Reminder: First came persistence of vision devices such as the Zoetrope, flip books, etc.

Gertie the Dinosaur (l9l4) & Winsor McCay› Line drawings on

paper, photographed by a film camera

Cel animation› Images hand-drawn

on sheet of celluloid

› Walt Disney & Ub Iwerks—partners since their teens in Kansas City

Cel Animation: Foreground & Background Cels

Stop motion animation› Physical objects

photographed one or two frames at a time, then moved in between, to create illusion of motion

› As early as 1898 (Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton’s The Humpty Dumpty Circus, U.S.)

Ray Harryhausen (Jason & the Argonauts (1963), Clash of the Titans (1981), etc.)

Aardman Animation (Peter Lord & David Sproxton + Nick Park; Chicken Run (2000); Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005))› Use clay animation› Established 1976

A typical set:

Versus “not full” animation, in which background cels are not animated, typical for TV animated series

Gives illusion of depth to the image

Only the biggies—Disney, Don Bluth, DreamWorks, Japanese studios)

e.g., Beauty and the Beast (1991)

Rotoscoping/Reference film (live action film as reference) › e.g., Ralph Bakshi, Lord

of the Rings (l978); Richard Linklater, Waking Life (2001); A Scanner Darkly (2006)

 

Optical printer used to combine live action w/ animation as early as 1920's › e.g., Who Framed

Roger Rabbit? (1989)

Not for kids only! Based on traditional

Japanese art forms Cel animation at its

best. . . › e.g., Akira (1988); Cowboy

Bebop (2001)

The “kinder, gentler” anime studio, founded by › Hayao Miyazaki--Princess Mononoke

(1999); Spirited Away (2002); Howl’s Moving Castle (2005)

› Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

Grave of the Fireflies (1988)

Computer animation (part of computer generated imagery, or CGI)—Images of things that may never exist in reality› Pixar, DreamWorks

› e.g., TRON (1982); Toy Story (1995); Finding Nemo (2003)

› Now the norm for animated features

With computer animation, we have a blurring of the line between animation and digital special effects › The majority of feature films released in the

U.S. contain at least some CGI (with live action)

› Even Studio Ghibli, which still uses hand-draw cel animation, uses computer applications for highlights and sparkles, etc.

Performance capture (using computers to generate CGI characters moving in "real time" as captured from real humans performing while wearing sensors)› e.g., Avatar (2009)› Angelina Jolie is to star in “Beowulf,”

the performance capture adaptation to be directed by Robert Zemeckis