Unit 53 2d animation
Research
The whole idea of animation spans across many thousands of years, possibly even dating back to to the old caveman drawings where images were used to tell a story it was only untill the 1800's where we began to strive deeper into the world of animation.
1824- T
he starting date of animation or rather the birth of the idea for fully developing it.
1832-
phenakistoscope was invented.
joseph plateue a belgian physicist and his sons introduced the phenakistoscope, uses the persistence of motion to create the motion illusion.
My own impressions of this were at first i thought the general choices of objects that were animated strange and somewhat creepy, this could be to the fact that the images used are out of my time and culture was different back in the time dated plus coming from other countries not native to me.
1834- First invented by william horner of england
initially named the "daedalum" which essentially meant the devils wheel (possibly seen to have magical properties, although it was just an illusion?). only truly started becoming popular around the 1860's where it was later developed by an american, william F lincoln and he named the device the "zoetrope" which means the wheel of life (animation giving the sense of that).
working differently to the phenakistscope by instead having the images placed on the inside of a vertical cyclinder and the slits themselves become the viewing window rather than being a technical modification around the images like with the phenakistoscope.
Later developments- 3d zoetrope
towards the end of the 20 th century such company's like pixar, disney created an adaptation of the zoetrope in the sense that instead of using simple flat images they attempted to use 3d models and apply the same effect as the zoetrope by having the models (of different movement stages) spun on a circular plate, with a flicker or strobe effect to apply a framerate. see below.
1895- Thomas Edison invents the kinetoscope for early motion films
Worked by taking a vast collection of tiny images which showed a gradual movement of positions of objects when in sequence. edison attached these images around a cyclinder (whilst adding the slots between images to give it a frame rate) when spun the images would appear to be in motion, giving the birth of early motion films.
Different from the phenakistoscope in the way that the images used are instead taken of real images rather than a cartoon.
1908- Emile cohl's fantasmagorie
Going from early film animation to early animation in the cartoon or caricature sense (traditionally seen more as animation). Emile cohl's fantasmoragie, you could say that this was essentially the birth into motion cartoon,serving as a bases for inspiration.
1934- Betty Boop Ha, Ha, Ha
here is a betty boop episode and an example of a development of early animation from emile rohl's fantasmagorie.
at this moment in animation boundaries were really being pushed boundaries essentially meaning the edge of the page. where the world of cartoon was beginning to be bridged over to the real world by having animated frames lead off the main staging ground and actually (seem to) interact with the real world around.
this could possibly be also seen as the early stages for augmented reality.
1970-2000's- Flip books
Flip books work by having several images drawn onto a notepad and proceed to run your thumb across the opposite end of the binding, the transition between pages being flicked through introduced frame rate hence forth giving the illusion of motion and the graphic to animate.
This particular flickbook animation stood out to me because it wasnt based solely around one scene, there arr many different scenes that transiotion to eachother throughout, all with changing perspective and angles. something ive not typically seen from any other flip book, where its usually the simple animated stickman set up.
1990 - wallace and gromitt's grand day out was created
A possible adaptation of the 3d zoe trope, claymation was introduced and widely became more famous around the the birth of the series wallace and gromitt and was thus beginning a new/alternate course in the progression/adaptation of animation.
claymation was a very laborious process much more so than that of hand drawn cel animation, it worked by photographs taken of different clay character models all at different stages of movement and when played in sequence at a very fast rate it would give our eyes an animated illusion of the clay models.
and to get an idea on how laborious it would take 12 changes to a models movement just to achieve a second of animation. and 64,800 changes for a full feature film.
1995 - Dawn of the cgi animation
Following on from claymation, animation began to take more of a prominent turn to into 3d animation and around this time computers were seen more and more as a useful an animation tool, untill the widely famous animated film "toy story" was released by pixar and was seen as the first and most detailed cg animation to date and began a new era for animation. from then on the computer became the only tool animators used to create and drawings only used for concepts.
a classic and a prominent stamp on the timeline of history of animation, and for quite some time put pixar as the animation powerhouse since other companies were lacking in the technology to achieve such a level as toy story.
Development of cgi
however once tech caught up all around, cg animation was everywhere and continually was developed in terms of detail, smoothness, so much so to the point of cg animation reaching a level/quality of realism, a clip from the film "final fantasy 7 advent children" is an example of that.
As you can see cg animation has come along way from the true essential birth of it with toy story, in terms of overall smoothness and detail specifically within the hair an texture in the backgrounds.
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