11 Seconds - Animation Overveiw

Animation: 
Creating an illusion of movement by rapidly display a sequence of images. Derived from the Latin Animatio, "the act of bringing to life", which is a combination of Animo, "give life to", and -atio, "the act of".

History of Animation:

Earliest Examples
Examples of attempts at conveying movement using two dimensional images date back to the stone ages. Borne from a survival instinct of sharing information, humans love telling stories and sometimes images painted on the walls of pre-historic dwellings pictured animals with multiple sets of legs, presumably in an attempt to depict motion. These, of course, aren't actual animations, but they do demonstrate a clear desire for it.

Recent History
-Thaumatrope, created in 1824 by Sir John Herschel. It was used to demonstrate the "Phi phenomenom"(or the persistence of vision). It is a double sided card with a string from the top and bottom in the center. When the string is spun with sufficient speed the images on both sides of the card appear to combine into a single image.
-Phenakistoscope, created in 1831 simultaneously by Joseph Plateau and Simon Von Stampfer. Consists of a disk with a series of images and a correspoding set of slots. The device is placed facing a mirror and then spun, the veiwer looking through the slots. At it spins the image the veiwer can see changes, creating the illusion of movement. The animations created by these devices are looped so that it ends at the beginning, allowing it to repeat indefinitely.
-Zoetrope, a similar invention created in 180 AD by Chinese inventor Ting Huan, the modern version was invented in 1834 by William George Horner. A cylindrical spinning device with a set of images on the inside and slots above that. As it spun the veiwer would look through the slots and the image would spin. It was superior to the Phenakistoscope due to the lack of mirror requirement and ability to allow multiple people to veiw it at once.
-Flip Books, a simple idea patented by John Barnes Linnett. It is a book of particlarly spring pages on which the edge opposite the spine of every page would be an image, each one a series of the animation. As the name implies, the veiwer would hold the book by the spine and flip the pages sequentially, making visible each image in order, creating a moving visual.
-Praxinoscope, created by Charles-Emile Reynaud in 1877, it was the first animated projection. The project slides were notable for actually being hand drawn animation on transparent strips.

Traditional Animation

Animation was first done in what we now call a traditional style at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Silent Era
In 1908, Emile Cohl created Fantasmagorie, a two minute animation with each frame drawn by hand. Due to the short duration and simplistic visuals, this was possible by one man. Traditional animations of a grander scale required teams of artists working in tandem.

A stop-motion animation called The Humpty Dumpty Circus was made in 1908 by J. Stewart Blackton and Albert E. Smith. Stop motion involves taking pictures of real life objects and then moving them frame by frame, picture by picture. Then the set of images are strung together and produce the illusion of movement.

Influenced by Emile Cohl, Ladislas Starevich created a stop motion animation using dead insects with wire limbs called The Cameraman's Revenge which is cited as the first example of an animation that contains a detailed and complex story with multiple characters.

Commercialisation of these more detailed, traditional animations, was not viable until 1914 during which an employee of John Bray Studios, Earl Hund, patented the cel technique. This involved animating moving objects on transparent sheets when were then placed over a static background and then photographed which reduced the workload massively and allowed a team of animators to create a series. A further innovation that eased a transition into commercialism was the creation of rotoscoping, invented by Max and Dave Fleischer. The first merchandised cartoon was Felix the Cat in 1920 who soon became a household name and the first animated feature film was Adventures of Prince Achmed created by Lotte Reiniger and Verthold Bartosch in 1926.

The Golden Age of Animation
In 1923, Walt Disney's studio Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt. Despite this setback, Disney decided to try again and opened a new studio in Los Angeles. He later went on to create the animated character, Mickey Mouse, a household name and also the first successful feature length animated film.

Seven years after Disney set up the The Walt Disney Company, Warner Brother's Cartoons was put together. In contrast to Disney, the animators working at the company were allowed much more freedom and expression which meant different people gained distinctive personal styles. For example, Tex Avery introduced The Loony Tunes characters which appealed to a much wider audience than Disney's children-specific demographic.

Modern Animation
Animation created in recent times is still often done in the traditional way. Computer technology, however, has revolutionised the way animation is created and has also paved the way for a new technique of animating: CGI animation.

Animating on the computer can take two forms: two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Two-dimensional computer animating is often similar to traditional with some of the limitations removed whereas three-dimensional animation is actually similar to stopmotion. A digital model is created, and then a skeleton is made, and the model is rigged up to the skeleton. Moving the skeleton bone structure moves the vertices composing the model. This is still a painstaking process and is slightly more limited than handdrawn animation but allows for aspects such as perspective and scale to always be correct.