Assessment 1 - 3D CGI Animation!!!

 

3D CGI Animation

Final Destination!

So this is the final part of my animation history assessment! So lets just jump right in and get stuck into the details of 3D CGI Animation! So to start CGI stands for "Computer Generated Imagery" put simply this is the best computer generated animation out there! ALmost every game these days uses 3D CGI Animation for animated cutscenes! Its not limited to just games though! More and more movies are using 3D CGI graphics for big budget scenes! The detail that can be produced with it has came so far as at times looking realistic! You ever see the Hobbit movie? Smaug....thats right that big awesome dragon was all CGI! granted with some motion capture mixed in, but lets not get into that just yet!

3D Animate Me!

So im just gonna say right off the bat, 3D CGI Animation is not quick, it is not easy but damn does it look good when its done! There are several parts to a 3D CGI Animation, starting off with a story board, basic concept designs, to making 3D models to rendering the pictures to "rigging" them so that different parts move differently, I found a great video that shows all of these steps to make a great 3D CGI Animation of your own! I will be doing this at a later stage of my course, not sure how in depth i'll be going with it but I might make a seperate post to show my own progress! Although there is tons of different software out there specificallly for 3D CGI Animation i woudl highly recommend Blender, it was the first software i used for 3D animation and its a great starting point, the UI is very easy to get used to! 

The Bad and the Great!

So i want to start with the bad here first of all, it might seem a bit daughting at first as this last animation needs alot of skill and practice to make it look great! There are several stages to this type of animation and because of the frame rate (which i will go into further later) you need to do anywhere between 12 to 24 frames per second for it too look smooth, that right there is alot of tweeking and animating if you ask me! Now if you can get through that, the great thing about this is just how amazing it will look once its completed! You can literally make your own mini movies or stories using 3D CGI Animation! you can keep the charactes and scenes youve made and reuse them by tweeking them slightly to look different! This is by far the greatest animation to date! Pixar itself has came out with some of the best 3D CGI Animation movies to date!

Tell Me That Funky History!

Now as its pretty obvious 3D CGI Animation is a pretty recent animation tecninique as its all computer generated, it has went throguh some amazing changes to get to where it is now though! So funny thing is, 3D CGI Animation is still tricking the eye and mind of everyone, by drawing (or animating) at 12 frames per second minimum, it can trick the brain into thinking that the image is moving smoothly, but most movies now run at about 24 frames per second, though i personnally have seen an animated scene in 48 FPS and wow....just wow the imagery was just so smooth and beautiful to look at, i was in awe of it! Anyways lets move on! So the early idea of 3D digital computer imagery was played about with by four funky guys called Edward E. Zajac, Frank W. Sinden, Kenneth C. Knowlton, and A. Michael Noll, though there was another party working on it over at the
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, these guys were toying with the idea back in the 1960's! Almost 50 years ago! One of the biggest jumps for 3D CGI Animation was in the film Futureworld released in 1976, where a 3D CGI animated hand was used in the movie! though the animated hand itself was made in 1972 by two graduates of the university of Utah, it was still a massive leap forward! The first full length animated series was called ReBoot which was released in 1994. The following year had the release of Toy Story and the rest goes on from there! its amazing how far the animation style has come over the years though!

Some Final Examples for you!

So i talked about the first instance fo a 3D CGI animated hand in a movie yea? Well i managed to find the clip from that movie! I also got the first ep of ReBoot as well! i woudl just like to end my examples with the latest 3D CGI Aniated movie iv seen, Zootopia! by seeing all 3 of these clips i think it shows how far the amiation has come! and how far it coudl go in the future!

Final Note!

I would just like to say thanks for all the views I've gotten! it means alot that people have been looking at my pages even if it was just out of boredom! Hopefully i can wow you with some of my own animations in the future!

Assessment 1 - 2D Computer Graphic Animation!!!

2D Computer Graphic Animation

Number 6 here!!!

Now we're digging into the good stuff here! Computer animation! woo! Right so lets get stuck in shall we? The Name itself is pretty self explanatory, its graphics art using a computer! This might seem overly obvious to your goodself, but it wasn't that long ago that computer graphics were getting started! This is where a lot of modern cartoons come from, simple enough in theory, you make a drawing using a computer software, Paint or Flash for example and then stream them together to make the animation run! The examples are almost endless here! I think this time I'll focus less on examples and more of the evolution of 2D Computer Graphic Animation, since it is recent history but its evolved so fast in retrospect!

Making a 2D animation!!!

So in all honesty, there is no easy way to make a 2D Computer Graphic Animation, it takes a lot of time and patience, plus, it also comes down to the software you use, there is different kinds that are easier and harder to use, some for basic animations for people getting started, or more advanced software for more experienced users. A couple of examples would be Adobe Flash which is free to download (as far as I can tell anyways! unless I got it by other means O_o) then there's stuff like blender, a damn good animation software for both 2D and 3D animation! I'd recommend using Flash if your just wanting to get started! iv included 2 video tutorials bellow, one for Flash and one for Blender for those adventurous souls out there!

The Bad and the Worse!!!

So as opposed to what the title says there are great points for 2D Computer Graphic Animation! but the down side is that to begin with the bad out ways the good unfortunately at least until you get more experienced! So the good here is....well its one of the more professional looking animations out there! its nice and smooth, easier to make, even though your still "drawing" the animation, its easier to tweak since you can make copies and highlight the movement sand copy the images to do so! so no more having to draw cel upon cel at a time! Copy the image and small tweaks here and there! so much easier! The bad though, as I said, initially outways the good since you still need a very high level of artistic skill in order to do this properly, id recommend drawing a few things, get some practice in before attempting this other wise it'll come out a colourful blob! (or that might just be me!) it takes a lot of time for the animation to slowly come together, later on I'm gonna have an extra wee bit show casing 2 examples of animation, one from the beginning of an animators career to the most recent, its a youtuber that I've followed for some time and seen his skills improve over the years! So its a great example of practice makes perfect!

Animate me they said! Computerise it they said!

So I'm gonna quickly touch on the beginnings of computer animations, but I mainly want to focus on the first 2D digital image and so on, focusing more on the 2D Computer Graphic Animation rather than computer graphics and special effects in general! So back in 1940 to dudes called John Whitney and James Whitney (yes they are related) cobbled together a device that was similar to an old anti air craft computer! Connected via servos to detect light and lit objects! This was the beginning to animation as we know it! Now lets jump ahead to 1957 to where Russel Kirsch and his team unveiled a Drum Scanner, which scanned the variable differences in a photograph, the picture itself was an image of Russel Kirsch's son, the image itself was only 176×176 pixels! kind of tiny compared to modern images! Lets skip further ahead to 1968, where a small group of soviet physicists and mathematicians with a man called Nikolai Konstantinov at the helm, came together to create a mathematical model for a cat! (do not ask me how, that is way beyond my knowledge!) they used the computer to print off a sequence of images using alphabet symbols that were latter put together in sequence, this created the motion of the cat moving! 2D Computer Graphic Animation itself has evolved and been touched up over the years giving a sharper image than before, improving the quality of it time and time again! Still being used even today you can see how far its came in modern cartoons! the images themselves look crisp and sharp!

Examples all around!

just thought id jump straight in with the examples this time, I tried finding images that shows the breakdown of the 2D Computer Graphic Animation style for you, think these two pictures give a better example than my ramblings could!

Extra!!!

As said early I wanted to show a few video examples of a youtuber that's been animating using 2D Computer Graphic Animation for a few years now! Sadly the original animator did pass away but his work still lives on for the fans! I know Present Eddsworld! the first and last video that's on their channel! just to showcase how advanced 2D Computer graphic Animation can become!

You can tell straight away this was a first attempt! but it was uploaded anyway since its still an animation which needed a damn good level of skill!

Here was are with the most recent video, as I said the original animator passed a few a few years ago, but he left the stuff needed to continue for a while, which is what he wanted, he was always for the fans and put his all into his animations

Assessment 1 - Cel Animation!!!

Cel Animation

Fifth Element!

Wow so we've looked at five different animation types, start from the basics of basics to some more advanced animation. Now I think its time we started moving onto the really good stuff, the kind of animation that most of us grew up with! That's right, Cel Animation! This is the mother of all cartoons! Disney wouldn't be what it is today if not for Cel Animated movies and TV shows! So with out further adieu lets get stuck in. Cel Animation was First patented by Earl Hurd in 1914. Cel is Short for Celluloid, a Celluloid itself is a class of compounds made from Nitrocellulose and camphor, with some dyes and other little things mixed in. I'm not going to go into detail about that kind of stuff (mostly cause its gibberish to me) I will however be touching on the Computer Animation Production System replaced this form of animation, I'm not going to go into too much detail on it (not now anyway, that will be my next topic) I'll just mention it from time to time through out this. So A Cel itself is a transparent sheet on which to stuff is drawn or painted onto, thus everything was hand-drawn! Imagine how long that would take! Frame by frame of it all! Mad! Thankfully the job itself was made slightly easier in that, they animators would have Cel Layers, having say a background cel, and have a cel for one character, another cel for another character, and if they are talking  another cel for the mouth movements!

Becoming the new Walt Disney

So I hear you ask, how do I make my fortune using Cel Animation? Well the simple answer is....you don't, its a very long process to do a Cel Animation, in all honesty this is the first animation that I've talked about that I would insist that you need a team doing it with you. The best way to describe this it, imagine a bigger Flip Book, but your using tracing paper, and a light board, starting off with a starting picture, say a smiley face, and you want it to turn to a frowning face, well you'd get your starting picture, and lay over another sheet and draw over it with a slight change (hence like the Flip Book) Here's where things get complicated, you need to start numbering them, start to finish 1 to say 10, then you need on a note book to show where you want things to change, so it starts coming together like a Zoetrope/Stop Motion. it all has to go nice and smooth, you need to work out how much the picture is going to move per frame, unlike how you can just move the model in the stop motion, all of this is hand drawn so its a very lengthy process. The outcome though, if done right is fantastic! The best explanation I could find video wise is linked below, credit to her she goes into a lot of detail about the process of it all! you might already have gotten an idea on how its done from cartoons that showed spoofs of cartoons getting made.

To be or not to be?

The good thing about Cel Animation is that when it all comes together its just amazing! I mean come on, Disney used it for a long time! so did many other companies! Simpsons, Batman Animated series etc, Though the major downside is, unless you have a lot of free time on your hands, you need a team working on it together, but even then, its all about tracing work and tweaking it, so you still need a high level of artistic skill to do it well enough! Also say you want to change a scene ever so slightly, its not like the Stop Motion where you can set everything up again, you need to find the starting point on where you want to change, then slowly redesign the following pictures afterword's, therefore adding a lot more extra work to the process.

Where it all Began!

The First instance of a "Cel" animation being used (using this term lightly as its more the first animation that used animated sequences) was back in 1900, it wasn't a fully animated movie, but a mix of live action and animated sequences, called "The Enchanted Drawing". Following this film was the first entirely animated movie, "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" and it was this movie that led the maker, J. Stuart Blackton, to be known as the father of American animation! The traditional animation style, Cel Animation all began back in 1910, as this was when Cel Animation as we know it was patented, by two gentlmen known as John Randolph Bray and Earl Hurd. Cel Animation became the norm for everything cartoon! Now earlier on I mentioned how Disney wouldn't be where it was without Cel Animation, well back in 1923 Walt Disney opened a studio in Los Angeles, with its first project being another live action/animation mix, with a young girl interacting with animated characters, but one of their biggest catch on's was obviously Steam Boat Mickey which appeared on the scene in 1928, this started the rise of the empire that is Disney!

Show me the Examples!

I'll be showing a few examples here, the breakdown of cel animation layers, of some cel animation drawings and so forth, I hope you enjoy!
 
 

The End?

Now this is just a little extra tid bit that I would have kicked myself if I didn't put this here, now unfortunalty Cel Animation has more or less died off, as with the advance of technology so is our ways to portray ourselves further evolved. In this case Cel Animation was replaced by Computer Graphic Animation, I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about that right now as that's my next topic! but well, as much as I love Computer Graphic Animation, it just never had the same feeling as Cel Animation to me, I mean if you paid close enough attention you can see where some cels are missing, errors have been done, kind of like human error glitches really. That's just my opinion, I have nothing against Computer Graphic Animation in the slightest! As I said i love it! but i grew up with Cel Animation cartoons, and always loved the feel of seeing just a simple drawing come to life through several images really.

Assessment 1 - Stop Motion!!!

Stop Motion animation

Kazu Yon (no.4)

Oh boy oh boy oh boy!!!! Stop Motion!!!! one of my favourite forms of animation! First off I'm gonna apologise for now for any spelling errors the may come forth with, really just from excitement form talking about Stop Motion!!! So so so! lets begin! Stop Motion, is and awesome technique that uses pictures or images to show an image of movement i.e., getting a clay model, and take a picture of it standing there, then another picture of the leg slightly moved forward, and another with the leg moved ever so slightly more, and so on and so on, until the pictures can be put together to create an animation. Think, Flip Book combined with 3D Zoetrope, but your only limited to your patience and your model's! The name itself is pretty self explanatory, Stop Motion, since you need to stop in-between pictures to move it, eh? get it? 

The Making of!!!

Now I've already gave a quick description on how the stop motion animation is done, as such im not gonna give you a step by step guide to start you off, I am actually gonna post a video that shows a pretty cool technique that will help you (and me) a lot! so what you need is pretty simple, you will need, a camera, some sort of software to compile the images together, like Flash for example, next you will need your model, whatever it may be, from Lego, to old toys or even just as simple as a pencil rolling down a table! Then you need a place to set everything up! I would highly recommend, no i demand you use a tripod stand for your camera! you need to keep the camera steady at all times, unless the shot needs you to move it! The main thing's that should be moving is your self and your model of choice! Just Remember that you can use almost anything for a stop motion animation! as long as you have a camera and some imagination it can be done! clay, plastercine, or even just old toys laying around!

Heaven's and Hell's (ups and downs)

The upside is, damn is it awesome!! So..freaking....awesome! you can make it look pretty damn professional too with enough time and practice! The Downside I hear you ask? It can potentially be very time consuming, you are sitting staring at a model, moving it inch by inch, frame by frame, Rome wasn't built in a day, and any good Stop Motion wasn't either unfortunatly. Aside from the time consuming nature of it, its also pretty complex as opposed to the previous animation styles, it sounds simple in theory, but depending on what software you use, what your aiming to do with it, how long it will be, you may need to edit a lot of your pictures, if not all of them....that's....a lot of pictures! Personally I think the pay off for it though is worth it! and I will show you why at the end! Be prepared to be overwhelmed with examples!

Here Stop Motion Cometh!

So for the History of Stop Motion I'm gonna change things up a notch, I'm gonna talk a little about how it came to be, how its aged over the years, then give a list of how its been used over the years too! The Examples page this time is gonna be covered in images, and videos of Stop Motion examples! Did I mention how much I loved Stop Motion? No? Okay then moving on. So lets begin at the beginning as they say! So the first example of it being used was in the movie industry (where else) and the credit for this awesome animation goes to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for a movie called "The humpty Dumpty Circus" where a toy circus of animals and acrobats come to life magically! This movie was realised back in 1898, making this young animation style only 118 years old! After this there was a few movies that used the stop motion, but I want to focus on the first Women animator. Back in 1916 a women by the name of Helen Smith Dayton, started messing around with Clay stop animation (we'll come back to that in a second) she realised her movie "William Shakesepeares Romeo and Juliet" I tried finding images to see if she used the animation technique in the movie, unfortunalty I couldn't find anything for it I'm afraid. Back to the Clay Stop Motion, now, my first intro to this was in an old 1925 movie call "The Lost World" I remember seeing this as a kid thinking, wow this looks awesome! Its as if its a toy that's came to life! Sitting there with my older brother just in awe of it! The man who made that awesome movie was Willis O'Brien, he went on to make a few other movies using the animation technique as well! Here is the list i promised earlier too! The reason I'm doing the list here rather than in the examples is, this is a history of the animation movies listed, giving the year of release, then I'm gonna give and example of the first listed and last to show a comparison, then other examples in videos!

• King Kong 1933
• Mighty Joe Young 1949
• Jason and the Argonauts 1963
• Clash of the Titans 1981
• Star wars Trilogy (1977, 1980, 1983)
• Terminator 1984
• Who Framed Roger Rabbit 1988
• The Nightmare Before Christmas 1993
• Fantastic Mr Fox 2009
• Kubo and the Two Strings 2016

Examples All Around!

Okay I've fan Boyed enough about the history of it, lets get some examples on the go for everyone! So a lot has changed from the late 1890's to modern day stop motion, the first two images are from King Kong (1933) and Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) just to show how advanced its become!

I know they aren't the sharpest of pictures, but King Kong is pretty damn old now! Wasn't even in 1080p! What kind of TV where people watching back in the day??? Next I'm gonna link two videos of some awesome stop motion TV series, Robot Chicken and Celebrity Death Match!

Celebrity Death match was me and my brother's reason for staying up late at the weekend growing up! Just think of how many frames are in these videos! Crazy!

Robot Chicken is still ongoing to this day and does awesome spoofs of Star wars and DC stuff! they're pretty clever on how they do the lip sinks, by using simple mouth cut outs, you can even see how they've increased the frames per seconds with they're newer stuff too! its so smooth and fluid in its motion!

Assessment 1 - The Flip Book!!!

Flip Book

The Third Animation History!

So now we're onto a much loved childhood classic, the Flip Book! This is gonna probably be a short post, I'll try to fill it out as best I can! So the name comes from the English Word "Book" which is a collection of written, blank or printed sheets of paper, and the Word "Flip" as in, to turn over or around, hence the name "Flip Book".....okay I'm sorry, I did warn you about padding this out! So its original name was actually "Kineograph" which means moving picture, but Flip Book is just such a better name!

The Making of a Flip Book!!!

So im sure everyone at some point tried this at school! I know i did, and failed horribly at! So for this little Project you will need

• Stack of paper (small note pad or stick note pad would be best)
• Pencil or Pen
• Patience!!!

Ups and Downs!

The upside for this one is, easy easy easy! everyone's got paper laying around, and pencil's I'm sure! you don't even need much skill to draw! You can draw a squiggly circle getting bigger and bigger and that's you! Downside though is if you are waning anything have decent, you will need to be a much better artist than myself, and a damn good deal of patience if your going for Bigger story telling!

Coming of The Flip!

So the Flip Book itself has went through a few wee changes, tweaks here and there shall we say. It all began with a man, a man named John Linnett. He patented the idea of a flip book back in 1868. Though not long later another gentleman byt the name of Max Skladanowsky showed off his Flip Book in 1894 and him and his brother went on to develop there on film projector the following year! A mechanical version of the Flip Book, called the Mutoscope, was invented by a man called Herman Casler. The Mutoscope mounted the images on a rotating cylinder, they were widely seen I'm penny arcades and amusement parks for a long time!

Examples now!

I hear you there, through your screen demanding examples of this wondrous animation example! (no sarcasm just my tone!) well, you ever seen a Disney movie lately? good old steam boat Mickey? how it opens up? ayep, Flip Book baby! I wanted to end this little palaver with Mickey whistling away but.....I couldn't find the video i wanted, i apologise! so i give you a few other examples instead! one of my personal favourites actually is from the hit movie Hot Fuzz!

Try my hand at the different types

So ive been thinking, with me studying these differen types of animation, i kinda want to try my hand at making some of them. As part of my assessment in college for animation skills, i need to do a stop motion animation and a 2d flash animation, the stop motion is going to be a group effort, but i was thinking that at the same time i might make my own for the practice, and this lead to the idea of making one of each! Might get back to using my old youtube account with recorded pictres of me making and/or playing the animation! if i do i think this will be the first place to show off my mad ginger skillz! Just wanted to share that!

Assessment 1 - The Zoetrope!!!!

Zoetrope

 

Second is a Good one!!!!

 Now I'll admit, I never knew What this animation was called! but as soon as I was told my eyes lit up! I've seen this animation in several forms of media! All sorts of movies! (Horror in particular) and its such a damn good animation! Now for the beginnings! It's a pre-film animation, coming from the Greek words "Zoe" which means life and "Tropps", which as I said before means turning, so a rough translation could be seen as "Wheel of life" kind spooky eh? This is a bit more complicated than the Thaumatrope, as in it uses several images and a cylinder to make the illusion for the animation. The cylinder itself would have small slits going round the side of the cylinder, with the images going around the inside of it. Say for example its a group of images of a man waving, going from left to right, each picture building up to him waving, once the pictures are inside, get yourself looking through these slits and spin the Zoetrope! the images start coming together to create the illusion of motion! How awesome is that!

How to make a Zoetrope!!!

Okay this time before having the video above my little gab, I'm gonna go into the details of what you need first of all, then a little guide video! so first off you'll need,

• Empty Tin Can (baked beans etc)
• Electrical Tape
• Ruler
• Tack Pin
• Marker
• Utility Knife
• Zoetrope Template ( which I found a good'un for you!)

Now, id recommend having a friend near by those cans and knives are sharp you know!

Ups and Downs

Now onto the good and the bad, the great points, yeah I said great, are that its an awesome wee animation! and you can change the size of it, so you can have a couple ready to go! don't need to have a big massive cylinder! The bad points though, are that its a lot more complex to make than the Thaumatrope, and you are using a tin can and a utility knife to make it, so you can injure yourself if your not careful!

The Coming Of!!

Now for the history of the zoetrope, I'm gonna go on for a bit cause....wow this little thing has a lot of history! I really wanna cover as much as I can, since its helping me to spread the word! The good word of animation history! There is some stuff I'm gonna leave out since there is accounts of different versions of the Zoetrope through out history but no clear cut examples of what it was can be found unfortunately. So to begin, the first.....idea of what could be a Zoetrope shall we say was 5000 years ago! In the style of an earthen bowl from Iran, the reason this is a contender is that on the inside of the bowl there are several images that as the go along the inside of the bowl the images ever so slightly change, to show movement. Though how they would spin it to create the illusion, God knows! They Could have spinned it on there hands quickly, or even a potters table! 5000 years old though, wow! Though a man called Simon Stampfer made a published idea about the zoetrope to be used for either a cylinder or a looped bit of paper in 1833, there has been a few variants over the years but the basic model always holds strong! The last history tid bit I want to touch on is something I personally find amazing! In the 1970's Sega (yes that Sega!) used a mechanism similar to an ancient Zoetrope in order to make electro mechanical arcade games! This would lead onto The first kind of First person shooter games! How crazy is that? If Sega didn't use the Zoetrope games today might not be what they are!

Gimme some Examples!!!

I didn't need to search for my first example, cause its one that's always haunted me since i seen it, its the reason that to this day I always associate the Zoetrope with horror is, House on Haunted hill (1999) one of the house guests gets trapped in a life size Zoetrope and the images are haunting! (excuse the pun) I couldn't find a video that should him entering it, but its shows the images that he see's and pulls out to show the size of it! I'd recommend skipping to about 1:13, when the lights start flashing that's the sign that the images are going by!

Extra!!!

I was debating with myself wither to add this in or not, but its just too good not too! So, I've went into details about where the Zoetrope came from the idea of it, how to make one yourself and even a spooky example of it, but did you know that there is also a 3D Zoetrope? Ayep my dear readers there is! Its the same principal, though replace the 2d image with a 3d model, and boom, Bob's your uncle! the best examples of this can be found in the greatest place on earth, that's right you guessed it! The Ghibli museum in Japan! The 3D Zoetrope has models of characters from my neighbour Totoro. Disney not wanting to be out done by Studio Ghibli done the same thing in Disney land California adventure park! using Toy Story characters! just gives me more of an excuse to travel!