1. TECHNIQUES AND TECHNOLOGY OF ANIMATION

2. In the back of some caves there are cave paintings. These were early forms of animation as due to the flickering fire from torches the paintings appear to move. As the light flickers the painting would appear differently. Bone disks were also used and different pictures were painted around the disk and when the disk was spun the images would combine into one area and flick between the images like a Zoetrope The picture is of a cave painting and was found on Wikipedia

3. Zoetrope strips are like earlier forms of a Dopesheet. Many pictures were drawn onto a thin strip of card and they consisted of every little change in movement of an animation and back to idle. When the strip was put into a Zoetrope and the Zoetrope was spun you could usually see 5 copies of the animation due to there being 5 holes on a standard Zoetrope. This GIF was taken off of Tumblr and it shows a spinning Zoetrope.

4. Disney realised that for the audience to understand what was going on, they would need to overdramatize the actions to make it obvious what was going on. This involved a character moving their arm far away from their body in Anticipation before swooping back to put their hand in their pocket instead of just sliding their hand into their pocket which was much less visible. This picture is from Wikipedia and it is of the Walt Disney Pictures logo

5. Disney animations were really unrealistic but the viewer could still relate to it. An example of this is when Mickey Mouse’s body is stretched massively by Steamboat Willie but then returns back to normal seconds later.

6. The image on the left shows Mickey Mouse stretching in alarm and then squashing dramatically because he thinks a ball is going to hit him. The image on the right shows squashing and stretching to jump up into the air off of a diving board. The picture on the right is from thishappyplaceblog.com and it shows Squash and Stretch

7. Originally, Animations were made by painting a character on a celluloid page and then putting the celluloid over the background. The image would be photographed, the background would be moved slightly and the next celluloid frame (which was slightly different) would be put on.

8. The person doing this would have hundreds of celluloid frames just for a short animation clip. They would only be different by a millimeter or so but when all of the pictures were combined together it would be a moving clip.

9. Because the background is a picture, if there was a scene that involved zooming in then the background would get bigger and that doesn’t happen in real life. To get around this Disney decided they needed a way for the foreground to move forwards but the background to remain the same size so it looked like a zoom in.

10. To do this they invented a system in which the setting would be split up into many different parts based upon their distance away from the camera. Each part would be painted onto a glass pane using oil paint. The panes could then be moved closer and further away from the camera as well as side to side.

11. This meant that they could move the house and the hills closer to the camera to make it look like they were getting nearer but the moon on the very back pane would stay in the same place. This caused the moon to look like it was getting closer but it wouldn’t expand in size.

12. The panes were aligned into a metal frame with the camera at the top pointing downwards. The furthest away frame was the one at the bottom and a photographer would tell the person in charge of aligning the panes if it was correct.

13. If the panes were correctly aligned the photographer would take the photo. The panes would then be moved ever so slightly to one side, closer or further away and another photo would be taken.

14. The ‘Multi-plane camera’ was used during the 1940 animation Bambi. It was used to make the background move at a quicker pace than the foreground which gave an astonishing look of perception that had never been seen before.

15. Pixar was originally “the Graphics Group” which was part of the Lucasfilm Computer Graphics Lab. Pixar were the people who decided that technology was as important as art when making an animation. Pixar produced the Pixar Image Computer which started being sold after Steve Jobs bought the company. This picture is from Wikipedia and it is of the Pixar logo

16. The Pixar Image Computer cost a massive amount of money but it could produce 3D images of an extremely high resolution. The machine processed imagery in 12 bits per colour channel and at the time it cost $135,000 and a $35,000 workstation was also required This picture is from Wikipedia and it is of the Pixar Image Computer

17. These two images are taken from an animation shown at the start of every Pixar film. The picture on the left shows squash as Luxo Jr. gets ready to jump and the picture on the right shows stretch as Luxo Jr. has reached full length after jumping and while ascending through the air

18. Nowadays, there’s software that is used to create Animation. An example of such technology is the program Unity. Unity has a program in it that interpolates between key frames added in by the animator. With this it does the same job as a tweener who would add the in-between frames to an animator’s key frames. This picture is from Unity’s website and it is the Unity Logo

19. The Graph/Curve editor in Unity can be used to change how an animation looks. By changing the points and the lines that connects them you can make a pendulum change from looking like it bounces off a wall to making the pendulum look like it runs out of energy and speed so falls back in the other direction.