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.