ANIMATION AND ITS TIMELINE OF TECHNIQUES

An almost Exhaustive Look at the Various Animation Techniques used throughout History.

Article by: Nhlakanipho Kubheka

Animation, an intricate art form, has evolved significantly throughout history, showcasing a diverse range of techniques employed by artists to bring still images to life. At its core, animation involves the creation of moving images through a series of carefully crafted iterations, each subtly different from the last to convey fluid motion. From the early days of hand-drawn animation, where artists painstakingly crafted each frame, to the advent of computer-generated imagery (CGI) and advanced digital techniques, animation has continuously evolved, pushing the boundaries of creativity and innovation. As we delve into the intricate world of animation, we’ll explore the innovation, creativity, and ingenuity that have propelled these techniques to the forefront of visual storytelling.

CEL ANIMATION

Disney captivated audiences for generations with its cel animation in the 20th century. This traditional hand-drawn technique transformed the visual landscape of cinema. But what exactly is cel animation, and how does it function? Explore the comprehensive breakdown in our expert guide. Artists at Walt Disney Studios popularized the technique during the 1930s. Cel animation became standard practice from the 1950s through the 1980s, highlighted by films like The Little Mermaid.

However, by the early 1990s, the digital era emerged. Initially, computers were employed for coloring film, but soon the entire process transitioned to digital handling, as explained by Disney animator Floyd Norman to Collider. Despite this shift, critics, artists, and cinema enthusiasts fondly remember the era of cel animation as a golden age.

Cel Animation vs. Digital Animation

Key Differences:

Cel animation dominated Hollywood for much of the 20th century, thanks to its popularization by Walt Disney Studios. It wasn’t until 1995 that the first computer-generated film arrived with Toy Story, from the then-new studio, Pixar. But what sets digital animation apart from traditional animation?

Hand-drawn vs. Computer-Designed

The primary distinction between these two animation types lies in their creation process. Cel animation involves artists drawing by hand onto celluloid sheets, known as animated cels, while digital animation is primarily created using software and computers.

Algorithm vs. artistry.

Disney animators working on films like Snow White were primarily artists, using pens, pencils, and paints as their tools. On the other hand, CGI creators work with algorithms and 3D graphics. While CGI artists demonstrate vast creative skills, their approach differs from the hand-drawn finesse of traditional animation, which resembles fine art.

Large teams vs. smaller teams.

Producing films using traditional animation and animated cels required significant resources. With each frame hand-drawn, productions needed numerous animators. In contrast, CGI films could be created with fewer people in less time.

Examples of cel animation. Cel animation gained public attention in the late 1930s when Disney used the technique in its animated films, bringing color, movement, and realism to animated films.

Some notable examples include:

? Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937)

? Sleeping Beauty (1959)

? The Lion King (1994)

? The Princess and the Frog (2009)

How to Make Traditional Animation:

While traditional cel animations have been largely replaced by CGI and other digital animation techniques, you can still create a cel animation today. Here’s how:

? Gather the right tools: Traditional animation relies on pens, pencils, and paper.

? Source your plastic: You’ll need a thin sheet of colorless, transparent, and flexible plastic for your animated cel.

? Draw your outline: Hand-draw the outline on the front of the plastic sheet.

? Add color: On the flip side of your sheet, add color and detail within the outline.

? Repeat for each frame: Draw and fill an outline for each frame in your scene.

? Create a background: Design the background of the scene separately.

Place the animation: Place the animation cels over your background and photograph each frame.

Traditional Animation Techniques

Traditional animation comprises several techniques and processes, including cel animation. To understand how those iconic animations were created, let’s explore some of these techniques:

Cel drawing: Hand drawing individual frames of animation on thin, transparent plastic sheets.

These animations, called animated cels, popularized by Disney in the late 1930s, were placed over pre-created backgrounds and photographed.

Cel overlay: Part of the cel animation process that transformed animated filmmaking in the mid-20th century. Characters were hand-drawn on plastic sheets and placed over existing backgrounds, enabling characters to move and change positions and expressions.

Limited animation: Created as a compromise to the time-consuming process of frame-by-frame cel drawing, limited animation techniques re-used existing frames wherever possible, only creating new animated cels when necessary.

Animation loops: Short, simple sequences of animation set to continually replay. Animation loops date back to the early 1900s, with digital technology transforming their potential in recent years.

Multiplane processes: Disney revolutionized cel animation with the multiplane camera in the late 1930s. This camera introduced different levels or planes with characters and objects placed at different levels, creating a sense of depth in animations.

Xerography: Disney utilized Xerox’s technique to streamline the cel animation process in the production of 101 Dalmatians in 1959/60. Scanning drawings directly onto cels saved animators time and money.

Rotoscoping: A technique used by animators to bring realistic movement to characters by tracing over footage of characters as they move frame by frame. Rotoscoping was developed in the early1900s and brought to the big screen by Disney in Snow White in 1937.

DISCUSSING ROTOSCOPING IN DETAIL

Rotoscoping is an animation technique where animators trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to create realistic action. Initially, live-action movie images were projected onto a glass panel and traced onto paper using a device called a rotoscope, invented by Polish-American animator Max Fleischer. Although computers have since replaced this equipment, the process remains known as rotoscoping.

In the visual effects industry, rotoscoping involves manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate, allowing it to be composited over a different background. While chroma keying is more commonly used for background replacement due to its speed and reduced post-production work, rotoscoping offers higher accuracy and can be used alongside chroma keying. Additionally, rotoscoping is useful when the subject is not filmed against a green or blue screen or for practical or economic reasons.

Technique:

Rotoscoping has long been a critical tool for visual effects in live-action films. By meticulously tracing an object, filmmakers generate a silhouette, or matte, which allows them to seamlessly extract the object from one scene and integrate it into another background. While blue- and greenscreen techniques have simplified the process of layering elements within scenes, rotoscoping remains essential in the creation of visual effects imagery. In the digital age, rotoscoping is significantly enhanced by advanced motion-tracking and onion-skinning software.

It is frequently employed to prepare garbage mattes for other matte extraction processes and to create special visual effects, such as glows, guided by the matte or rotoscoped outline. A quintessential example of traditional rotoscoping is found in the original Star Wars trilogy, where it was utilized to produce the iconic glowing lightsaber effect. This was achieved by tracing each frame with the prop, then enlarging the line and adding the luminous glow.

The method was extensively employed in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs to enhance the realism of human characters’ movements, though the film’s budget surpassed expectations due to the intricacy of the animation.

Rotoscoping was occasionally utilized by Leon Schlesinger Productions, the studio responsible for producing Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons for Warner Bros. For instance, the opening sequence of the 1939 MGM cartoon “Petunia Natural Park” from The Captain and the Kids featured a rotoscoped rendition of MGM’s mascot, Jackie the Lion.

In the challenging circumstances of the Second Sino-Japanese War and World War II, rotoscoping was extensively employed in Princess Iron Fan (1941), China’s inaugural animated feature film.

During the early days of animated filmmaking in the Soviet Union, rotoscoping found favor, particularly in adaptations of folk tales or poems, such as The Night Before Christmas or The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish. It wasn’t until the early 1960s, following the “Khrushchev Thaw,” that animators began exploring divergent aesthetics.

The creators of the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine incorporated rotoscoping into the “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” sequence. Similarly, director Martin Scorsese utilized rotoscoping to edit out a conspicuous chunk of cocaine from Neil Young’s nose in his rock documentary The Last Waltz.

Ralph Bakshi heavily relied on rotoscoping for several of his animated features, including Wizards (1977), The Lord of the Rings (1978), American Pop (1981), Fire and Ice (1983), and Cool World (1992). Bakshi initially turned to rotoscoping when 20th Century Fox denied his request for a budget increase to complete Wizards; he employed the technique to finish the battle sequences.

Rotoscoping found further application in a variety of productions, such as Tom Waits For No One (1979), Heavy Metal (1981), What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown? (1983), It’s Flashbeagle, Charlie Brown (1984), the Dire Straits “Brothers in Arms” music video (1985), and three of A-ha’s music videos, “Take On Me” (1985), “The Sun Always Shines on T.V.” (1985), and “Train of Thought” (1986). It was also utilized in Don Bluth’s The Secret of NIMH (1982), An American Tail (1986), Harry and the Hendersons (closing credits), The BFG (1989), and Titan A.E. (2000), as well as Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues (2008).

In 1994, Smoking Car Productions devised a digital rotoscoping technique for the development of its acclaimed adventure video game The Last Express, ultimately securing U.S. patent 6,061,462 for the Digital Cartoon and Animation Process. The game was conceptualized by Jordan Mechner, who had previously employed rotoscoping extensively in his games Karateka and Prince of Persia.

In the mid-1990s, animator and computer scientist Bob Sabiston, an MIT Media Lab veteran, pioneered a computer-assisted “interpolated rotoscoping” process, notably showcased in his award winning short film “Snack and Drink.” Director Richard Linklater subsequently enlisted Sabiston and his proprietary rotoscope software for the full-length feature films Waking Life (2001) and A Scanner Darkly (2006). Linklater was the first director to utilize digital rotoscoping for an entire feature film. Additionally, a series of television commercials for Charles Schwab’s “Talk to Chuck campaign from 2005 to 2008 showcased Sabiston’s rotoscoping work, while The Simpsons employed rotoscoping for a couch gag in the episode Barthood, described by Lisa as “a noble experiment that failed.”

In 2013, the anime The Flowers of Evil adopted rotoscoping to create a distinct visual style divergent from its manga source material. While viewers criticized the show’s shortcuts in facial animation, reuse of backgrounds, and liberties taken with realism, critics praised the film, with Anime News Network awarding it a perfect score for initial reactions.

Early 2015 saw the release of the anime film The Case of Hana & Alice, a prequel to the 2004 live action film Hana and Alice, entirely animated using Rotoshop. Unlike The Flowers of Evil, it received widespread acclaim for its rotoscoping.

Kowabon [jp], a short-form horror anime series, also utilized rotoscoping and aired on Japanese TV in 2015.

The cutscenes in Faith: The Unholy Trinity (2017) were animated using rotoscope.

Undone (2019–), an Amazon Prime original series, employed rotoscoping in its creation.

The Spine of Night (2021), a feature-length fantasy film directed by Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King, was animated using rotoscoping. Prior to this, King’s Gorgonaut Studios had utilized rotoscoping for a series of short fantasy films.

STOP MOTION ANIMATION

Numerous acclaimed films highlight stop motion animation. But what exactly constitutes stop motion video? It entails manipulating real-world objects and photographing them frame by frame. These frames are then compiled into a sequence and played back, creating the illusion of movement. Stop motion encompasses various animation forms, including claymation and cutout animation.

Types of stop motion animation:

Claymation: This technique involves sculpting characters and props from modeling clay to craft unique worlds. Claymation entails the sculpting and frame-by-frame manipulation of clay-based characters or objects. Notable examples include the beloved Wallace & Gromit duo from Aardman

Animations and Rankin/Bass seasonal specials. Examples: Morph, Wallace & Gromit

Pixilation: Pixilation incorporates live actors into the process, requiring them to hold poses for still photography while making subtle movements between frames. One noteworthy example is the music video by The Maccabees for their song “Latchmere.” Examples: H?tel électrique (1908)

Cutout-Motion: Involving two-dimensional objects typically made from paper, cutout-motion animates their movements. The pilot episode of South Park was famously created using cutoutmotion, although its creators have since refined their techniques. Examples: The Spirit of Christmas (Matt Stone and Trey Parker)

Puppet Animation: This technique involves crafting and manipulating puppets to achieve a charming animated aesthetic. Laika, known for films like Coraline and Kubo and the Two Strings, is renowned for its puppet animation. Examples: Coraline, Kubo and the Two Strings

Silhouette Animation: Combining cutout-motion with shadow play, silhouette animation produces captivating frames of action. Pioneered by European studios in the 1920s, it’s exemplified by the work of Lotte Reiniger, who created over 70 silhouette animation films retelling folk tales.

Examples: The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926), Papageno (1935)