A N I M A T I O N

ANIMATION refers to the creation of a sequence of images—drawn, painted, or produced by other artistic methods—that change over time to portray the illusion of motion. Before the invention of film, humans depicted motion in static art as far back as the Paleolithic period. In the 1st century, several devices successfully depicted motion in animated images.

Early drawings from ancient Egypt depicting a wrestling match. If you look closely, you can see that they tell a story, if you sped the images up, they would appear ‘animated’.

Animation is the process of creating motion and shape change illusions by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon. Animators are artists who specialize in the creation of animation.

Click or paste into your browser: Animation in early form was a series of drawings (each differing from the other just slightly, in order to create the ‘illusion’ of movement.) You can see the horse is ‘galloping’ when you put all of these together. Click on the link below or cut and paste into your browser.

Although animation was used on a crude level in ancient times and the years following, the first animated film short is credited to Walt Disney, who in 1928 produced a black and white short film called “Steamboat Willie”, which featured a little known mouse who later became the most famous mouse in the world, Mickey Mouse. They now use this in the introduction to their current animated films. Click on the link below or cut and paste into the browser.

Although Disney and other studios like Warner Brothers make animation look easy, it’s actually quite difficult and time consuming to draw the characters, put them into computers, make them ‘come alive’ and look 3Dimensional! All they start with is a sketch like the one below! Imagine that! See how they use very close sketches so if you ‘speed’ them up it will look animated like the ‘little person’ is running? That’s how animation works its’ magic on us!

There are many different types of animation as well including hand drawn, puppet animation, clay animation, cut-out, silhouette, model and computer animation. The Nightmare Before Christmas is an example of puppet animation – where puppets are created, posed in different styles and settings, and then brought to life through digital means.

Wallace and Gromit are examples of Clay Animation where a wire is put inside the ‘clay’ figures and put into different poses, eventually creating a ‘cartoon’ movement effect.

THE FIRST ANIMATED FEATURE FILM Many consider Walt Disney's 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs the first animated feature film, though at least seven films were released earlier. However, Disney's film was the first one completely made using hand-drawn animation. The previous seven films, of which only four survive, were made using cutout, silhouette or stop motion, except for one—also made by Disney seven months prior to Snow White’s release.

One of the most beloved and great examples of animation was released in 1940, entitled “Fantasia”, which was made entirely animated without speech, and simply set to classical music.

With Snow White’s success, Disney’s name became synonymous with animation, and the studio went on to make over 54 animated feature films including everything spanning from Snow White in 1937 to its most recent film, Big Hero 6. Beginning with Toy Story in 1995, The Walt Disney Studios also released animated films by Pixar Animation Studios, which became a wholly owned subsidiary of Disney’s in 2006.

Many more animated films followed, each becoming more realistic with more detail than the previous.

Many of you have probably seen these animated films. I’m sure everyone has a favorite. What is yours?

More Animated Films

Warner Brothers created “Looney Tunes” and preferred to stay in “short films” or “cartoons” – you may recognize many of these characters from childhood- and your parents and grandparents too!

Despicable me was from Universal Pictures, another success. Who doesn’t like the minions, right?

Most animated features made today rely on computer animation, which encompasses a variety of techniques, the unifying factor being that the animation is created digitally on a computer. 2D animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation while 3D techniques usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact. 3D animation can create images that seem real to the viewer. The most recent example of this would be the animated film “Frozen” and “Big Hero 6”

One of the most recent animated advancements was the building and creation of Elsa’s ice palace in “Frozen”, and while many of you have seen and heard this, please watch one more time and look at the details within the palace and the animation and see how long it took to do these things! Frozen took at least two years to create, commission, develop to bring it to its final format. A number of animators, actors, voice overs and digital artists make up the film. Although it looks easy, it’s a lot of hard work! It paid off as the highest grossing animated film of all time and won numerous awards. Flvxnbgk

Hope you had fun learning about animation!

Would you want to be an animator? Time for activities and discussion!