Animation Unit Alternate Animation Processes

Silhouette Animation Cel animation is the most familiar type of animation, but a good animator can bring clay models, sand, paper, puppets, or pins to life. Silhouette Animation: Shapes or figures are cut out and photographed against a backlight

Silhouette Animation Short Film by Janne Marete Grødum:

Cutout/Collage Animation Cutout animation: uses models or puppets that have been cut from drawing paper or craft paper. The pieces are arranged loosely, or connected by fasteners and then arranged. Each pose or move is captured, then the model repositioned, and shot again. Collage animation: uses basically the same process as cutout animation, except the pieces that are animated are cut from photos, magazines, books or clipart. Using collage can bring a variety of textures to the same frame.

Cutout/Collage Animation Miracle of Flight- collage

Stop Motion A more three-dimensional effect can be achieved by using stop-motion photography to animate movable figures made of clay, wood, or other materials. Stop motion: Stop-motion animation (or stop-action) is the process of photographing a model, moving it a miniscule amount, then photographing it again. Finally, you string the photographs together and the tiny movements appear to be action. This form of animation is the simplest to use and is great for beginners. This technique simple, because the concept is easy to understand and execute, but that doesn’t mean stop-motion is not time-consuming or cannot be sophisticated. Films like Corpse Bride by Tim Burton show that stop-motion isn’t a genre, but a medium that allows artists to create whatever they imagine. Each character in this film has several versions of bodies and heads in order to capture the most human movements and expressions.

Stop Motion Animation Western Spaghetti:

Time Lapse Time-lapse photography: a camera is set to snap one frame at regular intervals; compresses time; looks like jagged video. Basically, time-lapse photography is shooting a bunch of photos of the same thing, spread out over a period of time, and putting them together into one video that plays back in a shorter amount of time. Time-lapse lets you see the natural progression of time, while not having to wait through the actual length of it.

Time Lapse Photography Leaning Tower of Pisa: Dandelion:

Pixilation Pixilation: a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet. This technique is often used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones.

Pixilation “Her Morning Elegance” by Oren Lavie: Lost Things: =PLeb1dw3SJP3L4wJgLZkYQXXPFKUMKGh1S =PLeb1dw3SJP3L4wJgLZkYQXXPFKUMKGh1S

Claymation Wallace & Gromit : Curse of the Were-Rabbit [[[Behind the Scenes]]]

Storyboarding No matter what the material, each step of an animated film is worked out beforehand on storyboards, using sketches, small drawings, and captions. Since every second of a typical animated film involves 12 to 24 changes (more than 50,000 visuals for a 70-minute film), it is too expensive and time-consuming to complete an entire animation sequence and then scrap it. Even if the animator is not telling a story but has an abstract design in mind, he or she plans in detail the progression of images and how they can be combined to achieve the desired effect. The storyboard is an indispensable tool for the animator and is revised often. Comic strips, with their captions, close-ups, long shots, and other storytelling techniques, are similar to storyboards.

CGI CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is also used for 2D and stop- motion animation. But it’s 3D CGI animation that has become a popular form of animation. Beginning with Pixar’s Toy Story, 3D CGI animation has raised the bar for the images we see on screen. 3D CGI animation is used not only for entire films or TV series, but also for spot special effects. When filmmakers used models or stop-motion in the past, they now can use 3D CGI animation, such as in the first three Star Wars films and Spider-man movies.

Good 3D CGI animation requires specific software programs. These programs used to be available only to studios with lots of money, but with the advance of technology, now someone can create 3D CGI animation at home. In addition to software programs, you need to employ detailed modeling techniques, shaders and textures to create a realistic look, and build backgrounds and props. Just as much time and work is required in making 3D CGI animation as in 2D cel animation, because the more you build detail into your characters, backgrounds and props, the more believable your animation will be. Using computer generated imagery (CGI), an animator can reproduce the three-dimensional effects of stop-motion photography or the two dimensional effects of hand-drawn animation.

Instead of ink and paper, computer animators use a monitor, computer tools, and software that includes complex mathematical formulas. Rather than sketching out characters and objects like traditional animators, computer animators build a three-dimensional “model” that can be viewed from different angles. CGI can imitate camera moves and angles that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with traditional cel animation: the swoop from the chandelier to the dancing couple in the ballroom scene of Beauty and the Beast, for example. Because of its ability to mimic reality, CGI is also used to produce special effects in live-action films. CGI can create digital tears or blood, embellish backgrounds and sets, make a small crowd seem large, or touch up the actors’ wrinkles and flaws.

The 1982 film Tron, which combined live action with animation, was the first film to use CGI on a large scale. When the Academy instituted the Best Animated Feature Film award in 2001, the first Oscar went to the CGI-animated film Shrek. Early computer graphics looked unappealingly flat, but recent improvements in technology make it possible to create more realistic surfaces. Having the use of a computer does not necessarily mean less work for the animator.

CGI Then and Now Tron (1982): Tron ( 2013):

It took four years to complete Toy Story, the first completely CGI-animated feature; coincidentally, it took the same amount of time for the Disney studio to finish Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. CGI may never completely replace traditional animation, because some animators still prefer the latter’s personal touch and slight irregularities. For others, using CGI can be compared to using a word processor instead of a typewriter for writing, in that the new tool allows the animator to manipulate ideas and images with greater freedom.

CGI and stop-motion animated films are sometimes also referred to as 3D films because those techniques create a more lifelike illusion of three-dimensional characters and backgrounds. Many animated features are now stereoscopic films – films with 3D effects. Through the use of digital equipment, specially designed movie screens and polarized lenses, viewers are fooled into experiencing a movie as a three- dimensional space rather than as images on a flat screen.

Brain Divided: