Animate weekly

Exlusive on
Edward
Muybridge
And Ardman
animation
3

Introduction
Animation is a key part to all elements of media
today from cinema to channel indents, and as
we move on it becomes an ever growing
industry in the UK alone there is 4600 people
working in animation. People are always
improving methods to make it look as sharp as
possible and the more they do the more people
watch the production, as they are becoming less
for children and can now fit a lot of genres.

Types of animation
There are many different types of animation some
very old fashioned and not used today and some still
very useful if not a bit time consuming.
Persistence of vision is a theory, in basic it says that
when we see normally we see everything that
happens but at the same time seeing small amounts
of the past very briefly the brain usually can keep an
image in your head for a 15th of a second, for
example if you wave a pen or pencil from either end in
front of your eyes, you can see lots of faded images
and it makes it look like the pencil is bending. Another
common example of this is when you blink your eyes
every does not go completely dark does it? Many
pioneers used this technique to do their versions of
the moving image like Joseph Plateau Phenakistoscope
this was spun around fast on a disk and the eye would
focus on one image and the one before as well. It was
a perfect first step in animation it showed people what
could be done and how putting picture in a certain
order can make a transformation and make a moving

picture, this was picked up by alot of people trying to

make it easyer and more fluid.
Stop frame animation in my opinion gives the coolest
look it makes everything seem unreal and it is very
impressive as it can take years and years to make a
full length film, however it is now done a lot more
through computers and CJI programs for example
shows like family guy and Simpsons used to be drawn.
Stop frame animation is where you are moving an
object and every time you move it a picture is taken of
it this makes it seem like the inanimate object is
moving. The more photos you take the smoother the
film as you can move the object really small amounts
each time. However this style of animation will soon
be abandond as the use of computers has become alot
more ad- vanced, and frame rates can be acheved alot
quicker and alot more presiceley.

Pioneers
There were many pioneers
of animation as back then when film was not possible all they had
were drawings and to make them seem like thy were moving they
came up with all sorts of contraptions, like the Praxinoscope witch
was invented in France 1877 by Charles-Emile Reynaud and was a
hoop with images on the inside each one slightly different and when
spun fast you could look trough the slots it gave the impression of
movement, this worked because of persistence of vision (see page
1).
One pioneer that really sticks out for me is Edward Muybridge,
he used his cunning in photography to prove a bet. Muybridge had
bet a friend that there is a point in a horses run that makes it totally
air born this was too fast for the eye to see, so what he did was set
up 12 cameras in a row and when the horse ran past the cameras it
hit a trigger which set of all the cameras one at a time, the result
was incredible. this was a milestone because it showed people that
you can take a succsession of photoes and it almost becomes a film
just have to put them together somehow, you have to start
somwere right?

Another important person in the days of old is Thomas Edison with

his contribution the Kinetoscope this was a basic to how we see not
just animation but all cinema today, it was a 1 man personal theatre
were you would
look through a
peephole at the
top down to the
film below, the
films were very
basic
but it showed people the true potential of the moving image

Developers

These people are the people who really stepped up the game and
made animation what it is today with all the techniques and tricks
they discovered are the ones we use now. This lady did very well
using her type of animation silhouette animation she made over 40
films one of her most famous ones was the magic flute with music
played by Mozart. She was born in berlin and even as a young girl
she loved puppetry especially silhouetted puppetry, and this parked
an interest in cinema to and after attending a lecture about cinema
and animation she joined classes and groups that all come together
to help grow in to such a star.
This next man Willis OBrien went through many jobs from cowboy
to professional boxer from a guide at a palaeontologists place where
he gained an interest to a newspaper illustra- tor, so he has really
been through it all and then in 1915 he created his first film on a 5
000 budget. It obviously went well because our friend Thomas
Edison picked up on it and hired him and his crew for a series of
short films about prehistoric times and using his dinosaur knowledge
and artsy skills became a film maker and animator. He was the man
who changed how we make our animation models he starded to
make them more realistic a good example of this is how he put a
baloon in king kons chest and inflated and deflated it between
photos to simulate breathing.

Contemporary
Ardman animations is
the company that makes the animation you loved so much as a
child, like Wallace and grommet and chicken run the company was
founderd in 1972 as a small project by Peter Loyed and David

Spraxton. They started off with a dream off making a full length
animation film, the first major job they got was a couple of shorts for
the BBC, it was show for deaf children called vision on. They make
most of their animations for children well the ones that do really well
usually are aimed at kids you can see this by the type of characters
the use fun friendly usually animals. They are a good example of a
company that has adapted throught the times they used to do
puppetry, and then they used plastercine like in the chicken run and
wallice and grommit and now recently thay have started to use CJI
and computers to create shorts. They really go all out on their
characters and have hundreds of different sets of hair for when they
are moving fast of on a windy day, eyes for looking in different
places and for facial expressions and so the can get the best
possible lip syncing the have lots and lots of mouths. This is what
really makes the characters and personifies them making it so we
can relate to them.

On a slightly different note, The

Brothers Quay the only thing
them and Ardman have in
common in anima- tion the genre, audience and themes are polar
opposites, thats not to say they are not skilled at what they do.
They have been all over the world studying like Philadelphia and the
Netherlands but in 1969 they settled in England were they now live
and work. There animations are a lot
darker in there animations and have an
older following of people who are more in
to the art of animation rather than the
story line and pretty colours. As you can
see from the picture it could be quite scary
for a young child. They have big studios in
England were they make there box sets
that are made depending on the size of
their characters I have noticed they keep it
all to scale, but if they dont it is on
purpose for effect. Like ardman animation they do make some of
their own puppuets they make them of out already exixting
childrens toys or just bits and bobs they find at markets and piece
them together the fact that they are very mish mash and all second
hand makes the models feel very sinister. They make there
animation very smooth and some of the movement are quite slow
this and to the strange vibes that the animation give of.

What els?

So how else is animation used? Well if you have ever watched E4

you might recognise this scene (see picture) this is what known as a
channel indent, it is something usually something that the audience
might not have seen before, and they did not go and get a Jedi and
get him to use the force to float around some hay bales to get there
perfect shot, no they made it all on the computer. Channels usually
make a lot if not most of their money through adverts and they
dont want to spend to much money on their advert and animation
is a cheaper alternative to this. We also use it for lots of adverts just
a unique fun technique to keep the viewers interested a great
example of this is the new john Lewis advert were it shows of a lot of
their product by turning a hole house inside out this is good way to
show your wide range of product in a
fun and interesting way. You might
also have seen some music videos
that use animation, like the Coldplay
song strawberry swing it shows a
person doing all sorts of thing on
drawn furniture of the floor and he
lies on the floor pretending to walk
as the set moves and pretending to
sit, but on set he just looks like he is
in the fetal position on the floor. It allows them to jump as high as
he wants and fly even, do things that are usually impossible to do.
It also looks quite funny.