History of 2d Animation

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From what we know animation found its feet around 100 years ago. Although Walt Disney is often credited with making 2D animation with Mickey Mouse, he was not the first person to create a 2D animation.

The first 2D animation ever made was called Fantasmagorie, a short cartoon made by Emile Cohl. Created entirely in black and white, the cartoon begins with Emile drawing a simple stick man in live action. The animation begins when the stick man drops from a bar. The cartoon has several brief scenes in it, including a man stuck in a theater behind a lady with a big hat, and the stick man jumping out of a small box. The cartoon ends with the stick man riding off the screen on a horse. The cartoon is about 75 seconds long and it took about 700 different drawings to create. This historic animation was released in 1908, which predates Steamboat Willie (the first cartoon to feature Mickey Mouse) by about 20 years.

In animation, a normally very notable thing talked about id the pioneers of animation referring to the creators of the best techniques still used today in animation.

This young cartoonist from France is fondly known as the father of the animated cartoon. In the year 1908, he created the first fully animated cartoon ever to be produced on film.

Popularly called the world’s first cinemagician, this French filmmaker quickly became well known in the industry for the use of special effects in his films.

Known as the father of ‘true’ animation, Winsor McCay surprised moviegoers with his production of ‘Litte Nemo’, which featured two minutes of pure animation previously not seen in films.

Inspired by Thomas Edison’s inventions, J. Stuart Blackton founded the American Vitagraph Company and started producing films. His first movie was The Enchanted Drawing in the year 1900.

The animal locomotion studies of Muybridge weren’t exactly animation; they were one of the very first experiments in moving images, laying the groundwork for generations of videographists to come.

2D animation is the traditional animation method that has existed since the late 1800s. It is one drawing followed by another in a slightly different pose, followed by another in a slightly different pose, on and on for 24 frames a second. Traditional animation involved animators drawing by hand for each and every frame. Traditional animation is creating the drawings one by one on the frame. 2D animation involves creating numerous drawings than feeding into a plastic cells, hand painting them and create the animated sequence on a painted background image.

Computer animation, 2D and 3D this was used when the famous Mickey Mouse animation was created using the 2d animation technique. During the 1960s many popular cartoons like the Jetsons and the Flintstones were created using 2d animation. If creditors are interested in making the unreal characters into a realistic one, then it’s Digital 3d animation. Digital 3d animation characters are much faster to create and they are quite popular in the movie making industry. Using a computer software 3d animated images are used to create many short films, full length movies and even TV commercials and a career in digital 3d animation is highly rewarding.

Comparing to 2D animation and the traditional approach, 3d animation models are highly realistic. Have you ever wondered if a piece of stone can walk or talk, well anything is possible in animation? Using frame by frame animation, physical static objects are moved around and during the post production it is shown in a fluid movement. Stop motion animation has been around ever since the evolution of puppets. There were many movies created using the stop motion method, some of the finest examples are “Fun in a bakery shop” created in 1902.Edwin Porter directed ""The Teddy Bears,"" which was one of the earliest stop-motion animation films. The movie is a short sequence of playing teddy bears, just over a minute in length, which took over 50 hours to animate. machines can be animated by using the mechanical animation technique. Instead of creating the original machine, creating these mechanical animations, allows the animator to understand how the machine works. Explaining the functionality of these machines is quite easy through this kind of animation technique.

The 12 principles of animation are the principles that animation artist learn to do their craft and they will always stick to these techniques when making an animation. The first of which is squash and Stretch, The most important principle is squash and stretch, the purpose of which is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be applied to simple objects, like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions, like the musculature of a human face.

Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic. A dancer jumping off the floor has to bend the knees first; a golfer making a swing has to swing the club back first. This principle is akin to staging in theatre, as it is known in theatre and film. Its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is of greatest importance in a scene whether it is a facial expression trying to signify an emotion or a reaction.

Straight ahead action and pose to pose, these are two different approaches to the actual drawing process. ""Straight ahead action"" means drawing out a scene frame by frame from beginning to end, while ""pose to pose"" involves starting with drawing a few key frames, and then filling in the intervals later. Follow through and overlapping action is a general heading for two closely related techniques which help to render movement more realistically, and help to give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics, including the principle of inertia.

Ease in and ease out is the movement of the human body, and most other objects, needs time to accelerate and slow down. For this reason, animation looks more realistic if it has more drawings near the beginning and end of an action, emphasizing the extreme poses, and fewer in the middle. Arc, Most natural action tends to follow an arched trajectory, and animation should adhere to this principle by following implied arcs for greater realism. This technique can be applied to a moving limb by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory.

The exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines. Adding secondary actions to the main action gives a scene more life, and can help to support the main action. A person walking can simultaneously swing their arms or keep them in their pockets, speak or whistle, or express emotions through facial expressions. Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film. Exaggeration is an effect especially useful for animation, as animated motions that strive for a perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull. The level of exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular style, like a caricature or the style of a specific artist. The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, or giving them volume and weight.[The animator needs to be a skilled artist and has to understand the basics of three-dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow, etc.

Appeal in a cartoon character corresponds to what would be called charisma in an actor. A character who is appealing is not necessarily sympathetic villains or monsters can also be appealing the important thing is that the viewer feels the character is real and interesting.

The Simpsons movie is one of my favourite movies which was produced by 20th Century Fox, the animation of the movie was described by the Simpsons creator as “deliberately imperfect” and “tribute to the art of hand-drawn animation”. The Simpsons colored with the largest palette the animators had ever had available to them before during the T.V. series. A lot of the animation was produced using Wacom Cintiq tablets, which allowed images to be drawn directly onto a computer monitor to facilitate production. I think the creators of the Simpsons did an excellent job by catering to their audience and making sure that they liked it, however the audience that the Simpsons bring in is huge because it has been around for two decades so there's lots of different people who will want to watch the movie and will be entertained by it, this means making jokes that will make kids laugh as well as the adults and developing character that connect with the kids and the adults.

Wallace and Gromit received excellent reviews for their animated movie because the movie was so well produced; the production company was Aardman animations and Dreamworks Animation. Wallace and Gromit is a very unique animation because they are the only ones to make a stop motion animation do well at the box office, the stop motion. Stop motion which has been around ever since the evolution of puppets and is one of oldest techniques but it takes a lot of time to perfect because you have to make many models and change their expressions slightly for every second of the animation which makes it very time consuming but the finished product was very good. Wallace and Gromit received a 95% on rotten tomatoes making it one of the most highly rated movies.

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