CW Digital animation: Types and Techniques

Aim: To research the genres, types and uses of digital animation. 

Types of animation:

Stop motion animation - Wallace and grommet 
Anime - Spirited away
Claymation - Wallace and grommet (same as stop motion) 
2D Animations - Peppa pig 
3D Animations - Marvel films 

CGI - Endgame 
Line drawing 
Cel animation 
Hand drawn 
Rotoscoping 
Live action 

Line drawing: 

. A hand drawn sketch that moves frame by fame so that the shape evolves and moves. 

. It's commonly used in the contemporary advertising. 

. Line drawings, today, are generally created using Adobe Illustrator, Adobe flash and Lightbox

. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVGs) are animated by code. 

First Cartoon made - (Emile Cohl, 1908)

EXAMPLE: Name - Fantasmagorie (EXAMPLE OF A LINE DRAWING) 

With line drawings, the more line drawings you have the calmer an image looks, but the less you have means the more nervous the scene looks. 

When the image is almost simmering, its known as a line boil. 

A line boil is a drawing / tracing over a character to appear animated. 

More drawings = looks less animated 

Less drawings = looks nervous / colds 

EXAMPLE: A-ha - Take on me 

Groundbreaking for its time IE: Interesting and unique 

Bridge between fantasy and reality 

Red Bull 

Why do they use animation?

Redbull uses animation to be able to create something unrealistic (fantasy scenario) 

What affect does it have? 

The ad became humorous and also simplistic 

Cel animation 

Short for 'Celluloid animation' 

Many Disney films, especially the early ones, were created in this way.

A cel is a celluloid sheet - a transparent sheet onto which characters and scenery are drawn or painted. This is traditionally done by hand. 

EXAMPLE: Disney cel animation

Snow White facts: 

Took roughly three years to produce, from 1934 to 1937. 

Over 750 artists completed more than 2 million sketches. he film included 250,000 drawings. 

Hand-Drawing 

Not common practice today, because it is so time consuming, and can be achieved more easily through computer generation. However, Hayao miyazakis film 'spirited away', was entirely hadn't drawn 

EXAMPLE: Spirited away 

Miyazaki wrote, directed and drew the storyboards for the movie; essentially writing the movie with drawings. When you watch the film, you're seeing one mans work and vision. The filmmaker is so influential and involved in he production, the New Yorker once called him "the auteur of anime" 

Development vs Run time 

The run time of an animated piece is often disproportionate to the length of the time it takes to produce. In terms of frames, you are producing a three minute animation, with a standard 24fps, it would take 4,320 separate drawings or movements. 

For a 90 minute feature, this would equate to around 129,600 drawings. 

Rotoscoping 

Traditional rotoscoping involved a stand called a rotoscope - this was used to project sequences of moving images against a surface so that a set of animation frames could be traced over them. The 'roto' prefix refers to the rotation of images. 

Traces live action footage on paper to create the affect. 

Juno opening credits 

Why is the effect? 

Turns the film into a much more innocent one, reinforced the idea of her innocence. 

Why has the rotoscoping been used? 

Creates a sense of innocence, simplistic and childish. 

Contemporary Rotoscoping 

Silhouette, Adobe premiere or Final cut pro can be used to do the same work digitally. 

Digital rotoscoping is used to create a matte or mask for an element so that it can be extracted to be placed n a different background, or masked out so that the colours can be changed. 

The artist will trace an object using a set of tools within the compositing software. 

Live action animation 

In which non-animated characters interact with animated characters. 

Famously use in Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) and space ham (1996) as well as Mary Poppins the old version. (1964)

Stop motion and claymation 

Bringing inanimate objects to life. 

This is achieved meticulously, by moving the object bit by bit and photographing it. In this way, it seems as if the object itself is moving when the frames are played sequentially. 

Computer generated imagery (CGI) 

When digital technology and software is used to generate animated images and graphics. 

CGI refers to static scenes and moving characters, while computers animation refers only to moving characters/scenes. 

3D Animation is used in a lot of blockbusters to make characters seem more rounded (Pixar and Toy story, for example) 

Rendering - The process of generating an image from a 2D or 3D Model via the use of computer programs. 

Tweening - When frames between two key movements are generated in digital animation to give a smooth appearance. 

Chroma key - A special effects technique for layering two images or video streams together. The subject is filmed or video streams together. During the post-production, the background is removed and replaced with CGI.