Disney

        It doesn't seem right to investigate the history of animation without acknowledging Disney; perhaps the most well known and most recognisable studio in the history of animation. I would imagine you are in the minority if your childhood didn't include a healthy diet of Disney films to tech you about life, love, separation and death. It seems odd that these last two themes should feature so prominently in many of Disney's feature length films (Bambi, most notably) and yet not impact upon the deep affection many people feel for them.

Many children are introduced to the harsh realities of death and separation from parents though Disney features.

         Since the advent of Pixar, and Disney's acquisition of that company in 2006, Disney's output in the traditional 2D style has somewhat diminished, but between the 1930s and 1990s the studio produced many, many films, a number of which have become immortalised as childhood classics.

        The Disney style and stories, which deal with strong themes of good versus evil, are most prominently aimed at young children and consequently contributed to the misconception that animation is a child's medium. So strong is this perception that the term 'dynamation' had to be applied to Ray Harryhausen's special effects features to convince discouraged adults that they were not seeing a children's animated feature.

        Undoubtedly, part of Disney's appeal can be accredited to the enduring stories. The vast majority of the studio's 2D animations are interpretations of classic fairy tales (Beauty & The Beast, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid), timeless stories which don't age or date, and are certain to play a part in all future generations' childhoods. When such a solid bedrock is combined with well considered animation, beguiling characters and well realised environments you get a winning formula.  

       

When the Wind Blows

        When the Wind Blows (1986), by Jimmy Murakami, based on Raymond Brigg's graphic novel of the same name, demonstrates the potential of animation to act as a platform to communicate political messages.

        The animation remains faithful to Briggs' original style, which closely mirrors that of The Snowman, and yet the juxtaposition between style and story could not be greater. The familiar, rotund characters and softly coloured backgrounds cruelly lull the audience into a false sense of security before exploiting the fear of nuclear holocaust that much of the population felt during the cold war. The protagonists, Jim and Hilda Bloggs, are well placed to draw empathy from the audience; old, vulnerable and completely trusting in the advice the government offers. It is like watching this awful fate befall your grandparents.

        Although When the Wind Blows is narratively driven, unlike many propganda films, including Disney's film Education for Death which emulates a documentary, following a child's indoctrination into the Nazi party), the scathing criticism of the government is clear. As Jim and Hilda blindly follow the government's futile advice and instruction, their health gruesomely deteriorates, and yet Jim's faith in the government endures.

        Murakami's film uses dark humour to approach a particularly difficult subject, but this doesn't detract from the message that the government was greatly unprepared for the threat or nuclear warfare and would be unable to protect and help the population relying upon them.

Willis O'Brien

        Willis O'Brien, considered by some to be the 'great grandfather of stop motion animation' was a pioneer of early motion pictures, most notably for creating the original 1933 King Kong, which has become an icon of cinema, and influenced many  future film makers, including special effects maestro Ray Harryhausen. 

        O'Brien's Kong has inspired no fewer than two remakes and numerous sequels and spin offs (including Son of Kong by O'Brien himself), each trying to recreate the original puppet creature using the best technology available at the time. In spite of the technological advances however, the subsequent beasts are somehow lacking in the soul and spirit that made the puppet version so memorable. The fact that Harryhausen continued to create special effects using stop motion, even though more up to date techniques were available to him, demonstrates the faith animators had in this method, as it effectively allows you to live, breathe and act through your puppets.

        That stop motion special effects were used in the motion picture industry right up until George Lucas' Star Wars films also demonstrates the change in audiences capacity to suspend disbelief. Up until recently, audiences were willing to accept an image of a woman interacting with an incredibly puppet of a gorilla, in order to enjoy the spectacle and the story. Yet now, if an audience is confronted with a person interacting with a creature that is less than photorealistic, they are likely to react with disappointment and criticism.

        It is a shame that this shift in audience expectations may result in restraining creativity to what can realistically be depicted on screen.

        

The Simpsons

        The Golden Age of animation came to an end in the 1960s, as television sets became more affordable and consequently more commonplace in many households, which meant that there were other entertainment options than going to the cinema or theatre, the main places where animations were shown. In its place, the Silver Age was born, as TV provided a new platform to broadcast programmes of all types, including animation.

        The Simpson's, created by Matt Groening, is a notable example of animation created for television in that it is one of the longest running television animations, being first broadcast as full length episodes in 1989 and at the time of writing still going.

How the Simpsons originally appeared on the Tracey Ullman Show

        At the time The Simpsons was first broadcast, animation on American television was largely viewed as more appropriate for children than adults, yet while the programme's universal storyline of a dysfunctional family and satirical approach are aimed at adults, the animation style of bright colours and bold shapes makes it appeal to a broad spectrum of audiences. The intentional evasiveness as to the location of the programme's setting, the fictional Springfield, allows the show to act as a microcosm for the whole of the USA, to make scathing social and political comments, while younger viewer's attention will be held by the physical humour and amusing voices.



The updated design for The Simpsons

        The success of the show has widely been credited with opening the door to other animated programmes being broadcast on prime time TV, such as Family Guy and Futurama. Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy, said 'The Simpsons created an audience for prime time animation that had not been there for many, many years...As far as I'm concerned, they basically reinvented the wheel'. It is strange to think that without The Simpsons the landscape of television animation may have been quite different.

        In terms of animation style, the town of Springfield and it inhabitants are most definitely two dimensional, with no attempt to use shading and tonal colour to suggest depth and shape, with minimal shadowing and colour change to suggest an alteration in light. Instead, the illusion of depth and weight is achieved by rarely depicting characters directly in profile or from the front or back. Instead, the figures are most often drawn from a three quarter view, as in the still above. This technique, which is a part of the solid drawing principle of animation (one of the 12 principles) provides the 2D animation with depth and contributes to the programme's distinctive visual style.

          

Simon's Cat

        The role that the internet plays in the way we consume media and video has led to an increase in the volume of animation that is produced and broadcast. Rather than requiring studio or network support to gain an audience for animations, the internet enables any user to create and upload their work through websites such as Youtube and Vimeo. While this means that many people are capable of creating animations as a hobby, many others whose work becomes successful through these channels are able to make a living through creating animated series' broadcast on the internet.

        My favourite of these series' is Simon's Cat by Simon Tofield. While the concept and style of these animated shorts is fairly simple (black and white line drawings, depicting a man being tormented by his food and attention obsessed pet) that is what makes them work. For any cat owner, the scenarios are immediately recognisable (unless mine and Tofield's cats are the only such mischievous animals), while the unobtrusive style allows the focus to remain upon the animation; this is important as much of the humour in these videos is derived from subtle gestures and movements which would be swamped in  fully coloured, highly detailed environment.

        Creating animation for an internet audience also removes many of the restraints and restrictions which would no doubt apply when working for film or television. For one thing, TV schedules rarely feature programmes less than 20 minutes in length, whereas episodes of series' for the internet can be any length. Simon's Cats rarely exceed two or three minutes, as they do not have complex plots or storylines but are rather witty and well executed observations.

        Not working to the requirements of a company or employer also provides the opportunity to use your own ideas and create whatever takes your fancy. And there is always the added bonus that the internet may bring your work to the attention of somebody who works in the animation industry. It cannot be argued that the Internet has made the task of networking more accessible and approachable. 

Industrial Light & Magic

        Industrial Light & Magic, currently the largest visual effects company in the film industry, was originally formed by George Lucas to create effects for the Star Wars films in the 1970s. Since then the company has made many advancements in the world of digital animation, notably the first use of computer generated 3D characters in The Abyss and Terminator 2. In both of these films the CG characters are made of liquid (water and metal respectively), an effect which was unprecedented at the time. 

        Although less remarkable when viewed today, in the 40 years since ILM was created the technology in CG animation has advanced incredibly quickly, and the company still creates effects for some of the biggest effects blockbusters, including Marvel's The Avengers and Iron Man films, as well as many of the Harry Potter films. In the time of the company's existence digital effects have gone from being ground-breaking to commonplace, so much so that audiences expect the spectacular and are less easily amazed.

        It is an inevitable pitfall to working in an industry where technology advances so rapidly that often what was once innovative soon becomes dated. I distinctly remember being fascinated by the wild animals in Jumanji when I was younger, only to be distinctly underwhelmed when I re-watched it recently. The increasing demands of audiences in the digital age means that films from only a few years ago begin to loose their magic and become outmoded. In contrast, a well drawn 'traditional' animation can be timeless.

        Aside from 3D animation, ILM has also developed some of the techniques pioneered in early animations. For example Who Framed Roger Rabbit places 2 dimensional animated characters in a live action world alongside live action actors, not dissimilar to Winsor McCay's appearance in his Gertie the Dinosaur animation.  Industrial Light & Magic can also claim to be the parent company of Pixar, which began as the company's Graphics Group before being sold to Steve Jobs.

Lotte Reiniger

        Lotte Reiniger's silhouette animations, including The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) which was one of the first animated feature films, manage to incorporate a great amount of detail into characters who are only visible in outline. Indeed, there is so much depth to each frame that watching Reiniger's films seems to be like watching fairy tale illustrations come to life. 

        Although similar to and inspired by Chinese shadow puppetry, Reiniger created her animations using cardboard cut outs manipulated these figures frame by frame rather than in live action. The result is delicate movements which perfectly compliment the intricate style. The silhouette images, when combined with the colour tinting and fantastical backgrounds Reiniger applied to the films, create a wonderfully magical and ethereal atmosphere appropriate to their subject matter, which ranged from interpretations of One Thousand and One Nights to Grimm's Fairy Tales and The Magic Flute by Mozart.

        Yet while the beautifully intricate figures and magical stories may appeal to younger audiences, the fact that many of the characters' faces remain anonymous means that a contemporary audience remains somewhat separated from the story. As it is usual now for animated figures to have highly articulate and expressive faces which clearly communicate their character and intentions, Reiniger's shadowy figures can even be seen as slightly sinister. However, as many of the stories on which Reiniger based her animations had a sting in their tail, particularly the Grimm's Fairy Tales, perhaps it is appropriate that the silhouettes maintain a slight edge, in order that the moral of the tale remains memorable.

Gertie the Dinosaur

        Winsor McCay's most famous creation, Gertie the Dinosaur 'the only dinosaur in captivity', was originally created as part of a vaudeville act that seemingly allowed McCay to interact with the animated creature. McCay would read a script, giving Gertie various commands and the dinosaur would 'react' accordingly. The finale of the show would see McCay step into the prehistoric landscape and ride on Gertie's back, which demonstrated the potential for compositing together animated and real footage, which many decades later would become a staple of cinema. 

        Credited with pioneering the use of key frames, inbetweening and registration marks, McCay's aptitude for timing can be seen in the way that Gertie's movements are much more fluid and natural looking than many previous animations. The fact that the animation requires interaction also places added significance on timing, as the act would have been marred were McCay to miss a cue.

        Gertie's characterisation, which no doubt contributed to her popularity, was aided by a consideration of anatomy. McCay consulted New York Museum staff to gain the best informed opinion of how the relatively enigmatic creatures would move, and consequently the dinosaur moves as we would expect a living breathing creature to, and McCay keeps her volume consistent as she performs her tricks, which, in combination with the ground moving beneath Gertie's feet, creates an illusion of weight and presence within the animated landscape.

        All of these methods, which give Gertie a greater sense of depth and life, have since become standard animation techniques, adopted by some of the greatest animators such as Disney and the Fleischer Brothers. Indeed, as the first animated dinosaur, McCay's creation became highly influential, and is referenced in many cartoons and films, such as Jurassic Park. 

Ladislaw Starewicz

        Advancing from the pioneering work of Arthur Melbourne Cooper, Ladislaw Starewicz used the same stop motion technique to tell stories, often using dead bugs with wire limbs as his characters. Although this sounds somewhat macabre, there is an indescribable charm in seeing beetles, grasshoppers and dragonflies inhabiting their own miniature world.

        Starewicz's use of real insects stemmed from a desire to make a film for the Museum of Natural History in Kovno, Lithuania, depicting battling stag beetles. Yet the lighting he used prompted the nocturnal creatures to go to sleep. His solution was to create articulated 'puppets' and recreate the fight using these.

        From then on, his films developed from naturalistic to anthropomorphic. One such example is The Cameraman's Revenge (1911), in which a grasshopper is spurned by his dragonfly lover in favour of a beetle. The idea of a community of insects inhabiting a recognisably human world, going to the theatre, driving cars and dealing with issues such as jealousy, infidelity and love has been echoed in contemporary animations such as Pixar's A Bug's Life and Dreamworks' Antz, which demonstrate the far reaching appeal and influence of Starewicz's work.

        Considering that Starewicz began his animation career within a few years of Matches Appeal the quality of the animation is high, perhaps due to Starewicz's aforementioned interest in natural history. One reviewer of The Beautiful Leukanida (1912) believed that he was watching trained live insects rather than an animation.

        Starewicz also made films using more conventional puppets, such as The Tale of the Fox (1930, although not premiered until 1937 due to issues with the soundtrack), his first full length animated feature. Premiered shortly before Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, it was one of the first animated features with a soundtrack, and is considered some of his best work. Another of his puppet animations, The Mascot, was selected by Terry Gilliam as one of the 10 best animations of all time.

        However, it is Starewicz's insect animations which stick in my memory, as they are highly original, unusual and have an appeal which many other more technically advanced films just cannot equal.

Matches Appeal

        Matches Appeal, by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, is a landmark in the development of animation as it is widely considered to be the earliest surviving example of animation, dating back to 1899. Also, despite some current negativity towards commercial animation, Melbourne-Cooper's short appeal firmly roots animation in the world of advertising.

        The short piece of stop motion animation, which simultaneously advertises Bryant & May matches while appealing for help for soldiers fighting in the Boer War, caused a sensation when it was first shown. While by today's standards the film is not particularly remarkable or innovating, 1899 was not long after the advent of film and cinema, so for a population still marvelling at moving pictures, to see an inanimate object such as a match apparently come to life and write must have been quite spectacular.

        Understandably, given that Cooper was working with articulated matches, their movement is quite stiff and linear, without the attention to timing and spacing which would later develop as the animation industry grew. However, stick man had adequate movement to serve their purpose, and provided a basis for both Arthur Melbourne Cooper and other animators to work upon.

Mercury, Venus & Space

        Rather than create my entire animation digitally, I instead chose to create the main assets (characters and scenery) by hand and then place them into Photoshop, Flash or After Effects, and perhaps use these programs to augment the hand crafted. For example adding stars or fiery sparks. 

        The first task I chose to undertake was the background. I had several ideas for how to depict space; sponged acrylic paint, bleach and ink, and brush o dye and bleach. I wanted the setting to appear natural and the unpredictable nature of the bleach helped to achieve this. After testing out each of these techniques it was clear that the brush o dye was the best option, as the bleach brought out subtle variations in the colour of the powders, giving a greater sense of depth than either the acrylic or ink.

Ink Test

Acrylic Test

        I had also initially considered marbling with oil paint, but it was difficult to create the right balance of colour, while the amount of detail would have made the background too obtrusive and distracting. Yet this technique worked well for the planets that I would need.

Test background, including Mercury.

Marbled Sun

Marbled Venus

       

Marbled Mercury

        To communicate that the sun and the phoenix are one and the same I made my cut out model from the same marbled paper that I cut the sun from, as well as some slightly different shades to suggest the varied tone of fire. By using darker/redder tones for the body and integrating more oranges and yellows towards the outer sections of the wings I also hoped to suggest a change in the density and heat of the fire further away from the 'core'.

After Effects Puppet Tool

        While discussing my project, one of the tutors mentioned that After Effects has a puppet tool which allows manipulation of a digital puppet to create more natural movement. So to see whether this would be helpful in my Icarus animation, I investigated some tutorials to see what could be achieved using this tool. Thee are plenty of helpful videos around that show the basic capabilities.

        However, there is one significant drawback to this tool. The cut out wings that I had created are made of three individual sections, which fold and overlap. If I were to scan the wings in and only animate digitally, the puppet tool would not allow the wings to unfold, only bend and stretch the original image. Consequently, I shall stick to my original plans to animate the wings and phoenix as cut outs, and use the puppet tool to manipulate Francois Xavier Fabre's painting The Death of Abel.

        The advantage of the puppet tool is that you can give the illusion of joints and flesh, which would move and react in a certain way, to a digital object. The other transformations (position, scale, opacity and rotation) are just not helpful in some situations. In short, how it works is that you place pins on the areas of your character that would act as joints, and then animate these points along the timeline. You can also animate these points by hand as After Effects records the movements you make. There are also options to 'starch' or stiffen certain points so that they are less affected by the movement of the pins, but I'm not going to have time to experiment with this at the moment.

        Having had a play around with this tool I can see the potential, but the character I produced with it was not particularly natural or convincing. I think that this a tool which requires more time and practice before I can include it in a project.
 

Building Wings

        As a significant percentage of my animation will involve one or both of my characters in flight, I felt it was important to study the proper anatomical movement of wings. Eadweard Muybridge's highly informative photographic sequences luckily included a vulture in flight, which shows the clear stages in the movement of larger wings. 

 

 

        Also, while I have some idea of the size of bird wings in comparison with their bodies, I was unsure how large Icarus' wings should be. While in depictions of Cupid and some of the classical painting of Icarus I researched, the wings are quite small, many further winged figures in popular culture have more powerful looking wings, which I felt would be better suited to the character.

 

 

 

        Those I chose to focus on were the Angel of Death from Terry Gilliam's The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Black Swan's transformative dance sequence and the Icarus images used in Brazil, also by Gilliam. In each of these films the wings are large, like those of a bird of prey, and in the latter two act as an extension of the characters' arms. As Icarus' wings are artificial rather than organic, it seems logical to me that the wings would be attached to and controlled by the arms rather than moving independently.

 

 

        Which brings me to how the wings should move. As they are effectively mechanical, I didn't want the movement of the wings to be completely smooth and fluid, but rather slightly jolted and unnatural. What sprang to mid was the bat gremlin from Gremlins 2, whose slower than natural movement allows the beating wings to be better appreciated. Hopefully, by creating Icarus' wings as articulated cut out models I will be able to achieve a similar motion.



Icarus

        Having decided to create a cut out animation using a pre-existing image of Icarus (as in Terry Gilliam's Monty Python animations, which use photos and paintings) I began searching for a painting in a suitably classical style to evoke the ancient Greek origins of the story. 

        One of the most famous images of Icarus is Matisse's The Flight of Icarus, with bold, block colours; not the style I was searching for. Other, more suitable paintings that I discovered unfortunately depicted the character in awkward, contorted poses which would be difficult to transform into cut out models.

Jacob Peter Gowy The Fall of Icarus (rotated).

Herbert Draper Lament for Icarus.

        So I then began searching for an alternative figure who could pass for Icarus. I found quite a wide selection, including work by Burne Jones and Van Dyck, but the two that appealed to me the most were The Death of Abel by Francois Xavier Fabre and The Fisherman and the Siren by Frederic Leighton. The latter, while bearing more of a physical resemblance to the Icarus I had pictured, would require time consuming work to remove the siren and fill in the missing portions of his torso. As Fabre's Abel would also work well, I chose this image.

The Death of Abel.

The Fisherman & The Siren.

The Classical Elements

        For the Classical Elements project we are required to produce a 20 second, narrative driven animation based on either earth, air, fire or water. The only other stipulation was that the animation should in some way use a digital animation program such as Photoshop or Flash.

        After writing down several ideas for each element, I selected two ideas which I felt had the most potential, Icarus for fire and a Golem for earth, and wrote down a brief plot outline for each. This process gave me the opportunity to see that the Icarus story would be more visually dymanic and exciting to work on.

  

        As the Greek tale of Icarus is relatively in depth, too in depth to fit into 20 seconds, it was necessary for me to edit the narrative, showing just the flight from Icarus preparing to take off, to his wings being destroyed in the sun's heat. To an an extra dynamic, I wanted the sun to bust to life in the form of a phoenix, a creature traditionally associated with the sun, I felt that this would be more dramatic and interesting that if the sun were to remain a passive and inanimate object. Once the storyboard was completed I was able to construct an animatic which would give me an idea of how many frames each shot should last when I begin production.

        In terms of visual style, as both characters and the story are taken from Greek mythology, I wanted to keep the style sympathetic to that era, for example by using a pre existing image of Icarus or a suitable classical/renaissance painting as a cut out model.

A quick mock up of how I envisage the character of Icarus.

Brothers McLeod

        One of the first things that struck me about the Animation Production and Process module was that the outcome had to be 20 seconds long, no more, no less. While this is longer than the allowance for the last module (5-10 seconds), this animation had to have a narrative. How can you squeeze a story into less than half a minute? 

        As inspiration, I have watched the Brothers McLeod 365 animations. These monthly instalments feature a 1 second animation from each day of the month. While not exactly narratives, each animation demonstrates an action or reveal that can happen in a single second. They have made me see that a second has room for more than I envisaged, and consequently 20 seconds is plenty for a simple idea.

Animation Tests - Photoshop Timeline & Flash



        As part of the Classical Elements project, which requires the final animation to have been produced to some extent digitally, we have been carrying out simple animation tests to help get to grips with how Adobe Flash and Photoshop Timeline can be used. The later is also a good tool for creating animatics (working out shot durations etc.) while the former allows for smoother transitions thanks to motion tweens.

        At first both programs presented small but frustrating problems. However, the familiar tasks provided an opportunity to become familiar with the interface and tools each had to offer, and the potential each has for use in further projects.

Bouncing Ball & Pendulum produced using Photoshop Timeline.

Bouncing Ball & Pendulum produced using Flash.