Unit 33 Stop Motion Animation Task 1

Animation Timeline

Animation is 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. Historically there are three types

of animation: Hand Drawn, Stop Motion and Computer Generated Imagery.

Hand Drawn Animation

The Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age – 10,000-28,000 BCCave paintings of animals were drawn onto the walls of caves across Europe (especially southern

France and northern Spain). The artists used techniques such as using charcoal and ochre or

haematite to give the impression of different light contrasts on the images in order to create the

illusion of volume. They often diluted these pigments to produce variations in thickness to the

drawings. Later drawings contained abstract signs and human figures. They also used the natural

contours in the cave walls and etching around the outlines to give their drawings a three-

dimensional effect. They also used fires as the flickering shadows gave the illusion that the

drawings were moving. These would have been very time consuming to complete.

Kaleidoscope - 1817 

This was invented by Sir David Brewster and means to look to beauty in Ancient Greek. It

consisted of a cylinder tube using two mirrors to reflect multiple images of coloured glass pieces

such as beads or bits of glass. As the viewer looks into one end of the tube, light entering the other

end creates a colourful pattern, due to repeated reflection in the mirrors. Brewster chose

renowned achromatic lens developer Philip Carpenter as one of many manufacturers of the

kaleidoscope. It was a massive success with two hundred thousand kaleidoscopes sold in London

and Paris in just three months which proved to be one of the most popular optical toys ever

created.

Thaumotrope – 1824This is pronounced taw-mo-trope and means magic turn. It was invented to test the persistence of

vision, as the perception of an image that the eyes see and brain retains for a small fraction of a

second after the view is blocked or the object is removed. The brain can only process twelve or

fewer images per second to recognise them as separate images. If the images appear any faster,

they begin to merge with one another creating the illusion of movement. Television and movies are

created at twenty four to thirty images per second. The invention of the device is often credited

to Sir John Herschel, but John Ayrton Paris popularised it in 1824 when he demonstrated it to the

Royal College of Physicians. Paris published ‘Philosophy in Sport made science in earnest’ in

1827 and Peter Mark Roget published ‘Persistence of Vision with Regard to Moving Objects’ that

presented the idea that a succession of still images could create the appearance of motion. Paris

believed that scientific learning in children could be stimulated through a combination of enjoyment

and instruction using toys such as the Thaumotrope.

Thaumotrope is a very simple animation in which you have a small disc with different drawings on

each side and is attached by two pieces of string, on the left and right side. When the string is

twirled quickly between your fingers, the disc flips. This causes you to see both sides of the picture

at once, to give the illusion of one picture due to persistence of vision. One of the examples below

is a picture of a bird on one side and a cage on the other side of the disc. When the disc is spun, it

looks like the bird is in the cage.

Phenakistoscope – 1831This was an early animation device. It was invented in 1831 by Joseph Plateau and Simon von

Stampfer. It consists of a paper disk featuring evenly spaced, thin radial slots and a series of

sequential images. When the disc is rotated in front of a mirror, the images merge together

showing continuous movement e.g. horses running. It can only be viewed by one person at a time

and was famous for only two years due to the constant growing technology. It was replaced by the

Zoetrope which was similar to the Phenakistoscope but it had a cylinder instead of a spinning disc.

Zoetrope – 1834

A zoetrope is a pre-film animation device that produces the illusion of motion by showing a

sequence of drawings displaying progressive phases of motion. The name Zoetrope originates

from the Greek words Zoe “life” and tropos “turning”.

The zoetrope was created in 1834 by British mathematician, William George Horner, who was

aware of the recently invented phenakistoscope disc.

Horner’s revolving drum had the viewing slits between the pictures and called it the “daedaleum”

which was a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus. The daedaleum failed to become popular

until the 1860s, when a variant with the viewing slits on a level above the pictures, was patented

by both English and American makers. The American inventor named his version the “Zoetrope”.

The zoetrope is made up of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of

the cylinder there is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins,

the user looks through the slits on the sides at the pictures across from it. The spacing of the slits

keeps the pictures from blurring together and the user sees a rapid series of pictures, producing

the illusion of motion. This invention works because of the persistence of vision and the phi

phenomenon.

The phi phenomenon is the optical illusion of perceiving a series of still images as a continuous

motion, when viewed in a rapid succession. Persistence of vision is the theory where an

afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one sixteenth of a second on the retina. It’s

believed to be the explanation for motion perception and explains why the black spaces that come

between each image are not perceived.

Disadvantages of the zoetrope are the narrative have to be circular, freeze frames are limited and

you can spoil the illusion by simply looking in the top of the drum. However, the zoetrope is easy

and cheap to use and was a ground-breaking novelty at the time of its creation.

Stereoscope - 1838The Stereoscope was invented by Charles Wheatstone in 1838. It used a pair of mirrors at 45

degree angles to the user's eyes, each reflecting a picture located off to the side. It demonstrated

the importance of binocular depth perception by showing that when the each eye is shown a

picture, views of the same object are presented so that each eye sees only the image designed for

it, but apparently in the same location, the brain will fuse the two and accept them as a view of one

solid three-dimensional object. In 1839, Mr Elliott, a colleague of Sir David Brewster constructed a

simple stereoscope without lenses or mirrors, consisting of a wooden box, which was used to view

drawn landscape transparencies, since photography had yet to be invented. In 1849 Brewster's

personal contribution was the suggestion to use lenses for uniting the different pictures. In 1851 it

was demonstrated to Queen Victoria at the Great Exhibition. Brewster was unable to find in Britain

an instrument maker capable of working with his design, so he went to France, where the

stereoscope was improved by Jules Duboscq. Almost overnight a 3D industry developed and

250,000 stereoscopes were produced and a great number of stereo views, stereo cards and

stereographs were sold in a short time. Stereographers were sent throughout the world to capture

views for the new medium and feed the demand for 3D. Patented in 1939 the View-Master

stereoscope with its rotating cardboard disks containing image pairs, was popular first for 'virtual

tourism' and then as a toy. In 2010, Hasbro started producing a stereoscope designed to hold an

iPhone or iPod Touch, called the My3D. In 2014, Google released the template for a paper craft

stereoscope called Google Cardboard. Apps on the mobile phone substitute for stereo cards. The

underlying technology is otherwise unchanged from earlier stereoscopes. As time went on and

paper was more available, people wanted to make their own animation toys. This introduced the

flip-book.

Flip book - 1868A flip book also relies on the persistence of vision. John Barnes Linnett patented the first flip

book in 1868 as the Kineograph (moving picture). It is a small book with relatively springy pages,

each having one in a series of animation images located near its unbound edge. The user bends

all of the pages back, normally with the thumb, then by a gradual motion of the hand allows them

to spring free one at a time. The older devices by their nature severely limit the number of images

that can be included in a sequence without making the device very large or the images

impractically small. The book format still imposes a physical limit, but dozens of images of ample

size can easily be used. As with the Phenakistoscope and Zoetrope, the illusion of motion is

created by the apparent sudden replacement of each image by the next in the series, but unlike

those other inventions no view-interrupting shutter is required and no viewing device other than

the user's hand is absolutely necessary. Early film animators cited flip books as their inspiration

more often than the earlier devices, which did not reach as wide an audience.

Praxinoscope - 1877 The Praxinoscope was invented in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud, who was a French science

teacher. It was an animation device and the first known animated projection on a screen. It was

the successor of the Zoetrope and like the Zoetrope; it used a strip of pictures placed around the

inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The Praxinoscope improved on the Zoetrope by replacing its

narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors placed, so the reflections appeared more or less

stationary as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors as it was spinning would therefore

see a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion. The toy became a great

commercial success and won recognition at the great exhibitions of the period.

On 28 October 1892, he projected the first animation in public called the Pauvre Pierrot, at the

Musée Grévin in Paris. This film was notable as the first known instance of film perforations being

used. His films were not photographed, but drawn directly onto the transparent strip. In 1900, more

than 500,000 people attended these screenings. The invention of photography and moving

pictures aided in the development of animation and Stop Motion animation soon followed.

Stop Motion AnimationStop-motion animation is the term used to describe animation created by physically manipulating

real-world objects and photographing them one frame of film at a time. When the photographs

move together in a quick sequence, it creates the illusion of movement. This is similar to the way a

flip-book works. There are many different types of stop-motion animation, usually named after the

type of media used to create the animation; these include the early Humorous phases of funny

faces, Puppet animation, Cut-out animation and Claymation.

In 1906 James Stuart Blackton made the first silent short animated film called ‘Humorous phases

of funny faces’ by drawing faces on boards, photographed them onto film and then ran the film

sequentially to show the faces. It was considered stop-motion.

In 1908 a french animated film called ‘Fantasmagorie was produced by Emile Cohl. The film was

created by drawing each frame on paper, then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave

the picture a blackboard look. It was compiled of seven hundred drawings, each was double-

exposed (animated on twos) and ran for almost two minutes.

Puppet/Model Animation - 1908

The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the

illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Dolls with

movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop

motion animation using plasticine is called clay animation or clay- mation. Not all stop motion

requires figures or models; many stop motion films can involve using humans, household

appliances and other things for comedic effect. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to

as object animation.

The film ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’ (1908) created by J. Stuart Blackton and Albert smith

receives credit as the first stop-motion animation film that features puppets. Further pioneer

puppet animator include; Russian Ladislas Starewitch, a film maker who created ‘The

Cameraman’s Revenge’ (1912) and later produced his feature length puppet animation ‘Le Roman

de Renard’ (1929-1930) which translates as ‘The Tale of the Fox’. The story was based on the

11th century tale of ‘Reynard the fox’. More recently, puppet animation is commonly used in

children’s cartoons and films. An example of puppet animation used in cinema is in the film King

Kong (1933). The writer/director Tim Burton often uses puppet animation in his work for Corpse

Bride (2005) which is a stop motion animated horror musical. The Nightmare before Christmas

(1993) is an American stop motion musical fantasy horror film directed by Henry Selick. It used

227 puppets to represent the characters in the film and also 400 heads were used to allow the

expression for every possible emotion.

Keyframe animation - 1911Windsor McCay was the first person to use keyframe animation in his film ‘Little Nemo’. A

keyframe may define a picture size, position and rotation and must have a minimum of two

keyframes, start and finish, although more complex moves will use more. The drawings are called

"frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film. A sequence of key

frames defines which movement the viewer will see, whereas the position of the key frames on the

film, video, or animation defines the timing of the movement. Because only two or three key

frames over the span of a second do not create the illusion of movement, the remaining frames

are filled with inbetweens.

In 1914 Windsor McCay creates the first cartoon featuring Gertie the Dinosaur which is only

approximately 5 minutes long and contained 10,000 drawings using Keyframe animation. He used

registration marks to keep the background aligned from frame to frame, so that it did not appear to

"swim", as often happened in early cartoons. He avoided some repetitious work by re-using

drawings, in what would later be called cycling. He devised what he called the "McCay Split

System", the first occurrence of key-frame animation. Rather than draw each frame in sequence,

he would start by drawing Gertie's key poses, and then go back and fill in the frames between.

McCay was also very concerned with accurate timing and motion; he timed his own breathing to

determine how to animate Gertie's breathing, and included subtle details such as the ground

sagging beneath Gertie's great weight.

To create the film, McCay himself drew thousands of frames of Gertie on individual 6.5 x 8.5 inch

sheets of rice paper. He hired neighbour and art student John A. Fitzsimmons to draw the

backgrounds. Fitzsimmons carefully re-traced the rocks, lake and tree from a master drawing onto

each sheet of rice paper. Gertie the Dinosaur was produced before the introduction of later time-

saving techniques such as Cel-animation.

Rotoscoping – 1917Rotoscoping was invented by Max Fleischer in 1917. It is an animation technique in which

animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live- action and animated films. Originally,

live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator

frame by frame. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device was

eventually replaced by computers. It has often been used as a tool for visual effects in live-action

movies. By tracing an object, the moviemaker creates a silhouette (called a matte) that can be

used to extract that object from a scene for use on a different background. While blue and green

screen techniques have made the process of layering subjects in scenes easier, Rotoscoping still

plays a large role in the production of visual effects imagery. One classic use of traditional

Rotoscoping was in the original three Star Wars movies, where it was used to create the glowing

lightsaber effect, by creating a matte based on sticks held by the actors. To achieve this, editors

traced a line over each frame with the prop, then enlarged each line and added the glow.

Cut-out animation - 1917Cut-out animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and

backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs and arranged

on a flat surface and manually moved and repositioned to simulate animation. It can be used to

make photographs of people and animals seem as if they're talking or moving, often resulting in a

2D marionette effect. The world's first animated feature film using cut-out animation was called El

Apostil and was produced in 1917 by Quirino Cristiani. Today, cut-out-style animation is frequently

produced using computers, with scanned images or vector graphics taking the place of physically

cut materials. South Park is an example of this transition since its first episode was made with

paper cut-outs before switching to computer software. However, South Park still pretty much looks

like paper animation.

ClaymationStop-motion animation using clay is called Claymation. Clay figures are often used in stop-motion

for their ease of repositioning. Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such

similarly pliable material such as Plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature,

and then arranged on the set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand

to prepare it for the next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired amount of

film. Clay-animated films were produced in the United States as early as 1908, when Edison

Manufacturing released a trick film entitled The Sculptor's Welsh Rarebit Dream. During the late

1950s and early 1960s Davey and Goliath was a children’s show which featured on television.

Gumby was a show that premiered on Saturday morning television in the 1970s and 1980s for

children. In 1975 Will Vinton received an award for best animated film ‘Closed Mondays’.  He also

copyrighted the term 'Claymation' to describe the process of the film production that was built

around using clay models. Morph is another example of Claymation. More recently Wallace and

Gromit were created by Aardman animations. The characters were brought alive by Nick Park

using modelling clay and wire for the characters and then animated using stop motion animation.

A variation of clay animation was developed by Craig Bartlett, for his series of Arnold short films

(also made in the late-1980s/early- 1990s), in which he not only used clay painting but sometimes

built up clay images that rose off the plane of the flat support platform toward the camera lens to

give a more 3-D stop-motion look to his films.

The resources needed for Claymation consist of a camera, plasticine, tools, a computer and

materials for sets such as card and pens. All these resources are easily accessible. As the models

are made out of plasticine, they don’t need to be perfectly made because of the style in which they

are made and the fact they need to be able to move. One of the main issues when using

Claymation is the fact that is it too time consuming as the making, photographing and editing all

take quite a while.

1977 – Morph

Morph is a clay stop-motion comedy animation. He first appeared in 1977 on Tony Hart’s art-

themed television programmes for children, Take Hart and Hartbeat. His final appearance was in

1993.

Morph was first made for the BBC by Aardman Animations, weighs 162g, is 14cm tall and is

painted terracotta. He was also later joined by a cream coloured twin called Chas.

Originally Morph appeared in one-minute shorts that featured throughout Tony Hart’s shows.

Eventually he got his own series called ‘The Amazing Adventures Of Morph’ in 1980.

Morph also attempted to make a 90’s comeback with The Morph Files but failed to capture the

kid’s imagination in the same way and it was soon discontinued.

A flash mob of homemade Morphs gathered outside London’s Tate Gallery in 2009 to mark Tony

Hart’s death. This is what inspired Aardman to resurrect the character. Now both characters

feature on their own successful YouTube channel in one-minute shorts.

Morph can change shape, mimic objects or creatures, is funny and silly as he can only speak

gibberish, yet lovable and relatable with his humanlike actions and intentions. I believe these

qualities made Morph popular and added towards the appeal of this new style of animation.

Computer Generated Imagery (CGI) animation Computer-generated imagery (CGI) is the application of computer graphics to create or contribute

to images in art, printed media, video games, films, television programs, shorts, commercials,

videos and simulators. It is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques with 3D

models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations used for creating scenes or special

effects in films and television. It allows animators to create fantasy situations and illusions within

real live action. In the late 1970s to early 1980s CGI was used in film for the first time. The first

mainstream movie that used CGI was The Last Starfighter in 1984. In 1995 the American

company, Pixar created Toy Story. It was the first full-length motion picture to be entirely CGI. In

2004 The Polar Express becomes the first fully-animated film to use motion capture technology to

render all of its characters. In 2009 the movie Avatar uses CGI animation alongside other image-

based technologies to create stunning visual effects. Due to the way CGI is made, the final

product looks extremely professional and can create characters and settings easily, compared to

the other two types of animation. One main disadvantage about using CGI animation is the fact

that it is very complicated and would need practise, experience and the relevant software to be

successful.