this limit was able to be broken with the invention

of the mutoscope in 1894. It consisted of a long circularly bound flip book in a box with a crank handle to

flip through the pages.

of the zoetrope with the viewing mirror of the phenakistoscope. The mirrors were mounted still in the

center of the spinning ring of slots and drawings so that the image can be more clearly seen no matter

what the device’s radius. Reynaud also developed a larger version of the praxinoscope that could be

projected onto a screen, called the Théâtre Optique.

predates even photographic video devices such asThomas Edison’s 1883 invention, the Kinetsocope,

and the Lumière 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.

explored in much greater depth. A short stop-motion animation was produced in 1899 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. It directly descends

from various early “trick” film techniques which used video to realistically display the impossible. A few

other films featuring the stop motion technique were released afterward, but the first to receive wide scale

appreciation was Blackton’sHaunted Mansion which baffled viewers and inspired a lot of further

development in animation. In 1906 Blackton also made the first drawn work of animation on standard

film, Humorous Phases of Funny Faces. It features faces being drawn on a chalkboard which suddenly

begin to move autonomously.

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. Influenced by Cohl, Russian scientist Wladyslaw Starewicz started to

create stop motion films using deadinsects with wire limbs. In 1911 he created The Cameraman’s

Revenge, a complex tale of treason, suicide and violence between several different insects. It is a pioneer

work of puppet animation, and the oldest animated film of such dramatic complexity, with characters filled

with motivation, desire and feelings. In 1914, American cartoonist Winsor McCay released Gertie the

Dinosaur, an early example of character development in drawn animation. The film was made for

McCay’s vaudeville act and as it played McCay would speak to Gertie who would respond with a series of

gestures. There was a scene at the end of the film where McCay walked behind the projection screen and

a video of him appears on the screen showing him getting on the cartoons back and riding out of frame.

This scene made Gertie the Dinosaur the first film to combine live action footage with hand drawn

animation. McCay hand drew almost every one of the 10,000 drawings he used for the film.

created. Earl Hurd, one of Bray’s employees patented the cel technique. This involved animating moving

objects on transparent celluloid sheets which were then placed over a stationary background image and

then photographed to generate the sequence of images. This as well as Bray’s innovative use of the

assembly line method allowed John Bray Studios to create Col. Heeza Liar, the first animated series.^[19] In

1915 Max and Dave Fleischer invented rotoscoping, the process of using film as a reference point for

animation and their studios went on to later release such animated classics as Ko-Ko the Clown, Betty

Boop, Popeye the Sailor Man, and Superman. In 1918 McCay released The Sinking of the Lusitania, a

wartime propaganda film. McCay did utilize some of the newer animation techniques such as cels over

paintings, but because he did all of his animation by himself, the project wasn’t actually released until just

shortly before the end of the war. At this point the larger scale animation studios were becoming the

industrial norm and artists such as McCay faded from the public eye.^[18]

directed two other animated feature films, including 1931’s Peludopolis, the first feature length animation

to use synchronized sound. None of these, however, survive to the present day. In 1920, Otto

Mesmer of Pat Sullivan Studios created Felix the Cat. Pat Sullivan, the studio head took all of the credit

for Felix, a practice which was very common in the early days of studio animation. Felix the Cat was

distributed by Paramount Studios and attracted a very large audience. Felix was the first cartoon to be

merchandised, and he soon became a household name. In 1921 abstract animation was becoming

popular in Germany. Artists developing this genre include Walter Ruttman, Hans Richter, and Oskar

Fischinger, who referred to his works as “absolute animation.” The earliest-surviving animated feature is

the 1926 silhouette-animatedAdventures of Prince Achmed which used colour-tinted film. It was directed

by German Lotte Reiniger and French/Hungarian Berthold Bartosch.

Peter Roget discovered the vital principle,’ the persistence of vision.’ This principle rest on the fact that

our eyes temporarily retain the image of anything they’ve just scene. If this wasn’t so, we would never get

the illusion of an unbroken connection in a series of images, and neither movies nor animation would be

possible. Many people don’t realize that movies don’t actually move, and that they are still images that

appear to move when they are projected in a series. This principle was quickly adapted to develop a

series of gadgets, such as the Zoetrope and phenakitstoscope.

The Phenakistoscope: Two discs mounted on a shaft-the front disc has slits around the edge and the rear

disc has a sequence of drawings. Align the drawings with the slits, look through the openings and as the

discs revolve we have the illusion of motion.

The wheel of life’ or the Zeotrope: Appeared in the USA in 1867 and was sold as a toy. Long strips of

paper with a sequence of drawings on them were inserted into a cylinder with slits in it. Spin the cylinder,

look through the slits and the creature appears to move.

The flipper book: In 1868 a novelty called ‘the flipper book’ appeared worldwide and it remained the

simplest and the most popular device. It’s just a pad of drawing bound like a book along one edge. Hold

the book in one hand along the bound edge and with the other hand flip the pages and see them move.

Today the classical animator still flips his drawing the same way as a flipper book before testing it on the

video or film camera.

In 1906, J.Stuart Blackton made the first animated film called ‘humorous phases of funny faces’. Following

this in 1908,Winsor Mc Cay produced an animation sequence using his comic strip character ‘Little Nemo’

and followed it up with a cartoon called ‘Gertie the Trained Dinosaur. He was the first man to present

animation as an art form. Credited frequently as the father of animation industry, during the period

between 1911 and 1921,McCay nursed animation from a simple camera trick to a full -blown character

animation that would take 20 years to be surpassed. Mc cay animated his films single handedly. From

inception to execution each cartoon was his and his alone.

serious need of technological up gradation, which was essential to free the medium from the total

dependence on brilliant individuals and to ensure large volume output.

animation was done by directly photographing images from paper. This restricted the use of backgrounds

since it was to be drawn along with the characters on the same sheet of paper. In late1914,Bray

animation studio employee, Earl Hurd invented the process of inking the animator’s drawing onto

background.

output. Naturally, animation adapted itself to an industrial framework. The art of animation was no longer

the work of one man : it was a streamlined, assembly-line process in the best Henry Ford tradition. Even

before Mc Cay had shown the world the true potential of the animated cartoon, the first animation studios

were already around, trying to exploit the medium for what they could. This transformation of animation

from a fine art to an industry has had serious repercussions on both the quality and quantity of output. On

the positive side animation became highly popular through the huge quantity output and exposure. This

opened up a whole range of production options and segregation of the talent base into specialize

categories such as background artist, key animator, in-betweeners, cleanup artists, ink & paint artists, etc.

visually inventive, doing what a camera can’t do. The Felix cartoon led straight to the arrival of Walt

Disney. The most influential studio, both from an artistic as well as a commercial standpoint, in the history

of animation is the Walt Disney studio. In 1923, Walt Disney entered the animation industry with the film

“Alice’s Wonderland”. In 1928, Mickey Mouse took off with his appearance in Steamboat Willie- the first

cartoon with synchronized sound track and Disney continues to dominate the field to this very day. It is at

Disney that we see the studio system’s best effects on the development of animation as an art form. Walt

was the one who steered cartoons away from the ‘rubber hose style of the silent era and encouraged his

artists to develop a realistic, naturalistic style of animation in the early 1930’s. He was the moving force

behind such ground breaking films such as ‘Snow white and the seven Dwarfs” (1937), the first full length

animated feature and “Pinocchio” (1940), a film who’s intricate levels of technical brilliance many

animators feel has never been surpassed. Disney came out with a series of releases including films such

as ‘Lady and the tramp’, ‘The jungle book’, and the experimental film ‘Fantasia’ each surpassing the

predecessor in quality and finesse. Warner’s artists used their creative freedom to take the medium in

new directions. Directors Tex Avery and Bob Clampett broke from the Disney tradition and imbibed their

films with highly exaggerated slapstick comedy.

sake. Though television brought animation to the homes, its voracious requirement of quantity started

affecting the industry adversely. People genuinely interested in making quality cinema had manned the

great Hollywood studios of the thirties, forties and fifties. The denizens of the TV animation houses of the

sixties, seventies and eighties only cared that the product was there to the market. The quality of the

writing was poor and the animation itself was so limited, that it barely qualified as animation at all. A crop

of studios including Hanna-Barbara, Filmation and DIC came into being to cater to this huge market.

Desperate to conquer as much airtime as possible, the studios churned out series after series without

any regard to aesthetic. The budget restraints and hurried deadlines of the television industry simply

prohibited artists from crafting the kind of art their cinematic predecessors achieved.

Back on the big screen, the medium faced a different set of problems. Since the advent of television,

people were no longer spending all day at movies and short duration films were gradually loosing appeal

among audience. While animation never completely disappeared from theaters, by the 1960’s most

studios has closed down. The once that didn’t, suffered from severe declines in quality. Only Disney

retained it’s level of short films by the mid-fifties, earlier than anyone else.

principal medium of animation transformed from movies to television. But an interesting development

during the period was the emergence of computer as potential tool for animation.

animation for research and development applications. By the mid eighties, the potential of computers as

an animation tool was also recognized by the Cel animation industry. A large amount of simplicity was

brought about in conventional Cel animation by adopting it to the computer medium. Instead of

cellophane paper, finished illustrations were generated on ordinary paper and scanned into computer.

The later stages of production such as colouring, composting, sound synchronization, etc were executed

in the computer as this reduces the workload substantially.

Warner Bros, re-entered the market. Creations like Disney’s ‘Duck Tales’ (1986) and Warner’s ‘Tiny Toon

Adventures’ (1989) were considerably better than anything their competitors were producing.

The new generations of Disney artist breathed life back into animation with films like ‘Who Framed Roger

Rabbit?’ (1988) and ‘The Little Mermaid’ (1989). In the nineties, they came out with technical

masterpieces such as ‘Beauty and the Beast’, ‘Aladdin’, ‘Pocahontas’, ‘The Lion King’ and ‘Tarzan’.

These well crafted cartoons were celebrations of animation’s glory days and the public proved just as

nostalgic as the artists themselves. The use of computers elevated them to a whole new level of

sophisticated. The new Disney crew proved that the studio system was still capable of turning out great

art.

character, the effect of movement is emphasized by a change in shape. The basis of squash and stretch

is that the visual volume remains constant. While the height increases, width decreases and when width

increases height decreases.

happen. This is one of the prime considerations while preparing the storyboard and later on when an

action is planned. In storyboards, anticipation is incorporated by the inclusion of a shot; anticipating the

action that is about to happen. For example including a shot of the character looking up in horror, just

before something heavy falls on him would make the incident much more clearer to the audience.

presented so that it is completely and unmistakably clear. Staging includes a variety of factors such as

the camera distance, camera angle, camera movements, lightning and atmosphere settings, type of

background, etc.

Lightning: this is commonly employed in Disney animation films, where a well lit of action is defined by

surrounding it with lessor lit areas, thus creating a spot lit effect.

Layout: The elements in the background are arranged so that attention is concentrated to the central

character.

Perspective: this is mostly used in scenes which have an architectural background. The strong

perspective lines funnels the concentration to the main character.

character, it’s line of sight redirects attention to the staged action.

Posture: characters postures should be clear and defined. The best method would be to analyze the

pose in silhouette to verify the clarity of representation.

When a character is animated, if all it parts start moving together and stop together, the action would look

mechanical. This is because, in nature, different objects have different speeds of movement. For

moves first, followed by the limbs, then the trunk and then the legs. Similarly they stop moving at different

frames. This is overlapping action.

the sequence of frames is generated by first generating the key postures and then generating the in-

between postures. The in-between postures are not equally spaced between the key positions. This

would create a uniform speed of action and hence would result in a ‘mechanical’ movement. Variations in

the spacing of postures. An object starting from rest would not start with its maximum speed. It slowly

gains speed, comes to the maximum speed and then before the final position, starts reducing the speed

and finally comes to rest. As a thumb rule, When the postures are close together, movement is slow and

when they are spaced out, movement is fast.

through single point pivots. For example, the fingers are pivoted at its base to the palm. The palm in turn

is pivoted at the wrist to the forearm, and the forearm at the elbow to the upper arm. The upper arm is

connected to the trunk through a ball and socket joint. All these individual points move in arcs, and

combined movement results in complicated arcs. There certainly are exceptions to this, yet on the whole,

smooth movement requires movement along arcs.

turns away in disgust. The element of disgust may be amplified by the use of say an animated scowl on

his face along with a disapproving nod of the head. In character animation, the turning action is the

principle action, which is strengthened by the secondary actions i.e. the scowl and the nod.

number frames used to create it. In addition to the number of frames, how they are spaced is also crucial

in deciding the nature of a movement. For example, violent actions require lesser in-betweens and slower

movements require more in-betweens. The point is to arrive at the correct combination of number of

frames and spacing to convey the action. Other aspects of the character, such as the size , weight and

the nature of action are all decided by the timing assigned to it.

via the design and the action. But exaggeration is not just distorting a character beyond its physical limits.

It should be acceptable to the totality of the scene and the type of action depicted. Exaggeration as a

principle has various levels of consideration. At the most preliminary level, the basic concept of the film,

the amount of realism, the overall design and treatment of the characters of the film itself would decide

the amount of exaggeration adopted in the film. In normal circumstances, the exaggeration level of the

film. An overtly exaggerated animation sequence would look out of place in a moderately exaggerated

story and background treatment. A classic example of a positive use of this oddity is the central character

of the film “The Mask’.

character action. This is achieved in animation mainly through timing or the speed of the animation. For

example, a simple sphere can represent a shot put, a solid rubber ball, a balloon or a bubble through

animation. In characters, huge and bulky characters are given a lumbering gait to enhance its weight.

have a good imagination. Secondly, you need to have excellent observation powers. Do you see how

different people walk differently? Thirdly, you must have a lot of patience. Be it traditional or CGI,

patience is the name of the game. Fourthly, a penchant for communicating. Your work has to be

understood by people. Combine this with ability to work in a team and the sky is the limit for growth of

your career in the field of animation.

the early 1930s, after several years of similar processes being in use at Walt Disney and other animation

studios.

storyboarded but most of this material has been lost during the reduction of the studio archives during the

1970s. The form widely known today was developed at the Walt Disney studio during the early 1930s. In

the biography of her father, The Story of Walt Disney (Henry Holt, 1956), Diane Disney Miller explains

that the first complete storyboards were created for the 1933 Disney short Three Little Pigs. According to

John Canemaker, in Paper Dreams: The Art and Artists of Disney Storyboards (1999, Hyperion Press),

the first storyboards at Disney evolved from comic-book like “story sketches” created in the 1920s to

illustrate concepts for animated cartoon short subjects such as Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie, and

within a few years the idea spread to other studios.

Smith with creating the idea of drawing scenes on separate sheets of paper and pinning them up on a

bulletin board to tell a story in sequence, thus creating the first storyboard. The second studio to switch

from “story sketches” to storyboards was Walter Lantz Productions in early 1935,^[1] by 1936 Harman-

Ising and Leon Schlesinger also followed suit. By 1937-38 all studios were using storyboards.

Cameron Menzies, the film’s production designer, was hired by producer David O. Selznickto design

every shot of the film.

standard medium for previsualization of films. Pace Gallery curator, Annette Micheloson, writing of the

exhibition Drawing into Film: Director’s Drawings, considered the 1940s to 1990s to be the period in which

“production design was largely characterized by adoption of the storyboard”. Storyboards are now an

essential part of the creation progress.

Film

to help film directors, cinematographers and television commercial advertising clients visualize the scenes

and find potential problems before they occur. Often storyboards include arrows or instructions that

indicate movement.

events as they are to be seen through the camera lens. And in the case of interactive media, it is the

layout and sequence in which the user or viewer sees the content or information. In the storyboarding

process, most technical details involved in crafting a film or interactive media project can be efficiently

described either in picture, or in additional text.

pitch to their funders, stating that it helps them to get the support they require, since they can show

exactly where the money will be used. Alfred Hitchcock’s films were strongly believed to have been

extensively storyboarded to the finest detail by the majority of commentators over the years, although

later research indicates that this was exaggerated for publicity purposes. Akira Kurosawa was known,

particularly in his later years, for painstaking detail in his storyboarding, to the degree that the storyboard

paintings for Ran (for which he storyboarded every shot) are regarded as fine works of art in themselves.

Other directors storyboard only certain scenes, or none at all. Animation directors are usually required to

storyboard extensively, sometimes in place of writing a script.

called “animatics” to give a better idea of how the scene will look and feel with motion and timing. At its

simplest, an animatic is a series of still images edited together and displayed in sequence with a

rough dialogue and/or rough sound track added to the sequence of still images (usually taken from a

storyboard) to test whether the sound and images are working effectively together.

timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if

necessary, and a new animatic may be created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard is

perfected. Editing the film at the animatic stage can avoid animation of scenes that would be edited out of

the film. Animation is usually an expensive process, so there should be a minimum of “deleted scenes” if

the film is to be completed within budget.

linear editing software). These animations can be combined with available animatics, sound effects and

dialog to create a presentation of how a film could be shot and cut together. Some feature

film DVD special features include production animatics.

“rip-o-matic”, is made from scenes of existing movies, television programs or commercials, to simulate the

look and feel of the proposed commercial. Rip, in this sense, refers to ripping-off an original work to

create a new one.

books, often indicating staging of figures, backgrounds and balloon placement with instructions to the

artist as needed often scribbled in the margins and the dialogue/captions indicated. John

Stanley and Carl Barks (when he was writing stories for the Junior Woodchuck title) are known to have

used this style of scripting.

this stage, finalizing preparations for production go into effect. Financing will generally be confirmed and

many of the key elements such as principal cast members, director and cinematographer are set. By the

end of pre-production, the screenplay is hopefully finalized and satisfactory to all the financiers and other

stakeholders.

members, costumes, special effects and visual effects are identified. An extremely detailedschedule is

produced and arrangements are made for the necessary elements to be available to the film-makers at

the appropriate times. Sets are constructed, the crew is hired, financial arrangements are put in place and

a start date for the beginning of principal photography is set. At some point in pre-production there will be

a read-through of the script which is usually attended by all cast members with speaking parts, the

director, all heads of departments, financiers, producers, and publicists.

numbered at the beginning of pre-production to avoid confusion. This means that even though additions

and deletions may still be made, any particular scene will always fall on the same page and have the

same scene number.

recording the completed work.

.

.

Writing, (re)recording, and editing the soundtrack.

which release prints will be made (although this may be made obsolete by digital-

cinema technologies).

.

recording or mixing with professional audioequipment.

a color suite.

and can take several months to complete because it includes the complete editing, color correction and

the addition of music and sound. The process of editing a movie is also seen as the second directing

because through the post production it is possible to change the intention of the movie. Furthermore

through the use of color correcting tools and the addition of music and sound, the atmosphere of the

movie can be heavily influenced. For instance a blue-tinted movie is associated with a cold atmosphere

and the choice of music and sound increases the effect of the shown scenes to the audience.

offered by high end post houses or boutique facilities have been eroded away by video editing

software that operates on a non-linear editing system (NLE). However, traditional (analogue) post-

production services are being surpassed by digital, leading to sales of over $6 billion annually.

moved from time-consuming (tape to tape) linear video editing online editing suites, to computer

hardware and video editing software such as Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, Avid, Sony

Vegas and Lightworks.

an animation technique where each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of

animation in cinema until the advent of computer animation

a storyboard, which is a script of sorts written with images as well as words, similar to a giant comic strip.

The images allow the animation team to plan the flow of the plot and the composition of the imagery.

animation may be more precisely synchronized to the soundtrack. Given the slow, methodical manner in

which traditional animation is produced, it is almost always easier to synchronize animation to a pre-

existing soundtrack than it is to synchronize a soundtrack to pre-existing animation. A completed cartoon

soundtrack will feature music, sound effects, and dialogue performed by voice actors. However, the

scratch track used during animation typically contains only the voices, any vocal songs the characters

must sing along to, and temporary musical score tracks; the final score and sound effects are added

in post-production.

track was recorded after the film elements were finished by watching the film and performing the

dialogue, music, and sound effects required. Some studios, most notably Fleischer Studios, continued to

post-synch their cartoons through most of the 1930s, which allowed for the presence of the “muttered ad-

libs” present in many Popeye the Sailor and Betty Boop cartoons.

An animatic typically consists of pictures of the storyboard synchronized with the soundtrack. This allows

the animators and directors to work out any script and timing issues that may exist with the current

storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, and a new animatic may be

created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard is perfected. Editing the film at the animatic

stage prevents the animation of scenes that would be edited out of the film; as traditional animation is a

very expensive and time-consuming process, creating scenes that will eventually be edited out of the

completed cartoon is strictly avoided.

into full up spots. Animatics use drawn artwork, with moving pieces (for example, an arm that reaches for

a product, or a head that turns). Video storyboards are similar to animatics, but do not have moving

pieces. Photomatics are another option when creating test spots, but instead of using drawn artwork,

there is a shoot in which hundreds of digital photographs are taken. The large amount of images to

choose from may make the process of creating a test commercial a bit easier, as opposed to creating an

animatic, because changes to drawn art take time and money. Photomatics generally cost more than

animatics, as they require a shoot and on-camera talent.

departments. Character designers prepare model sheets for all important characters and props in the film.

These model sheets will show how a character or object looks from a variety of angles with a variety of

poses and expressions, so that all artists working on the project can deliver consistent work. Sometimes,

small statues known as maquettes may be produced, so that an animator can see what a character looks

like in three dimensions. At the same time, the background stylistswill do similar work for the settings and

animatic and analyzes exactly what poses, drawings, and lip movements will be needed on what frames.

An exposure sheet (or X-sheet for short) is created; this is a printed table that breaks down the action,

dialogue, and sound frame-by-frame as a guide for the animators. If a film is based more strongly in

music, a bar sheet may be prepared in addition to or instead of an X-sheet. Bar sheets show the

relationship between the on-screen action, the dialogue, and the actualmusical notation used in the score.

same as the blocking out of shots by a cinematographer on a live-action film. It is here that the

background layout artists determine the camera angles, camera paths, lighting, and shading of the scene.

Character layout artists will determine the major poses for the characters in the scene, and will make a

drawing to indicate each pose. For short films, character layouts are often the responsibility of the

director.

(not to be confused by its predecessor the leica reel). The term “animatic” was originally coined by Disney

animation studios.

transparent paper perforated to fit the peg bars in their desks, often using colored pencils, one picture or

“frame” at a time. A peg bar is an animation tool that is used in traditional (cel) animation to keep the

drawings in place. The pins in the peg bar match the holes in the paper. It is attached to the animation

desk or light table depending on which is being used. A key animator or lead animator will draw the key

drawings in a scene, using the character layouts as a guide. The key animator draws enough of the

frames to get across the major points of the action; in a sequence of a character jumping across a gap,

the key animator may draw a frame of the character as he is about to leap, two or more frames as the

character is flying through the air, and the frame for the character landing on the other side of the gap.

on in the soundtrack at the moment the frame will appear, or else the discrepancy between sound and

visual will be distracting to the audience. For example, in high-budget productions, extensive effort is

given in making sure a speaking character’s mouth matches in shape the sound that character’s actor is

producing as he or she speaks.

preliminary version of the final animated scene; the pencil drawings are quickly photographed or scanned

and synced with the necessary soundtracks. This allows the animation to be reviewed and improved upon

before passing the work on to his assistant animators, who will go add details and some of the missing

frames in the scene. The work of the assistant animators is reviewed, pencil-tested, and corrected until

the lead animator is ready to meet with the director and have his scene sweatboxed, or reviewed by the

may be required to re-do a scene many times before the director will approve it.

animators solely dedicated to drawing that character. The group will be made up of one supervising

animator, a small group of key animators, and a larger group of assistant animators. For scenes where

two characters interact, the key animators for both characters will decide which character is “leading” the

scene, and that character will be drawn first. The second character will be animated to react to and

support the actions of the “leading” character.

department, made up of the clean-up animators and the inbetweeners. The clean-up animators take the

lead and assistant animators’ drawings and trace them onto a new sheet of paper, taking care in including

all of the details present on the original model sheets, so that it appears that one person animated the

entire film. The inbetweeners will draw in whatever frames are still missing in between the other

animators’ drawings. This procedure is called tweening. The resulting drawings are again pencil-tested

and sweatboxed until they meet approval.

budget productions are done in separate departments. Effects animators animate anything that moves

and is not a character, including props, vehicles, machinery and phenomena such as fire, rain,

and explosions. Sometimes, instead of drawings, a number of special processes are used to produce

special effects in animated films; rain, for example, has been created in Disney animated films since the

late-1930s by filming slow-motion footage of water in front of a black background, with the resulting film

superimposed over the animation.

black and white film stock. Nowadays, pencil tests can be made using a video camera, and computer

software.

animated sequence will take place. These backgrounds are generally done in gouacheor acrylic paint,

although some animated productions have used backgrounds done in watercolor, oil paint, or

even crayon. Background artists follow very closely the work of the background layout artists and color

stylists (which is usually compiled into a workbook for their use), so that the resulting backgrounds are

harmonious in tone with the character designs.

photography, a process known as ink-and-paint. Each drawing is then transferred from paper to a thin,

clear sheet of plastic called a cel, a contraction of the material name celluloid (the original

flammable cellulose nitrate was later replaced with the more stable cellulose acetate). The outline of the

reverse sides of the cels to add colors in the appropriate shades. In many cases, characters will have

more than one color palette assigned to them; the usage of each one depends upon the mood and

lighting of each scene. The transparent quality of the cel allows for each character or object in a frame to

be animated on different cels, as the cel of one character can be seen underneath the cel of another; and

the opaque background will be seen beneath all of the cels.

involved in a frame of a sequence is laid on top of each other, with the background at the bottom of the

stack. A piece of glass is lowered onto the artwork in order to flatten any irregularities, and the composite

image is then photographed by a special animation camera, also called rostrum camera. The cels are

removed, and the process repeats for the next frame until each frame in the sequence has been

photographed. Each cel has registration holes, small holes along the top or bottom edge of the cel, which

allow the cel to be placed on corresponding peg bars before the camera to ensure that each cel aligns

with the one before it; if the cels are not aligned in such a manner, the animation, when played at full

speed, will appear “jittery.” Sometimes, frames may need to be photographed more than once, in order to

implement superimpositions and other camera effects. Pans are created by either moving the cels or

backgrounds one step at a time over a succession of frames (the camera does not pan; it only zooms in

and out).

pencil animation. Once every sequence in the production has been photographed, the final film is sent for

development and processing, while the final music and sound effects are added to the soundtrack. Again,

editing in the traditional live-action sense is generally not done in animation, but if it is required it is done

at this time, before the final print of the film is ready for duplication or broadcast.

always made of black anodized aluminum, and commonly had 2 pegbars, one at the top and one at the

bottom of the lightbox. The Oxberry Master Series had four pegbars, two above and two below, and

sometimes used a “floating pegbar” as well. The height of the column on which the camera was mounted

determined the amount of zoom achievable on a piece of artwork. Such cameras were massive

mechanical affairs which might weigh close to a ton and take hours to break down or set up.

to the various axes of movement of the camera, thus saving many hours of hand cranking by human

operators. A notable early use of computer cameras was in Star Wars (1977), using the Dykstra system

at Lucas’ Sun Valley facility. Gradually, motion control techniques were adopted throughout the industry.

While several computer camera software packages became available in the early 1980s, the Tondreau

System became one of the most widely adopted.

obsolete.

animation drawings are completed; instead of being transferred to cels, the animators’ drawings

are scanned into a computer, where they are colored and processed using one or more of a variety of

software packages. The resulting drawings are composited in the computer over their respective

outputs the final film by either exporting a digital video file, using a video cassette recorder, or printing

to film using a high-resolution output device. Use of computers allows for easier exchange of artwork

between departments, studios, and even countries and continents (in most low-budget animated

productions, the bulk of the animation is actually done by animators working in other countries,

including South Korea, Japan, Singapore, Mexico, andIndia).

the last major animation production to use the traditional process is Cartoon Network’sEd, Edd n

Eddy (1999–2009), although it was forced to switch to digital paint in 2004.^[1] Minor productions such

as Hair High (2004) by Bill Plympton have used traditional cels long after the introduction of digital

techniques. Digital ink and paint has been in use at Walt Disney Feature Animation since 1989, where it

was used for the final rainbow shot in The Little Mermaid. All subsequent Disney animated features were

digitally inked-and-painted (starting with The Rescuers Down Under, which was also the first major

feature film to entirely use digital ink and paint), using Disney’s proprietary CAPS (Computer Animation

Production System) technology, developed primarily by Pixar (the last Disney feature using CAPS

was Home on the Range). Most other studios use one of a number of other high-end software packages

such as Toon Boom Harmony, Toonz Bravo!, Animo, and even consumer-level applications such

as Adobe Flash, Toon Boom Studio, TVPaint and Toonz Harlequin.

affecting the film directly, assisting the animators in their work and making the whole process faster and

easier. Doing the layouts on a computer is much more effective than doing it by traditional methods.

Additionally, video cameras give the opportunity to see a “preview” of the scenes and how they will look

when finished, enabling the animators to correct and improve upon them without having to complete them

first. This can be considered a digital form of pencil testing.

repeated from frame to frame, thus saving labor. A simple example would be a scene with two characters

on screen, one of which is talking and the other standing silently. Since the latter character is not moving,

it can be displayed in this scene using only one drawing, on one cel, while multiple drawings on multiple

cels will be used to animate the speaking character.

will stay still for the entire sequence, so it can be drawn as part of the background. The plate can be

drawn along with the character as the character places it on the table. However, after the plate is on the

table, the plate will no longer move, although the boy will continue to move as he draws his arm away

from the plate. In this example, after the boy puts the plate down, the plate can then be drawn on a

separate cel from the boy. Further frames will feature new cels of the boy, but the plate does not have to

be redrawn as it is not moving; the same cel of the plate can be used in each remaining frame that it is

still upon the table. The cel paints were actually manufactured in shaded versions of each color to

plate would be painted slightly brighter to compensate for being moved one layer down.

frame, including the background and all characters and items, were drawn on a single sheet of paper,

then photographed. Everything had to be redrawn for each frame containing movements. This led to a

“jittery” appearance; imagine seeing a sequence of drawings of a mountain, each one slightly different

from the one preceding it. The pre-cel animation was later improved by using techniques like the slash

and tear system invented by Raoul Barre; the background and the animated objects were drawn on

separate papers. A frame was made by removing all the blank parts of the papers where the objects were

drawn before being placed on top of the backgrounds and finally photographed. The cel animation

process was invented byEarl Hurd and John Bray in 1915

example, in a scene in which a man is sitting in a chair and talking, the chair and the body of the man

may be the same in every frame; only his head is redrawn, or perhaps even his head stays the same

while only his mouth moves. This is known as limited animation. The process was popularized in

theatrical cartoons by United Productions of America and used in most television animation, especially

that of Hanna-Barbera. The end result does not look very lifelike, but is inexpensive to produce, and

therefore allows cartoons to be made on small television budgets.

film (which usually runs at 24 frames per second), meaning there are only 12 drawings per second. Even

though the image update rate is low, the fluidity is satisfactory for most subjects. However, when a

character is required to perform a quick movement, it is usually necessary to revert to animating “on

ones”, as “twos” are too slow to convey the motion adequately. A blend of the two techniques keeps the

eye fooled without unnecessary production cost.

techniques, television animation may be shot on “threes”, or even “fours”, i.e. three or four frames per

drawing. This translates to only eight or six drawings per second.

such as a character walking or a breeze blowing through the trees. In the case of walking, the character is

animated taking a step with his right foot, then a step with his left foot. The loop is created so that, when

the sequence repeats, the motion is seamless. However, since an animation loop essentially uses the

same bit of animation over and over again, it is easily detected and can in fact become distracting to an

audience. In general, they are used only sparingly by productions with moderate or high budgets.

creative use of loops. In addition, a promotional music video from Cartoon Network’s Groovies featuring

the Soul Coughing song “Circles” poked fun at animation loops as they are often seen in The

Cartoon Network), supposedly walking in a house, wonder why they keep passing the same table and

vase over and over again.

multiplane effect or the parallax process. The art is placed on different layers of glass plates, and as the

camera moves vertically towards or away from the artwork levels, the camera’s viewpoint appears to

move through the various layers of artwork in 3D space. The panorama views in Pinocchio are examples

of the effects a multiplane camera can achieve. Different versions of the camera have been made through

time, but the most famous is the one developed by the Walt Disney studio beginning with their 1937

short The Old Mill. Another one, the “Tabletop”, was developed by Fleischer Studios. The Tabletop, first

used in 1934’s Poor Cinderella, used miniature sets made of paper cutouts placed in front of the camera

on a rotating platform, with the cels between them. By rotating the entire setup one frame at a time in

accordance with the cel animation, realistic panoramas could be created. Ub Iwerks and Don Bluth also

built multiplane cameras for their studios.

the electrostatic copying technique called xerography allowed the drawings to be copied directly onto the

cels, eliminating much of the “inking” portion of the ink-and-paint process. This saved time and money,

and it also made it possible to put in more details and to control the size of the xeroxed objects and

characters (this replaced the little known, and seldom used, photographic lines technique at Disney, used

to reduce the size of animation when needed). At first it resulted in a more sketchy look, but the technique

was improved upon over time.

used in the short film Goliath II, while the first feature entirely using this process wasOne Hundred and

One Dalmatians (1961). The graphic style of this film was strongly influenced by the process. Some hand

inking was still used together with xerography in this and subsequent films when distinct colored lines

were needed. Later, colored toners became available, and several distinct line colors could be used, even

simultaneously. For instance, in The Rescuers the characters outlines are gray. White and blue toners

were used for special effects, such as snow and water.

Transfer) process was a technique for transferring the animators’ art onto cels. Basically, the process was

a modification of a repro-photographic process; the artists’ work were photographed on high-contrast

“litho” film, and the image on the resulting negative was then transferred to a celcovered with a layer of

light sensitive dye. The cel was exposed through the negative. Chemicals were then used to remove the

unexposed portion. Small and delicate details were still inked by hand if needed. Spencer received

an Academy Award for Technical Achievement for developing this process.

of a ready frame. This creates the illusion of depth, but not as much as a multiplane camera would. A

special version of cel overlay is called line overlay, made to complete the background instead of making

the foreground, and was invented to deal with the sketchy appearance of xeroxed drawings. The

background was first painted as shapes and figures in flat colors, containing rather few details. Next, a cel

with detailed black lines was laid directly over it, each line drawn to add more information to the

underlying shape or figure and give the background the complexity it needed. In this way, the visual style

of the background will match that of the xeroxed character cels. As the xerographic process evolved, line

overlay was left behind.

on cels in its final stages, but painted cels are rare today as the computer moves into the animation

studio, and the outline drawings are usually scanned into the computer and filled with digital paint instead

of being transferred to cels and then colored by hand. The drawings are composited in a computer

program on many transparent “layers” much the same way as they are with cels, and made into a

sequence of images which may then be transferred onto film or converted to a digital video format.

similar device, where the outline drawings are done in a similar manner as they would be on paper.

The Goofy short How To Hook Up Your Home Theater (2007) represented Disney’s first project based on

the paperless technology available today. Some of the advantages are the possibility and potential of

controlling the size of the drawings while working on them, drawing directly on a multiplane background

and eliminating the need of photographing line tests and scanning.

computer-assisted traditional animation from 3D computer animation, such as Toy Story and Ice

Age. However, often traditional animation and 3D computer animation will be used together, as in Don

Bluth’s Titan A.E. and Disney’s Tarzan and Treasure Planet. Most anime still use traditional animation

today. DreamWorks executive Jeffrey Katzenberg coined the term “tradigital animation” to describe films

produced by his studio which incorporated elements of traditional and computer animation equally, such

as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas.

Waker and others use “cel-shading” animation filters or lighting systems to make their full 3D animation

appear as though it were drawn in a traditional cel style. This technique was also used in the animated

movie Appleseed, and cel-shaded 3D animation is typically integrated with cel animation in Disney films

and in many television shows, such as the Fox animated series Futurama.

“traced” over actual film footage of actors and scenery. Traditionally, the live action will be printed out

frame by frame and registered. Another piece of paper is then placed over the live action printouts and

the action is traced frame by frame using a lightbox. The end result still looks hand drawn but the motion

will be remarkably lifelike. Waking Life is a full-length, rotoscoped animated movie, as is American

animation, along with live action, in addition, Kanye West’s music video for his song Heartless, in homage

to American Pop is fully rotoscoped. In most cases, rotoscoping is mainly used to aid the animation of

realistically rendered human beings, as in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, and Sleeping

Beauty.

objects, such as cars, boats, or doors. A small live action model of the required object was built and

painted white, while the edges of the model were painted with thin black lines. The object was then filmed

as required for the animated scene by moving the model, the camera, or a combination of both, in real

time or using stop-motion animation. The film frames were then printed on paper, showing a model made

up of the painted black lines. After the artists had added details to the object not present in the live-action

photography of the model, it was xeroxed onto cels. A notable example is Cruella de Vil’s car in

Disney’s One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The process of transferring 3D objects to cels was greatly

improved in the 1980s when computer graphics advanced enough to allow the creation of 3D computer

generated objects that could be manipulated in any way the animators wanted, and then printed as

outlines on paper before being copied onto cels using Xerography or the APT process. This technique

was used in Disney films such as Oliver and Company (1988) and The Little Mermaid (1989). This

process has more or less been superseded by the use of cel-shading.

production will combine both live-action and animated footage. The live-action parts of these productions

are usually filmed first, the actors pretending that they are interacting with the animated characters, props,

or scenery; animation will then be added into the footage later to make it appear as if it has always been

there. Like rotoscoping, this method is rarely used, but when it is, it can be done to terrific effect,

immersing the audience in a fantasy world where humans and cartoons co-exist. Early examples include

the silent Out of the Inkwell (begun in 1919) cartoons by Max Fleischer and Walt Disney’s Alice

Comedies (begun in 1923). Live-action and animation were later combined to successful effect in features

such as The Three Caballeros (1944), Anchors Aweigh (1945), Song of the South (1946), Mary

Pagemaster (1994) Space Jam (1996), andLooney Tunes: Back In Action (2003). Other significant live-

action hybrids include the music video for Paula Abdul’s hit song “Opposites Attract” and numerous

television commercials, especially for breakfast cereals marketed to children. This technique was also

recently used for the Geico commercial starring Foghorn Leghorn.

create special elements such as smoke, lightning and “magic”, and to give the animation in general a

distinct visual appearance.

Mermaid, The Secret of NIMH and The Thief and the Cobbler. Today the special effectsare mostly done

different techniques, such as drybrush, airbrush, charcoal, grease pencil, backlit animation or, during

shooting, the cameraman used multiple exposures with diffusing screens, filters or gels. For instance,

the Nutcracker Suite segment in Fantasia has a fairy sequence where stippled cels are used, creating a

soft pastel look.

images in art, printed media, video games,films, television programs, commercials, simulators and

simulation generally. The visual scenes may be dynamic or static, and may be 2D or 3D, though the term

“CGI” is most commonly used to refer to 3D computer graphics used for creating scenes or special

effects in films and television.

availability of CGI software and increased computer speeds have allowed individual artists and small

companies to produce professional-grade films, games, and fine art from their home computers. This has

brought about an internet subculture with its own set of global celebrities, clichés, and technical

vocabulary.

such as fractal landscapes are also generated via computer algorithms. A simple way to generate

fractal surfaces is to use an extension of the triangular mesh method, relying on the construction of

some special case of a de Rham curve, e.g. midpoint displacement. For instance, the algorithm may

start with a large triangle, then recursively zoom in by dividing it into 4 smaller Sierpinski triangles,

then interpolate the height of each point from its nearest neighbors. The creation of a Brownian

surface may be achieved not only by adding noise as new nodes are created, but by adding

additional noise at multiple levels of the mesh. Thus a topographical map with varying levels of height

can be created using relatively straightforward fractal algorithms. Some typical, and easy to program

fractals used in CGI are the plasma fractal and the more dramatic fault fractal.

focused computer-generated effects, e.g. the use of specific models to represent the chemical

weathering of stones to model erosion and produce an “aged appearance” for a given stone-based

surface.

customers and builders. These computer generated models can be more accurate than traditional

drawings. Architectural animation (which provides animated movies of buildings, rather than interactive

images) can also be used to see the possible relationship a building will have in relation to the

environment and its surrounding buildings. The rendering of architectural spaces without the use of paper

and pencil tools is now a widely accepted practice with a number of computer-assisted architectural

design systems.

interactive manner, thus providing “interactive environments” both at the urban and building

levels. Specific applications in architecture not only include the specification of building structures such as

walls and windows, and walk-throughs, but the effects of light and how sunlight will affect a specific

design at different times of the day.

internet-based systems still lags those of sophisticated inhouse modelling systems.

instance, a computer-generated reconstruction of the monastery at Georgenthal in Germany was derived

from the ruins of the monastery, yet provides the viewer with a “look and feel” of what the building would

have looked like in its day

organizations such as the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute have developed anatomically

correct computer-based models. Computer generated anatomical models can be used both for

instructional and operational purposes. To date, a large body of artist produced medical images continue

to be used by medical students, such as images by Frank Netter, e.g.Cardiac images. However, a

number of online anatomical models are becoming available.

in applications which involve CT scans a three dimensional model is automatically produced from a large

number of single slice x-rays, producing “computer generated image”. Applications involvingmagnetic

resonance imaging also bring together a number of “snapshots” (in this case via magnetic pulses) to

produce a composite, internal image.

For instance, in total knee replacement, the construction of a detailed patient specific model can be used

to carefully plan the surgery. These three dimensional models are usually extracted from multiple CT

scans of the appropriate parts of the patient’s own anatomy. Such models can also be used for

planning aortic valve implantations, one of the common procedures for treating heart disease. Given that

the shape, diameter and position of the coronary openings can vary greatly from patient to patient, the

extraction (from CT scans) of a model that closely resembles a patient’s valve anatomy can be highly

beneficial in planning the procedure

secondly the mechanics of continuous elastic sheets and thirdly the geometric macroscopic features of

cloth. To date, making the clothing of a digital character automatically fold in a natural way remains a

challenge for many animators.

of clothing are now routinely used by top fashion design firms.

resembling real skin at the static level; physical realism in resembling its movements and functional

realism in resembling its response to actions.

dynamically and allowing a user to view the data from multiple perspectives. The applications areas

may vary significantly, ranging from the visualization of the flow patterns in fluid dynamics to

specific computer aided design applications. The data rendered may correspond to specific visual

scenes that change as the user interacts with the system, e.g. simulators such as flight

simulators make extensive use of CGI techniques for representing the world.

data is managed and filtered to a form that makes it suitable for rendering. This is often called the

“visualization data”. The visualization data is then mapped to a “visualization representation” that can

be fed to a rendering system. This is usually called a “renderable representation”. This representation

is then rendered as a displayable image. As the user interacts with the system, e.g. by using joystick

controls to change their position within the virtual world, the raw data is fed through the pipeline to

create a new rendered image, often making real-time computational efficiency a key consideration in

such applications.

to dynamic images that resemble a movie. However, in general the term computer animation refers to

dynamic images that do not allow user interaction, and the term virtual world is used for the interactive

animated environments.

and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations. Computer generated animations are more controllable

than other more physically based processes, such as constructing miniatures for effects shots or

hiring extras for crowd scenes, and because it allows the creation of images that would not be feasible

using any other technology. It can also allow a single graphic artist to produce such content without the

use of actors, expensive set pieces, or props.

replaced by a new image that is similar to the previous image, but advanced slightly in the time domain

(usually at a rate of 24 or 30 frames/second). This technique is identical to how the illusion of movement

is achieved with television and motion pictures.

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. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop

motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay

animation or “clay mation”. Not all stop motion requires figures or models; many stop motion films can

involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic effect.

Both orthographical variants, with and without the hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has, in

addition, a second meaning, not related to animation or cinema: “a device for automatically stopping a

machine or engine when something has gone wrong” (The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 1993

edition).

are taken at regular intervals and combined into a continuous film.

The first instance of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart

Blackton for The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1897), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to

life. In 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used the stop trick technique in the “lightning sculpting”

sequence. French trick film maestro Georges Méliès 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^{[dubious – discuss]}. The

Haunted Hotel (1907) is another stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton, and was a resounding success

when released. Segundo de Chomón (1871–1929), from Spain, released El Hotel Eléctrico later that

same year, and used similar techniques as the Blackton film. In 1908, A Sculptor’s Welsh Rarebit

Nightmare was released, as was The Sculptor’s Nightmare, a film by Billy Bitzer. Italian animator Roméo

Bossetti impressed audiences with his object animation tour-de-force, The Automatic Moving Company in

1912. The great European stop motion pioneer was Wladyslaw Starewicz (1892–1965), who

animated The Beautiful Lukanida (1910), The Battle of the Stag Beetles (1910), The Ant and the

Grasshopper (1911).

December 1916 brought the first of Willie Hopkins’ 54 episodes of “Miracles in Mud” to the big screen.

Also in December 1916, the first woman animator, Helena Smith Dayton, began experimenting with clay

stop motion. She would release her first film in 1917, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and

Juliet.

others as O’bie). His work on The Lost World(1925) is well known, but he is most admired for his work

on King Kong (1933), a milestone of his films made possible by stop motion animation.

O’Brien on the film Mighty Joe Young (1949), Harryhausen 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 (1955), Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The Golden Voyage of Sinbad(1974) and Clash Of The

Titans (1981).

products marching past Autolite factories to the tune of Franz Schubert’s Military March. An abbreviated

version of this sequence was later used in television ads for Autolite, especially those on the 1950s CBS

program Suspense, which Autolite sponsored.

clay animation with his Oscar-nominated 1965 film Clay (or the Origin of Species). Noyes also used stop

motion to animate sand laying on glass for his musical animated film Sandman (1975).

create an experimental film called “Closed Mondays” which became the world’s first stop motion film to

win an Oscar. Will Vinton followed with several other successful short film experiments including “The

Great Cognito”, “Creation”, and “Rip Van Winkle” which were each nominated for Academy Awards. In

1977, Vinton made a documentary about this producess and his style of animation which he dubbed

“claymation” and he title the documentary “Claymation”. Soon after this documentary, the term was

trademarked by Vinton to differentiate his team’s work from others who had been, or were beginning to

do, “clay animation”. While the word has stuck and is often used to describe clay animation and stop

motion, it remains a trademark owned currently by Laika Entertainment, Inc.

Dutch-Canadian animator Co Hoedeman. Hoedeman was one of dozens of animators sheltered by

the National Film Board of Canada, a Canadian government film arts agency that had supported

animators for decades. A pioneer of refined multiple stop motion films under the NFB banner was Norman

McLaren, who brought in many other animators to create their own creatively controlled films. Notable

among these are the pinscreen animation films of Jacques Drouin, made with the original pinscreen

donated by Alexandre Alexeieff and Claire Parker.

with origami, The Red and the Blue and the clay animation kittens Mio and Mao. Other European

productions included a stop motion-animated series of Tove Jansson’s The Moomins (from 1979, often

referred to as “The Fuzzy Felt Moomins”), produced by Film Polski and Jupiter Films.

Jittlov to do the first stop motion animation of Mickey Mouse toys ever produced for a short sequence

called Mickey’s 50th in 1978. Jittlov again produced some impressive multi-technique stop motion

animation a year later for a 1979 Disney special promoting their release of the feature film The Black

Hole. Titled Major Effects, Jittlov’s work stood out as the best part of the special. Jittlov released his

footage the following year to 16mm film collectors as a short film titled The Wizard of Speed and Time,

along with four of his other short multi-technique animated films, most of which eventually evolved into his

own feature-length film of the same title. Effectively demonstrating almost all animation techniques, as

well as how he produced them, the film was released to theaters in 1987 and to video in 1989.

as the original Star Wars trilogy: the chess sequence in Star Wars, the Tauntauns and AT-AT walkers

in The Empire Strikes Back, and the AT-ST walkers in Return of the Jedi were all stop motion animation,

some of it using the Go films. The many shots including the ghosts inRaiders of the Lost Ark and the first

two feature films in the RoboCop series use Phil Tippett’s go motion version of stop motion.

famous Pogo comic strip. Titled I go Pogo, it was aired a few times on American cable channels, but has

yet to be commercially released. Primarily clay, some characters required armatures, and walk cycles

used pre-sculpted hard bases legs.

of the small alien ships in Spielberg’s Batteries Not Included in 1987, animated by David W. Allen. Allen’s

stop motion work can also be seen in such feature films as The Crater Lake Monster (1977), Q – The

Winged Serpent (1982), The Gate (1986) and Freaked (1993). Allen’s King Kong Volkswagen commercial

from the 1970s is now legendary among model animation enthusiasts.

Adventures Of Mark Twain” based on the life and works of the famous American author. While the film

may have been a little sophisticated for young audiences at the time, it got rave reviews from critics and

adults in general Vinton’s team also created the Nomes and the Nome King for Disney’s “Return to Oz”

feature, for which they received an Academy Award Nomination for Special Visual Effects. In the 80’s and

early 90’s, Will Vinton became very well known for his commercial work as well with stop motion

campaigns including The California Raisins.

include Alice, an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, andFaust, a rendition

of the legend of the German scholar. The Czech school is also illustrated by the series Pat & Mat (1979–

2004). Created by Lubomír Beneš and Vladimír Jiránek, and it was wildly popular in a number of

countries.

Little Mermaid at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s, there have been an increasing

number of traditional stop motion feature films, despite advancements with computer animation. The

Nightmare Before Christmas, directed by Henry Selick and produced by Tim Burtonwas one of the more

Peach and Coraline, and Tim Burton went on to direct Corpse Bride.

called The PJs, with creator Eddie Murphy. The Emmy winning show aired on Fox then UPN for 3

seasons.

and Gromit. In addition to a series of award-winning shorts and featurettes, he won theAcademy Award

for Best Animated Feature for the feature-length outing Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-

Rabbit. Chicken Run, his first feature-length production, grossed over $100 million at the North American

box-office, and garnered critical praise. Other notable stop motion feature films released since 1990

include Fantastic Mr. Fox and $9.99, both released in 2009, andThe Secret Adventures of Tom

Thumb (1993).

short was In Tune With Tomorrow (also known as Motor Rhythm) in 1939 by John Norling. The second

stereoscopic stop motion release was The Adventures of Sam Space in 1955 by Paul Sprunck. The third

and latest stop motion short in stereo 3D was The Incredible Invasion of the 20,000 Giant Robots from

Outer Space in 2000 by Elmer Kaan and Alexander Lentjes. This is also the first ever 3D stereoscopic

stop motion and CGI short in the history of film. The first all stop motion 3D feature is Coraline (2009),

based on Neil Gaiman’s best-selling novel and directed by Henry Selick. Another recent example is

the Nintendo 3DS video software which comes with the option for Stop Motion videos. This has been

released December 8, 2011 as a 3DS system update.

used on the films The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Dragonslayer (1981), and the RoboCopfilms. Go

motion involved programming a computer to move parts of a model slightly during each exposure of each

frame of film, combined with traditional hand manipulation of the model in between frames, to produce a

more realistic motion blurring effect. Tippett also used the process extensively in his 1984 short

film Prehistoric Beast, a 10 minutes long sequence depicting a herbivorous dinosaur (Monoclonius), being

chased by a carnivorous one (Tyrannosaurus). With new footage Prehistoric Beast became Dinosaur! in

1985, a full length dinosaurs documentary hosted by Christopher Reeve. Those Phil Tippett’s go motion

tests acted as motion models for his first photo-realistic use of computers to depict dinosaurs in Jurassic

Park in 1993. A lo-tech, manual version of this blurring technique was originally pioneered by Wladyslaw

Starewicz in the silent era, and was used in his feature film The Tale of the Fox (1931). The 2009

film Fantastic Mr. Fox was also entirely filmed in stop motion.

projects such as in children’s programming, as well as in commercials and comic shows such as Robot

Chicken. The argument that the textures achieved with CGI cannot match the way real textures are

captured by stop motion also makes it valuable for a handful of movie makers, notably Tim Burton, whose

puppet-animated film Corpse Bride was released in 2005.

Clokey’s Gumby series—which spawned a feature film, Gumby I in 1995—using both freeform and

character clay animation. Clokey started his adventures in clay with a 1953 freeform clay short film

called Gumbasia (1953) which shortly thereafter propelled him into his more structured Gumby TV series.

motion Christmas specials such as Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, The Year Without a Santa

Claus, Santa Claus is Coming to Town, and many others.

show that had Cold War propaganda as its primary function. New episodes are still being produced in

Germany, making it one of the longest running animated series in the world. However, the show’s

purpose today has changed to pure entertainment.

which played for many years on the BBC. Another French/Polish stop motion animated series

was Colargol (Barnaby the Bear in the UK, Jeremy in Canada), by Olga Pouchine and Tadeusz Wilkosz.

Mark Hall (Cosgrove Hall Films) produced a full length film The Wind in the Willows (1983) and later a

multi-season TV series The Wind in the Willows based on Kenneth Grahame’s classic children’s book of

the same title. They also produced a documentary of their production techniques, Making Frog and Toad.

made action figures and other toys as principal characters. Other action figures, calledStikfas, are very

popular stop motion figures and are not extremely expensive. Moral Orel is another stop motion based

show, along with Mary Shelley’s Frankenhole, both created by Dino Stamatopoulos.

bordering on “freeform”, but effective. Some barely have a face, but the comedic or violence proportions

exceeding those of conventional clay puppets, with grisly crime scenes riddled by clay gunfire and

hapless victims falling in a sniper’s cross hairs. The comedy helps the viewer enjoy the animation without

noticing the simpleness of the clay puppet. Many younger people begin their experiments in movie

making with stop motion, thanks to the ease of modern stop motion software and online video

publishing. Many new stop motion shorts use clay animation into a new form.

YouTube on January 19, 2009. The video, directed by Lavie and Yuval and Merav Nathan, uses stop

motion and has achieved great success with over 15 million views, also earning a 2010 Grammy Award

nomination for “Best Short Form Music Video”.

to CGI. the Virgin Interactive Entertainment Mythos game Magic and Mayhem (1998) featured creatures

built by stop motion specialist Alan Friswell, who made the miniature figures from modelling clay and latex

rubber, over armatures of wire and ball-and-socket joints. The models were then animated one frame at a

time, and incorporated into the CGI elements of the game through digital photography. “ClayFighter” for

the Super Nintendo and The Neverhood for the PC are other examples.

McLaren

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Starevich

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Joseph Barbera

Berthold

Bartosch

Mel Blanc

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Grim Natwick

Lotte Reiniger

Émile Reynaud

Osamu Tezuka

Frank Thomas

Bill Tytla

Richard Williams

Frederico Valle

Karel Zeman

Milt Kahl

Chuck Jones

Kihachirô

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Max Fleischer

Friz Freleng

Oscar

Fischinger

Paul Grimault

Zlatko Grgić

William Hanna

Ray

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Jean-François

Laguionie

Rene Laloux

Walter Lantz

Len Lye

Bob Clampett

Émile Courtet

Quirino Cristiani

Shamus

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John Hubley

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Walerian

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Jacques-Rémy

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Seth

Silverman

Hayao

Miyazaki

Koji Morimoto

Yuri Norstein

Richard

Williams

Michel Ocelot

Nick Park

Trey Parker

Jonti Picking

Priit Pärn

Bill Plympton

Oliver Postgate

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Sylvain Chomet

Louis K Wang

Peter Chung

David Crognale

Gene Deitch

Andreas Deja

Jean Knoertzer

Michaël Dudok De

Wit

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Pierre Hébert

Don Hertzfeldt

Maddisson Hulme

Andreas Hydake

Mike Judge

Isao Takahata

Bruce Timm

Will Vinton

Dušan Vukotić

Wan brothers

Giselle

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John Lasseter

Caroline Leaf

Guionne Leroy

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Brothers Quay

Joanna Quinn

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Paul Fierlinger

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Rotoscoping

Computer animation (CGI)

Cutout animation

Analog computer animation

Motion capture

Stop-motion animation

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Pixilation

Puppet animation

Cutout animation

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Pinscreen animation

Drawn on film animation

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DePatie-Freleng Enterprises

Filmation

Fleischer Studios and Famous Studios

Grantray-Lawrence Animation

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Harman-Ising Productions

Leon Schesinger Productions/Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. (a/k/a “Termite Terrace”, now known

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Rankin-Bass

Soyuzmultfilm

United Productions of America (UPA)

Van Beuren Studios

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Klasky Csupo Inc.

Madhouse

Mainframe Entertainment

Marathon Studios

National Film Board of

Canada

Nelvana

PannóniaFilm

Pixar

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ŠAF

Spumco

Sony Pictures Animation

Studio 4°C

Studio Ghibli

Sumo Dojo

Sunrise

Walt Disney Feature

Animation

Williams Street Studios

Zagreb Film

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Animax Entertainment

Banjax

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DreamWorks Animation

DPS Film Roman

Folimage

Gainax

GONZO

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Rough Draft Studios

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available to make you a knowledgeable artist. My advice is to buy a few Animation Books to refer to and

use as you start your journey of understanding “The Fascinating World Of Animation.”

LEMAY, BRIAN Lightfoot Ltd

ANIMALS IN MOTION

MAYBRIDGE, EADWEARD 0-486-20203-8

ANIMATION FROM SCRIPT TO SCREEN

SHAMUS, CULHANE 0-315-02162-3

ANIMATION MAGIC

HAHN, DON 0-7868-3072-7

ART AND ANIMATION

MANVELL, ROGER 0-904208-88-6

BUGS BUNNY, FIFTY YEARS

ADAMSON, JOE 0-8050-1190-0

BLAIR, PRESTON 1-56010-084-2

CARTOON ANIMATION

HAMM, JACK 0-399-50803-1

CHUCK AMUCK

JONES, CHUCK 0-374-12348-9

DESIGN CARTOON CHARACTERS

LEMAY, BRIAN Lightfoot Ltd

HAHN, DON 0-7868-3072-7

THOMAS, FRANK 0-89659-233-3

DISNEY’S THE ART OF ANIMATION

THOMAS, BOB 1-56282-899-1

DONALD DUCK

BLITZ/MARCIA 0-517-52961-0

DRAWING DYNAMIC HANDS

HOGARTH BURNE 0-8230-1367-7

DRAWING THE HEAD AND FIGURE

HAMM, JACK 0-399-50791-4

DRAWING THE HUMAN HEAD

HOGARTH, BURNE 0-8230-1375-8

DYNAMIC ANATOMY

HOGARTH, BURNE 0-8230-1550-5

DYNAMIC FIGURE DRAWING

HOGARTH, BURNE 0-8230-1575-0

DYNAMIC LIGHT AND SHADE

HOGARTH, BURNE 0-8230-1580-7

0-89586-414-2

HANDBOOK OF ANIMATION TECHNIQUES

LEVITAN, ELI 0-442-26115-2

HOW TO DRAW ANIMALS

HAMM, JACK 0-399-50802-3

HOW TO DRAW COMICS THE MARVEL WAY

LEE, STAN 0-671-22548-0

“I TAWT I TAW A PUDDY TAT”

BECK, JERRY 0-8050-1644-9

OF MICE AND MAGIC

LAYOUT AND DESIGN MADE SIMPLE

LEMAY, BRIAN Lightfoot Ltd

HAYWARD, STAN 0-240-50967-6

STORMING THE MAGIC KINGDOM

TAYLOR, JOHN 0-345-35407-9

WALL STREET, THE RAIDERS AND THE BATTLE FOR DISNEY

TEX AVERY

TEX AVERY LES DESSINS

TEX AVERY: THE KING OF CARTOONS

ADAMSON, JOE

THE ART OF WARNER BROS. ANIMATION

BASHE, PHILLIP

THAT’S NOT ALL FOLKS 1

BLANC, MEL 0-446-51244-3

THE ANIMATOR’S WORKBOOK

WHITE, TONY 0-8230-0229-2

THE ART OF ANIMAL DRAWING

HULTGREN, KEN 0-486-27426-8

THE ART OF WALT DISNEY

FINCH, CHRISTOPHER 0-8109-0122-6

THE BEST OF DISNEY

SINYARD, NIEL 0-88665-4661

THE DISNEY STUDIO STORY

HOLLISS, RICHARD 0-7064-3040-9

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ANIMATED CARTOON SERIES

LENBURG, JEFF 0-306-80919-4

TAYLOR, RICHARD 1-56138-531-X

THE FLEISHER STORY

CABARGA, LESLIE 73-94123

THE HISTORY OF ANIMATION

SOLOMON, CHARLES 0-517-11859-9

THE ILLUSION OF LIFE

THOMAS, FRANK 0-7868-6070-7

TOO FUNNY FOR WORDS

THOMAS, FRANK 0-89659-747-4

ART ABRAMS, ROBERT 0-89660-031-9

TREASURES OF DISNEY ANIMATION

ART CANEMAKER, JOHN 0-89659-581-1

WALT DISNEY AND ASSORTED OTHER CHARACTERS

KINNEY, JACK 0-517-57057-2

VILPPU, GLENN Lightfoot Ltd.

THOMAS, FRANK AND JOHNSTON,OLLIE 1-55670-160-8

CULHANE, JOHN 0-8109-0822-0

WALT DISNEY’S MAGIC MOMENTS

ARSENI, BOSI, LEONE MARCONI, MASSIMO

Movies and Videotapes

Andersen

Brown

Foster

Foster

The Contemporary Animator

The Animation Book

John Halas

House

Press

Publishing

Dover

Muybridge

Animation Techniques

Experimental Animation

Muybridge

Public.

Books

& Cecile Starr Press

Guptill

& Ollie Johnston

in the field of ‘The Fine Art of Animation’.