UNDERSTAND THE TECHNIQUES

AND DEVELOPMENT OF 2D Erin Hopwood

ANIMATION
TRADITIONAL 2D ANIMATION
 FLICK BOOKS
Flip books or also known as flick books are ways to showing an
animation when you flick the pages. They are presented usually in small
books, and the animations are featured at the bottom right of the page.
This is to give the illusion that if you flick the pages very quickly the
animation appears to move. They dont always feature a special sketch
like Mickey Mouse but can be interesting. They can be aimed at children
in story books which make it more fun to read, but can also be in smaller
more intellectual forms for adults and are presented as small images.
They can be used in magazines or books, and dont always have to be
separate. They can have some pages featured in a book for children
mainly to create a 3d moving effect.
 CELL ANIMATION
Hand drawn animation is when animations are self drawn by an artist. These animations are
drawn slide by slide separately to create the effect of an animation. They are rarely used
anymore but were particularly special before technology was at the standard it is now. They
were used to create cinematic films mainly, and always started off as a storyboard to plan out
how it would look. It is similar to a giant comic strip and mainly consisted of drawn images, with
some text. When all the planning is done and the animation is approved all the data is sent off
to the design departments. They plan out what characters play what role and what they look
like. They will then sketch images of those from every angle and with those assigned colours,
so the animations will be the same. The background stylers will also plan the way the
background will be designed and ensure they are the same too. The last step is when the
artists begin to draw the animations on each frame with the help of a peg bar. This is a tool
that is used to keep the drawings in place. They have pin holes which match the peg size. This
will hold the pages in the same place and then through transparent paper can be made much
easier to draw the animation. Many old animations used hand drawn techniques and a
particular very popular one is Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse is now a high definition animation
shown on Disney channel to children, but was once a sketch animation and that is how it all
begun. They also used these techniques and that is how the characters would look the same
for each sketch.
ROTOSCOPING
Rotoscoping is an animation technique that
animators use when they need to copy motion
pictures. It is the use in which video is recorded
within an animation. It is an animation, within an
animation. As an example, a cartoon could
feature a television with another cartoon on the
background. rotoscoping is the rotated projection
of a sequence of image frames so that the artist
can copy them from the frame or create an image
to superimpose on it.
DRAWN ON FILM
Drawn on film animation is a form of animation where
producers do not use a camera. A drawn on film is a type
of animation that is used without a camera. The artists
produce animations by purely placing the images on film
stock. Drawn-on-film animation imposes the animated
image directly on the individual frames of a reel of film.
Artists can create drawn on animations by either starting
with a blank (undeveloped) or black (developed) film in
large or small sizes, all depending on what animation they
are going to create.
DIGITAL TECHNIQUES FOR 2D
ANIMATION
 2D BITMAP GRAPHICS
Raster animation is again another form of animation.
Raster or in other words pixels, is thousands of tiny
pixels made up to create an image and so this is how
these animations are created. Millions of pixels are
placed together in all different colours to create a
certain image but can be a problem if the animation is
being viewed at a larger screen than the file size. This
would mean the animation would blur and it would not
be as clear. The colour palette also has to be large to
contain all of the colours required to make the
animation you want to. If not, the animation will
consist of basic colours that are sharp and un blended.
 2D VECTOR GRAPHICS
Vector graphics are digital images created with a sequence of commands that place
shapes and lines in a two or three dimensional space. They are known to be more
flexible than Raster Images as they can be made bigger, smaller and be stretched out
easily. An advantage of vector images is that vector graphics often require less memory
than raster images do. They also appear the same and of the same quality on devices
like printers, computers and monitors whereas raster may be presented less clear. The
software people use with Vector Images are usually Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw and
macromedia freehand along with many other programs. The formats Vector Images take
are .EPS which stands for Encapsulated Post Script is a format used in Adobe Illustrator.
This format can contain text as well as a graphic image and usually also contains a
raster image version for a simper view. .FLA is another file format which you use on the
program Flash. This is used to add animation to your web pages as well as video and
interactivity. These are file images that are compressed and can be viewed on the web
with Flash. Vector images, as well as having advantages also has its disadvantages such
as vector images are displayed as images that do not look realistic and maybe more of
an animation. An advantage of them which Raster do not have is that you can resize the
image as much as you want and they wont lose any quality. They are created by curves,
points and lines that are connected. They can even be in the form of polygons. The
vector images stay the same when being moved, cropped or resized. If the image is
resized this is called file extensions and the image will remain the same with no data
lost. This also means it is a lot easier to change the shape of an image unlike Raster. A
main image is made up of many small individual lines but have lines that are line
segments which come between two anchor points. Below are some examples of images
before and after they become a Vector Image and as you can see they do not appear a
realistic photograph.
 FLASH
This software that is owned by Adobe was created for the production of
graphics, games and animations. It was first brought out in 1996 and was
named Future Splash then changed to Macromedia Flash. In 2005, Adobe
took over Macromedia and so it then became Adobe Flash. On this
software, you can create almost anything and so therefore, I will be using
this to create my stop motion animation. I have experience in this
software as I used it to create my clay stop motion. When many internet
applications want to play a video or download media they use Adobe
Flash Player but now technology improving not all use the software now.
 PHOTOSHOP
Photoshop is a software that was brought out in the year 1988 and is a
program to edit images and text. The images it allows you to edit is
raster and is used for creating logos and graphics for windows and MACs.
I will need Photoshop for my animation as I need to create all my
graphics on it. I can then export it and insert to Director. It will be the
same format as using Flash and Sound booth as they are both owned by
Adobe. Instead of using another program, I chose this as I can create
high quality images on it rather than on Paint.
PIONEERS
 JOSEPH PLATEAU
Joseph Plateau (Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau) was a physicist from
Belgium. He was born on the 14th October 1801 in Brussels and died the 15 th
September 1883 in Ghent aged 81. He was one of the first people to ever
present the illusion of stop motion which is a lot of images put together to give
the moving effect. The way Joseph did this was by drawing the same image
over and over then just changing each one slightly. He then spaced slits in
each image and displayed them in small increments of motion on a rotating
disk. His invention was made in 1832 and he called it the phenakistoscope.
When he first thought of the idea that was 1829 when he presented it to
Adolphe Quetelet. The idea consisted of two disks one on top of the other with
the top one having a small equidistant radical window to display the images
through it on the second disk when it is spun. Joseph was a very bright man
and could read by the age of 6 being taught by his father which he then sadly
lost along with his mother very young. The result led to him becoming poorly
himself. When he was 40 years old he married Augustine Clavareau. They then
went on to having two children- a son in 1841 just a year after they married
and then a daughter named Alice.
 WILLIAM HORNER
William Horner the inventor of the Zoetrope was born in 1786 on June
9th and died in 1837 on 22nd September. He started off as a
schoolmaster then became a headmaster and school keeper whilst also
being a mathematician. William was educated at Kingswood School
Bristol. At the unbelievable age of 14 he became an assistant master
at Kingswood school in 1800 and headmaster four years later. He left
Bristol and then went and founded his own school in 1809 called The
Seminary at 27 Grosvenor Place in Bath. In 1834 he invented the
Zoetrope, a device that allows viewers to see an illusion
ofactionfromarapidsuccession. It was basically a improvement on
the phenkitascope. It then lead to the praxinoscope being created and
also lead to animation being viewed simpler which is where it comes
from in the present day. The animations werent of a high quality as it
is today due to the equipment only just been invented but since it was
such a good idea and proved it could make animations the idea was
developed and this is where producers get their idea from.
 EMILIE REYNAUD
Charles was born in Montreuil, France on 8 th December 1844 and died in Ivry-sur-
Seine, France on 9th January 1918. He became a professor of physics and natural
sciences, and taught the subject from the year 1873 for 4 years. During this time
he came up with the idea of the "praxinoscope" and invented it. This is an
instrument that creates an optical illusion to viewers. He returned to Paris with the
invention, where it became a success. He drew all of his cartoons onto film paper,
which he then projected to audiences on large screens like a movie. The first
display was shown for the first time on 28th of October, 1892. He then created the
Theatre Optique which was a moving picture show played on the Praxinoscope he
had made. The entire show consisted of 500-600 images he individually painted
placed together on a slide show lasting of around 15 minutes. It had a similar idea
to the Zoetrope as the images were placed in a cylinder than spun around to give
the illusion of a moving animation. For people to view the illusion it had small slits
around the cylinder for you to look through whilst it turned. It was of a higher
quality than the Zoe Trope and produced a less distorted picture.
 EDWARD MUYBRIDGE
Edward James Muggeridge was born on April 9, 1830 in England.
When he was 20 years old, he moved to America, first to New York,
and then, in 1855, to San Francisco, where he became a successful
bookseller. At the similar time he also changed his surname to
Muybridge, which he believed to be its original construction. Whilst
he was a bookseller over in America he discovered photography in
which he became interested in. He then went back to San Francisco
to take up photography full time. He studied at the University of
Pennsylvania in Philadelphia where he qualified as a photographer.
The images he produced were of animals and humans moving to give
the illusion of a moving image. He did some travelling in order to
promote his work by visiting England and Europe and spent time
giving talks on how he did his work. Other famous artists took
inspiration from his work and is another reason why photography
became so big. In 1904 the Kingston Museum was opened showing
his equipment to the public.
 EDISON
Thomas Edison was born on February 11 1847 and died October 18 1931.
Thomas was an inventor in America and brought out many famous things
such as the electric lightbulb, motion picture camera and photographs.
Thomas was born in Milan, Ohio but then moved to Port Huron, Michigan
where he grew up. He had 6 other siblings and was the youngest of the 7,
his parents Samuel Ogden and Nancy Matthews. Unfortunately, in early
life Edison had hearing problems due to Scarlett Fever which affected his
education. The first camera that he created was the Kinetograph and he
did the electromechanical design whilst his employee W.K.L Dickinson
worked on the photography. Once the device was made and became
famous it was installed into arcades where people could pay to watch
short motion pictures. He didnt just invent images but also light bulbs,
batteries in electric cars and other major things we use in everyday life
today. He started off working as a telegraph operator but moved onto
inventing these great things that we couldnt be without today.
 LUMIERE BROTHERS
The Lumiere brothers were two men who were the first ever
filmmakers in history. Auguste Marie Louis Nicolas was born on the
19th October 1862 in Besancon, France and died on the 10 th April
1954 in Lyon. Louis Jean was born on the 5th October 1864 in
Besancon, France and died on the 6th June 1948. Their parents
moved to their home town before they had be born and set up a
small photographic studio in which they took ideas from. In 1870
the family moved to Lyon and the brothers attended La Martiniere
which was a technical school. The factory their parents had
produced photo plates but unfortunately it was un successful until
the brothers returned and took over. They invented machinery to
upgrade the quality of their fathers plate production. The idea was
successful and in 1884 the factory hired dozens of staff. When
they produced these photographic illusions it became movies
where cinemas came from. The idea has stuck throughout history
and now cinemas are all over the world.
DEVELOPERS
 WALT DISNEY
Walt Disney was born December 5th 1901 and died December 15 th
1966. Walt was an animator, film producer and founder of the
famous Disney. He was born in Chicago and founded Disney in his
early 20s after moving to California. Walt won 22 Oscars and
received 59 nominations and several honours. He created the first
hand drawn animation which was Mickey Mouse playing on Disney.
When the company became more well known they discovered more
sketches using colour and audio. The famous films that are known
worldwide are ones such as Snow white and the seven dwarfs,
Dumbo, Bambi and Cinderella. The films Disney featured were
mainly for children and all were animated and magical, one of the
reasons Disney grew so big. Eventually, Disney expanded to the
amusement park industry having its own Disney World which was
first made in Florida and then followed by Paris. Now, Walt Disney's
legacy lives on with films still being produced in his honour.
HANNAH BARBERA
Hanna-Barbera Productions is an American
show that was an American company that
created TV shows for almost 30 years. The
company was founded in 1957 by the
creators called Metro Mayer, William
Hanna, Joseph Barbera who also invented
Tom and Jerry. In the year 1966 the
company sold to Taft Broadcasting and
spent the future 20 years as the subsidiary.
It is considered the very first animation
studio to successfully produce cartoons
made exclusively for television.
WARNER BROS
The company was made from four Warner brothers Harry, Albert,
Sam, and Jack. They moved as children with their parents to Canada
from Poland where they then grew up. The youngest son was born in
London, Ontario after moving. It was the first three brothers that
started to take interest in the movie theatre industry. Their first
theatre was opened in 1903 called the Cascade, Pennsylvania.
When it got to the first world war, they started to create films and
their first studio was on Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood.
 NORMAN MCLAREN
Norman Mclaren who was born on the 11th April 1914
was a Scottish/Canadian animator. He passed away on
the 27th January 1987. He was known for his popular
work for the National Film Board of Canada and also
worked in a variety of areas when it came to
filmmaking. He created Hand drawn animations,
Visual music, abstract film and graphical sound. He
was born in Scotland and studied at the school of Art
in Glasgow. When he first started to create animations
he had no access to a camera and so created hand
drawn ones, the beginning of his professional career.
He firstly made Seven Till Five in 1933.
 LEN LYE
Leonard Charles also known for Len Lye was born on the 5th
July 1901 and sadly passed away on the 15th May 1980. He
was born and raised in New Zealand and became known for
his artistic features and experimental films. You can find Lens
work in archives all over America. Places they can be found
are in the museum of New York, University of California,
Berkeley, Chicago and so on. He also made sculptures which
again are out on display for you to visit in the Whitney
Museum of Art, Albright-Knox Art gallery or the art gallery in
Plymouth.
CONTEMPORARY WORK
MONTY PYTHON
Monty Python is a famous sitcom made in Britain. They first aired in
1969 and featured comedy shows on the telly. Their shows were
played on BBC and became really big in the television industry,
even creating a film. Overall, 4 series were made with 45 episodes
recorded between them. They then made a comedy sketch called
Flying Circus which again was aired on BBC. This was brought out in
1969 and went on until 1974. The creator Terry Gilliam, is an British
animator and directed Monty Python creating animations within the
show. Although the show features real people, it has animated
scenes in it to make the show more entertaining. Their intros were
creative and different for each episode and cleverly planned out, to
attract the viewers. Here you can see images of the animated
intros on Monty Python.
YELLOW SUBMARINE
Yellow Submarine is a British film made in 1968 that was a fantasy
music animated sketch with inspiration from the beetles. The film is
an animated musical fantasy comedy and was directed by George
Dunning. Originally, the film was going to feature the voices of the
Beetles themselves but due to circumstances, the Beetles just
record the last song. Their voices were recorded by other actors.
The beetles characters in the film were designed in relation to their
personalities and look in order to be clear who they are. American
animators were hired for this film so it could be a high quality and
entertaining animation. Some ideas for this film were taken from
Pop Art and from the artist Peter Max but the animation was
designed by Heinz Edelmann.
A SCANNER DARKLY
A scanner darkly is a film that was created in 2006
and is a thriller made in America. The director was
Richard Linklater who also produced the novel. The
film was filmed digitally and then used the rotoscope
technique to animate. The film was distributed by
Warner Independent Pictures and won the Hugo
award for best Dramatic presentation. The film has a
big plot with a twist in it, starting as the United States
have lost a war on drugs. After the film was shot using
digital technology, it was then converted to
QuickTime and produced over 18 months into
animation. It was took using Panasonic AG-DVX100
and as I mentioned before, RotoScope was used for
the conversion. They got the idea of this when they
saw it was used in the film Waking Life by LinkLater.
PERSEPOLIS
Persepolis is an animated French film made in 2007. It is an
animated film based on a novel created by Marjane Satrapi. In
2007, the film was released on the 27 June in not only France but
also Belgium. The film was high rated and also nominated for the
Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, unfortunately it lost to
the film Ratatouille. The film is recorded in a black and white look
to reflect the genre and age it was set. Satrapi also says it was so
that the characters didnt look foreign or in a foreign country, but to
show how any place can become like Iran. Directed by Christian
Desmares, the film was produced by twenty animators.
GENRES AND FORMS
 CINEMA
Many films you see in the cinemas now are animated or have an
element of it within. The reason for this is that animation has become so
widely popular and known across the world that films seem to sell
better and become more appealing to audiences if they have some kind
of animation in them. You usually see children's films animated by
Disney, DreamWorks, Pixar etc. And are a huge success. Not all
animated films though are for children and some can even be horror
movies or even needing some form of animation within it to create a
scary part in a film. Recent films such as the Jungle Book which was
released in 2016 all over was widely popular by both childrens and
adults as it copied the famous cartoon films and books out over the
years. It wasnt all animated just the animals as the boy and the wild
were all real. They used technology and computer software to create
the animals, which looked extremely real and even seemed difficult to
tell. The public went mad on the CGI quality of the film as it was so good
with actors doingvoice overs on the animals also.
 ADVERTISING
When advertising whether it be on the television, online or
in magazines etc. Companies want to find the best way to
do so that would attract the most audience. As I have
mentioned before, animations are so popular now that
most things have some kind of animation in it. Advertising
with animations can be helpful in promoting a product as
you can create anything you want even if it isn't
something you can do in real life. It also makes the
company look like they made a lot of effort in creating the
ads and looks more appealing. YouTube as an example
have ads that play before music videos, and as a user I
know if I see an animated ad that stands out to me by the
use of art of color, I feel more intrigued to look into what it
is they are trying to sell.
 CHILDREN'S TELEVISION
Children's television are aimed at entertaining children
by creating shows for them to watch. There are many
channels in which advertise and play kids programs
such as CBBC, CITV, Cbeebies and some of ITV. The
first channels I mentioned, are solely dedicated to
children's programs having ones to suit all ages. As
adults and children enjoy different things and
obviously some shows are unsuitable for children,
these are designed to keep them entertained also
playing at suitable times for them. Most children's
shows are animated, mainly because they are more
interesting and easier to entertain children. Now
technology has improved, a lot if not all programs have
some form of animation in it especially childrens
shows. I think it is important shows are animated as it
leaves children to their imagination.
 MUSIC VIDEOS
Music videos are always popular in animations as it makes
viewers more interested in looking at it rather than just
listening to the song. When you look at older songs they
mainly dont feature animations but it is becoming more
known to be in music videos. Songs that come from films such
as Disney's Tangled have a music video using clips from the
film which is all animated and some are just created with
animations for effect. A new song that has been released
'Shape of you' by Ed Sheeran has all of the lyrics on screen
with animation in the background of trees, shapes, animals
etc. Which is different to your usual music video. This can
make more people want to view the video especially if it is
playing on your television screen as it appears more
appealing.
 COMPUTER GAMES
Every computer game ever created has used animation as in
most games you control a character and so would need to be
animated in order to do so. Over the years, the quality of
computer games have dramatically increased as more
technology has been discovered and in doing so, consoles
have been invented such as the PlayStation and Xbox. These
are widely used by people around 12 and above having
millions of games available to play. The idea of being able to
create your own world and design your own game is
interesting and appealing to players especially in the game
The Sims. This game is a simulation game with animated
characters that portray a real life situation and you control
their life like it is yours. I think the idea of computer games are
very successful as more and more are brought out every year,
with some games creating sequels due to its successes.
 MOBILE PHONES
Mobile phones were originally big devices in which you could
only call and text one another from.Over the years, it started to
have small games on it in which you could play such as Snake a
basic animated game available for mobile phone users. As this
was evidently successful and Apple brought out the I Phone's
games then became an option for users to play. It got an app
store where you can download any game you like free or not
from this.This definitely sent the phones up in the market as
now a days you can do almost anything on them and to young
people, games are entertaining therefore they will want to be
able to play them on something they use a lot.
 WEBSITES
Websites are used to advertise products such as clothes, furniture, music
etc. And so depending on what they are for it may include animation. You
may find animated clips on websites in the background for added effect
or if it relates to what the site is for. A website selling music for albums
may have the music videos on there which may be animated and also
game websites which have animated games on them. A popular game
site I used as a child named GirlGoGames.com has all animated games
on there in which you can play. Animations are used in most websites
now, with images and video clips being animated to look more appealing
and intruiging.