Animation essay

Animation is the art form and genre of manipulating imagery in rapid succession with moments of
the content to create the illusion of movement. With this essay, I will be exploring everything there
is to know about animation. Its going to be really fun to read; I promise.
Techniques
Persistence of vision is what makes animation possible. Persistence of vision is what happens to your
eyes when it sees rapid succession in movement to create the vision of movement itself. This
happens because your retinas in your eyes can only pick up around 25 frames of movement every
second and after each frame, it will create motion blur. When the first frame plays your eyes gather
that image, but then when it changes to a new image/frame, it cant process it fast enough and
leaves a small image of the previous frame behind, thus creating blur. This is why we can see
movement and that the average frame rate of video and animation in film is 24 frames per second.
Animation techniques work well with this and have to be smooth so that you dont see that frames
and movements stick out in between. A technique for hiding this is called Smear Framing and it is
when you take motion within a frame, and smear the features of the scene. Heres a photo to show
a Smear Frame.
Here you can see that the character has moved themselves
really fast from one side to the other, and if the animators
wanted to do this quickly, they would have to use less
frames, but to have motion blur within a small amount of
frames is rare, so they would use a smear.


Stop-frame is the animation technique of having frame-by-frame animations of one image followed
by another image that has the content of the video slightly different to the previous one. If you do
this enough times, you will get motion and animation. This is one of the most popular animation
techniques used by professional and amateur animators.
Frame rates are important with animation because it can determine the speed in which you want
your animation to be shown. If you want a nice smooth animation with little motion blur, you will
need to produce it in a higher frame rate. Tis is because more frames will be shown and you will see
the motion clearer. If you have fewer frames between it, this will make the animation fast and
therefore jumpier. If you take a framerate that is higher but play it through a lower frame rate eg
60 frames played at 30 frames will make the animation slow-motion because it will take twice as
long to play through.



Development
Pioneers
Pioneers of animation really vary between modern day and historical figures. It is often debated who
are the key pioneers to animation but here are a few that made the biggest impact, in my opinion.
Joseph Plateau was the inventor of the phanakistoscope which was esentially a spinning disk with
several pictures over. Once you spun the disk and looked at the bottom of the disk, you will see the
pictures change into eachother and thus creating motion and animation. Although Joseph Plateau
created and eveloped the phanakistoscope, Eadward Muybridge was the master at creating them.
William Horner was the seccond notable pioneer of animation with his invention of the zoetrope.
The zoetrope was also a spinning disk with different pictures shown to make an animation, but this
one was different because the spinning dsik was vertical and was only visable through small games
made at the top. This was revolutionary in the field of animation and the world of cinema.
Eadweard Muybridge then developed animation within the medium of film and photography.
Although animation had been done with cartoons and drawings, no one had developed it into
phoptography animation. Until this guy came along. How freaking rad. He took photos of a horse
running arong about twelve cameras all taking photos at particular times so that you can see the
horse takes on all four feet. This was revolutionary in the forms of cinema and animation all
together.
The Lumiere Brothers were two brothers that changed cinema in ways of content and the
development of film itself. They experimented with elements of animation and cinema and
eventually developed the first screening of a film in a cinema called Workers at the factory. This
was imspirational and revolutionary in the medium of film and animation and was a huge inspiration
for silent films and film of the future.
Developers
Willis H. OBrien was an expert in the medium of special effects and sop-motion animation. He is
most notable and famous for creating the animations for King Kong (1933). King Kong was very
inspiration and a huge development in 1993 when shown. The filom is still noted today as inspiration
for big time directs and the birth of CGI, animation and special effects.
Ray Harryhausen was an animation and
special effects specialist as well around the
era of the mid-60s. He is noted for created
such films like Mighty Joe Young, Jason and
the Argonauts, and Clash of the Titans.

Jan Svankmajer is a surrealistic animator who has helped make films such as Alice. He has inspired
many famous film directors such as Tim Burton and Terry Gillian. He is a pioneer of surrealism and it
is a very hard genre to master. Special effects and CGI play in very well to surrealism and can add to
the sense if disconnection from reality.
Contemporary work
A notable duo in contemporary work with animation is the Quay Brothers. These two are identical
twins and have been animating since 1969 when they graduated from university. There work is also
quite surrealistic and has a very dark noir style and is very esoteric and individual. They make most
of their animations with stop-motion and use models in all of their work. They mainly came into
fame and critical success with their short film, Street of Crocodile.
A very popular stop-motion animator and director who is highly critically acclaimed and successful is
Tim Burton. Although Tim Burton has also directed many live action films such as Edward
Scissorhands and Sweeney Todd, he is usually most noted for his animated films such as The
Nightmare before Christmas and Corpse Bride. These films have a very dark and gothic theme
throughout them which could very easily been inspired from the Quay Brothers. In his animations,
he sticks to clay animations and doesnt experiment with CGI or 2D animation as much.
Aardman studios are probably one of the most notable stop-motion animation studios in the UK.
Aardman created stop motion films and televisions shows such as Wallace & Gromit, Creature
Comforts and Angry Kid. Aardman concentrate on clay-animation as well and are most notable to
Wallace & Gromit.
Genres and forms

TV animation is a very common genre and can spread over many different television shows and
different genres of animation. 2D animations featured on television vary from The Simpsons to
childrens television shows such as SpongeBob SquarePants. 3D Animated television programmes
vary from Creature Comforts to Robot Chicken. CGI animation is very common but not as common
as the other two genres. Some notable CGI animated television programmes are Jimmy Neutron and
Penguins of Madagascar. Because these animations are television programmes, they are usually
short and between the times of 15-20 minutes long.
Channel indents are short animations to show you what
television channel you are watching. These have become very
popular and have even created competitions where you enter in
your own animation, and it could be shown on television. This
was called E4 Estings by Channel 4 and was very successful. Here
is a photo.
Animation within cinema has been very popular and is rising with the increase of CGI animation. The
highest grossing animated film is the Disney classic Frozen. -_-. The first animation that was
commercially shown in cinema was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1939 and was rivalled with
The Wizard of Oz in cinema that year. This is an ever growing genre in cinema and will increasing
with the use of CGI and special effects in films.
Advertising uses animation all of the time and is a very successful way of present something in a
hyperbolic manner. Because you can exaggerate the truth with animation, it makes it perfect for the
products that people are trying to sell to the masses.
Music videos are always including animations and
will be an ever growing medium if the music
video doesnt die out. The most common
animated music video and notably the best one is
Peter Gabriels Sledgehammer. This wasn;t the
first music video to use animation, but was one of
the first to do nothing but animation. Other music
videos that include animation are The White
Stripes Fell in Love with a Girl, Dire Strait-
Money for Nothing, and A-Ha- Take on Me.


Thank you for reading my essay on animation and I hope you enjoyed xoxo