Animation

Today!

A critical overview of animation in 21st century

Hāmed Zeraa΄tpisheh

UCA 2007-8
Preface

Animation today enjoys an unprecedented variety of forms, styles, genres and techniques.

Unveiling all mysteries and complexities of such a complex art form requires time and

space far beyond the limits of this essay. What follows, therefore, is a brief evaluation of

the status of animation today. Starting with a brief history of the moving image, the essay

will then look at the evolution of animation, its breakthroughs and achievements

throughout the final decades of 20th century to present time.

For convenience of the reader, wherever necessary, certain terms and names have been

defined or further explained, using on-line databases. The details of these web pages

could be found at the bottom of each page as footnotes. I hope this piece brings a better

understanding of the status of animation in today’s world.

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‘The condition of film history becomes reasonably healthy when it is recognized how
unimportant a “first” is in itself. The vital question is the degree to which any departure
from routine film making affected the medium’1
James Card

‘The raw material of motion picture animation is movement. Plastic form is necessary
only because we cannot perceive movement without forms . . . The “how” of movement is
the real aim of animation.’2
Alexandre Alexeieff

‘If it is the live-action film’s job to present physical reality, animated film is concerned
with metaphysical reality- not how things look, but what they mean.’3

John Halas and Joy Batchelor

History of animation

The moment that human beings realised by putting a series of images in a sequence and

looking rapidly at them they could see an illusion of movement, the art of animation was

discovered. Cave paintings from 36000 years ago and Egyptian pots of some 3600 years

back suggest that man has been aware of this magical effect at least since ancient time (if

not pre-historic times)4. However the art of animation as we understand today started

around a century and a half ago, running parallel with the industrial revolution and the

beginning of the modern age. It should be mentioned though that there is not a beginning

in the history of moving image. For animation came to life as a result of collective effort

of many people who contributed to the development of the medium in different times and

parts of the world, many of whom are not even recognised today!

1
James, Card (Spring 1950) “Problems of Film History”, Film Quarterly 4:3 p. 287.
2
Alexandre Alexeieff (1972), “Reflections on Motion Picture Animation,” in Robert Russett and Cecile
Starr, eds., Experimental Animation (New York: Van Nostrand Reinold) p. 93.
3
John Halas and Joy Batchelor, (January 1949) “European Cartoon: A survey of the Animated Film”
Penguin Film Review, no. 8: 9.
4
Williams, Richard (2001) Animation Survival Kit London: Faber and Faber Limited

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Despite this it is possible to reminisce some of the most outstanding inventors and artists

who have left their names as the pioneers of this art. Peter Roget in 1824 discovered the

vital principle of cinema and moving picture: ‘the persistence of vision with regard to

moving objects’, and by this discovery paved the way for forthcoming inventions.

Richard Williams writes about persistence of image in Animation Survival Kit: ‘This

principle rests on the fact that our eyes temporarily retain the image they’ve just seen. If

this wasn’t so, we would never get the illusion of unbroken connection in a series of

images, and neither movies nor animation would be possible. Many people don’t realise

that movies don’t actually move, and that they are still images that appear to move when

they are projected in a series.’5

Within half a century this principle gave birth to several contraptions, all of which used

this principle to create some form of movement illusion:

• Thaumatrope 1826

• Phenakistoscope 1832

• Zoetrope (Wheel of life) 1867

• Flipper book 1868

• Praxinoscope 1877 6

All these inventions were highly innovative at the time and inspired hundreds of curious

individuals to think about the potential of this principle and seek other ways of creating

the illusion of movement. Thomas Edison and James Blackton were examples of such

interested individuals.

5
See note 4
6
For more info see Hoffer, Thomas W. (1981) Animation a reference guide Westport: Greenwood Press

4
Richard Williams reports in the same book: ‘In 1896 a New York newspaper cartoonist

James Stuart Blackton interviewed the inventor Thomas Edison who was experimenting

with the moving picture. Blackton did some sketches of Edison who was impressed by

Blackton’s speed and drawing facility and asked him to do some drawings in a series.

Later, Edison photographed these- the first combination of drawings and photography. In

1906 they publicly released Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’. This short clip was a big

step towards the development of animation.

Finally it was Windsor McCay who tried to develop animation as an art form. In 1914 he

created the first animated character, Gertie the Dinosaur, which consisted of thousands of

drawings. Then McCay himself performed live in front of the projected animation on

stage, holding an apple and inviting her to eat, Gertie lowered her neck and swallowed

the fruit.7

Figure 2 Gertie the Dinosaur

7
See note 4

5
McCay was a brilliant mind and developed a form of art that has become an inseparable

part of the contemporary visual culture. He is therefore known as the father of animated

cartoon.

The next notable event is probably the formation of Disney studios in 1923 and the

beginning of a new era in the history of the moving image. In 1937 Walt Disney released

the world’s first fully-animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and with

it started the so called ’Golden Age’ of animation, which despite all its success, as we

will see later, did considerable harm to the evolution of animation as an art form.

Figure 3 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs Walt Disney 1937

Animation Today

It is probably still the case that when people hear the word animation they automatically

recall Walt Disney cartoons. Disney’s contributions to the medium of course is beyond

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any doubt, however, this should not stop one from seeing the problems of this style

neither should it close one’s mind to other forms of animation.

Paul Wells writes in Understanding Animation:’ in many cases Disney had aligned

animation with aspects of photographic realism, and misrepresented the form’s more

distinctive characteristics. The animated film had reached maturity, but in doing so had

established Disney as synonymous with ‘animation’. This led to animation being

understood in a limited way. Disney perfected a certain language for the cartoon and the

full-length feature which took its model from live-action film-making. This

overshadowed other types of innovation and styles of animation which have extended the

possibilities of the form and enabled other kinds of film to be made.’8

Besides what Wells points out, the theme of most Disney productions are either some

type of Silly Symphony9 or based on stereotypical stories of good and evil (e.g. Snow

White, Cinderella), dramatic fairytale style stories that mums tell (or used to tell) their

children before sending them to bed. Evidently, the audience of such works are mostly

children. This not only created an incorrect vision in the mind of many people worldwide

that animation is solely meant for children, but also left little space for other forms of

artistic expression for decades.

8
Wells, Paul (1998) Understanding Animation London: Routledge
9
Silly Symphonies is a series of animated short subjects, 75 in total, produced by Walt Disney Productions
from 1929 to 1939, while the studio was still located at Hyperion Avenue in the Silver Lake district of Los
Angeles. Unlike the Mickey Mouse series, to which it is a sister series, Silly Symphonies did not usually
feature continuing characters.
See Wikipedia, Silly Symphonies, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silly_Symphonies (as of Jan. 9, 2008, 23:38
GMT).

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Throughout the twentieth century, however, there were other animators and schools of

animation, who looked at animation from a rather different perspective. Oscar Fischinger,

the German painter and animator for instance, was one of the pioneers of the medium

who worked in the areas of abstract and experimental animation in Europe at the time

that narrative 2D classical animation was thriving in America.

Zagreb School of Animation is another example of a view that looks at animation from a

different perspective. Paul Wells writes elsewhere in the same piece: ‘Mclaren reinforces

the notion that the true essence of animation is in the creation of movement on paper, the

manipulation of clay, the adjustment of a model etc., before the act of photographing the

image, i.e. the activity that has taken place between what become the final frames of film.

Animators of the Zagreb School, in the former Yugoslavia, however, seek to develop this

definition further by stressing the aesthetic and philosophical aspects of the craft. They

suggest, that to animate is ‘to give life and soul to a design, not through the copying but

through the transformation of reality’ (Holloway, 1972:9). Though recognising the

importance of animation as a technical process, the Zagreb film-makers wanted to

emphasise the creative aspect of literally ‘giving life’ to the inanimate, revealing

something about the figure or object in the process which could not be understood under

any other conditions. Film-makers at Zagreb, including leading light, Dusan Vukotic,

wanted to transform reality and resist the kind of animation created by Disney Studios

which, for all its personality and comic energy, conforms to a certain mode of realism

concordant with live-action film-making.’

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 Figure 4 Oscar Fischinger (1900-1967) and abstract animation

Another example of an animator with an interesting standpoint is the brilliant Russian

animator, Alexander Petrov, who won an Oscar for his short film The Old Man and the

Sea in 2000. Petrov's style is very unique and personal. For each frame of his animation

he uses his fingers to paint on a retroiluminated glass surface and, afterwards, he

photographs the results. The Old Man and the Sea is made up of 29,000 takes,

painstakingly prepared over the course of almost three years.10

10
See Wiedemann, Julius (2004) Animation Now! Cologne: TASCHEN GmbH

9
 Figure 5 The Old Man and the Sea Alexander Petrov 2000

It is well worth mentioning here also the efforts of the talented animators of Aardman

studio, whose unique style and creative techniques in the area of stop motion animation

has won them the reputation of the most successful Plasticine animation studio in the

entire world. Aardman's prominent animator, Nick Park (the creator of Creature Comforts

and Wallace& Gromit) proved to the world that one can achieve almost any effect with

stop motion animation.11

11
For more information see www.aardman.com

10
 Figure 6 Wallace and Gromit created by Nick Park

In spite of all such efforts (and hundreds of other examples) Disney’s dogmatic animation

remained as the dominant form of animation until the last decades of the 20th century.

Two break points that I would like to point out here are the arrival of The Simpsons in

1987 and the advent of 3D Computer Animation in the early 90s.

The most revolutionary animated piece of all times The Simpsons12 breaks almost every

rule that Disney studios had preset and dictated on the medium for over half a century,

from the realism in the movement of animation to the story telling conventions and the

narrative. The Simpsons completely turns back to the must do and must not do clichés of

classical style and shows the world what animation, in its simplest 2D form, can achieve.

Matt Groening’s ingenious masterpiece is a metaphorical story of a middle-class

American family who lives in the town of Springfield along with other residents of the

12
See www.thesimpsons.com

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town. All members of the family: Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Magi as well as other

characters of the series, whose personalities and interactions are designed and

orchestrated in the best possible way, each represent a group of people or school of

thinking in the contemporary society of the United States.

Figure 7 The Simpsons created by Matt Groening 1987

This seemingly simple 2D hand drawn animation is profoundly rooted in the most

debated socio-political, cultural and philosophical issues of the present time. Anyone who

has watched The Simpsons in depth knows that behind its exquisite comedy lays a critical

mind, analysing the dilemmas of our time. Race, sex, colour, sexuality, identity, politics,

religion, American capitalism, to name a few, are some of the issues that the producers of

the Simpsons have touched upon in their lengthy sitcom series so far. The Simpsons is

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neither a Silly Symphony nor is it a dramatic fairytale. Therefore its creative agenda

appeals to all age groups and social classes around the world.

Matt Groening’s surprisingly open and neutral attitude does away with any biased and

narrow minded approach and opens the way up to orchestrate, in the most creative way,

characters, personalities and archetypes that best represent the characteristics of the world

we are living in, a true critique of our time.

The other ground breaking change that shifted the equation of animation equals classical

Disney cartoon was the emergence of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) through

technological advances in the area of computer graphics and resulted in the formation of

a totally new from of animation, 3D Computer Animation. Ever since the release of Toy

Story, the first fully computer generated feature film by the pioneering Pixar animation

studios in 1995, the world has witnessed some fantastic productions.

Figure 8 Finding Nemo, Pixar studios’ best selling animated feature film of all times 200313

13
For more information see www.pixar.com

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Many of the recently produced CGI animated films not only have revolutionised

animation in terms of the technology and theory but also have contributed to the

aesthetics of the moving image and visual arts. The creative agenda of some of these

films are also noteworthy. Blue Sky studio’s Ice Age, for example, was not only one of

the most successful productions in the area of 3D Computer Animation and contributed

to the development of the medium, but also had an important message with it: the

contemporary issue of global warming

Figure 9 Ice Age the meltdown Blue Sky studios 2005

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John Vince writes in 3D Computer Animation about the various uses of computer

animation:’ Although computer animation has found an excellent niche in advertising,

film special effects and television credits, it is also being used for visualising a wide

variety of 3-D databases and numerical data sets. For instance, computer aided design

(CAD) techniques are central to the activities of a modern architectural practice, which

employs computer animation to visualise an architectural project. This might be an

animated sequence shown as an aerial fly-over, or an interior walk- through. Research

systems already exist where virtual reality (VR) techniques enable stereoscopic views of

an environment to be displayed in real-time. Similar VR technology is also being used to

evaluate the design of lighting fittings for building interiors.

Industrial applications of computer animation include product visualisation of cars,

engineering components and construction projects such as bridges, tunnels and hydro-

electric schemes. In flight simulators, real-time image generators create sophisticated 3-D

coloured scenes of international airports, and within the safety of these virtual

environments, pilots can be trained to develop flying skills and practise emergency

procedures.

Computer animation is also used in educational graphics to describe two- and three-

dimensional problems in mathematics, physics, astronomy, science, biology and

chemistry. And where idea is collected from experiments, or from computer simulations,

the techniques of scientific visualisation become powerful tools for translating multi-

dimensional data sets into animated images. Such sequences offer an extraordinary

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insight into phenomena that might have remained undetected without these visualisation

tools.’14

Animation today, therefore, enjoys great verve and variety and its significance is felt

more than any time before. For not only is it an art form and industry on its own rights, it

draws on and contributes to so many areas of Art, Design and Sciences: Drawing,

Photography, Cinema, Architecture, Mathematics, Geometry, Dynamics and Computer

Science, to name a few, are all areas that in one way or another contribute to and benefit

from the world of animation at the present time.

Be it considered as a fully experimental art form, a form of live-action movie, a way to

simulate the movement of dynamic objects, a means of visual communication for

commercials purposes etc, animation is a magical medium with endless possibilities and I

think that many of its accomplishments and breakthroughs are yet to be seen, the future is

bright!

14
Vince, J. (1992) 3-D Computer Animation Suffolk: William Clowes

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List of Illustrations

1. On the cover, Happy Homer Simpson, retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://emkeane.blogspot.com/2007_09_01_archive.html

2. Gertie the Dinosaur, retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://umikarahajimaru.at.webry.info/200701/article_27.html

3. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://www.finddisney.com/images/ticket/Snow%20White%20Postcard.jpg

4. abstract animation by Oscar Fischinger , retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~kaleigh/film/images/fischinger.jpg

5. The Old Man and the Sea, retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://www.answers.com/topic/aleksandr-petrov

6. Wallace and Gromit, retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://www.crossingwallstreet.com/archives/wg2.jpg

7. The Simpsons, retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://www.dan-dare.org/Dan%20Simpsons/TheSimpsonsEveryoneEver800.jpg

8. Finding Nemo, retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://thecia.com.au/reviews/f/images/finding-nemo-2.jpg

9. Ice Age the meltdown, retrieved on 13/01/2008 from:

http://www.velverse.com/img/2006/april/mov_iceage_top.jpg

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Bibliography

- Alexeieff, Alexandre (1972), “Reflections on Motion Picture Animation,” in Robert Russett and

Cecile Starr, eds., Experimental Animation (New York: Van Nostrand Reinold)

-Hoffer, Thomas W. (1981) Animation a reference guide Westport: Greenwood Press

-James, Card (Spring 1950) “Problems of Film History”, Film Quarterly 4:3

-John Halas and Joy Batchelor, (January 1949) “European Cartoon: A survey of the Animated

Film” Penguin Film Review, no. 8: 9

-See Wiedemann, Julius (2004) Animation Now! Cologne: TASCHEN GmbH

-Vince, J. (1992) 3-D Computer Animation Suffolk: William Clowes

-Wells, Paul (1998) Understanding Animation London: Routledge

-Williams, Richard (2001) Animation Survival Kit London: Faber and Faber Limited

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