Assignment One: Techniques

The following inventions have all contributed to the industry of animation and have advanced the knowledge and understanding of how to create a moving picture smoothly with volume.

What is the Persistence of Vision?

The Persistence of Vision helped the understanding of animation because of the study that we can make the human eye see an image move by the speed of it moving but for this to work it can’t be less than 16 frames per second or it will become irritating and wouldn’t have a smooth effect.

A Thaumatrope

Beta Movement is images moving slowly when looking at them, an example of this is a flip book that was invented by John Barnes Lennett in 1894.

This links with another invention called Phi Movement invented by Max Wertheimer in the early 1900's and its when the image stays in the same place but the human eye makes it look like it is moving.

Phi Movement

Beta Movement

What is Stop Frame?

Stop Frame is helped the understanding of animation because of the study that if you take a physical object and move it frame by frame and played it on a faster speed it will give the effect that the object is moving. Depending on how fast the speed of the animation is, the more realistic and believable it will look. It is a little like 2D animation but with real objects not drawings.

Pros for Stop Frames:
More control,
Can animate inanimate objects,
Can create more surreal story lines,
Make difficult subjects easier to tackle,
Interesting created effects.

Cons for Stop Frames:

Difficult to correct speed,

Time consuming,

Fluid motion,

Difficult to visualise,

Need to create separate audio book.

Some examples of Stop Frame are:

The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1898)

The humpty Dumpty Circus was directed by J. Stuart blackton and produced by Albert E. Smith. The animation has been lost over time due to people not really saving animation back them but there is a screenshot showing the set and the dolls they borrowed from their daughter. He used his daughters toys for props. This links with current media as it was one of the first animations to move and shown to people to tell a story.

wallis and Gromit (2005)

Wallis and Gromit was directed by Nick Park and Steve Box and produced by Nick Park, Peter lord, David Sproxton, Carla Shelley, Claire Jennings. It was made in 8 October 2005. It has won awards like Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film.
This animation is about a man and his dog and has incredible scenes where they use mechanics to help them in every day life chores, like waking up and getting dressed and going to sleep. This links with current media as it would take people days to complete one of these animations with the movement of the body, eyes and objects in the scenes would all have to be small so when it is played it creates a moving object.

Chicken Run (2000)

Chicken Run was directed and produced by Nick Park and Peter Lord and was also produced by  David Sproxton. Chicken run is an award winning Dream Works animation from the Aardman Team. it was released in June 2000.
The animation is about a group of chickens who try to escape where they live due to a new device that is used to kill them. This animation is similar to Wallis and Gromit and links with current media as is a claymation and the movement and pictures would be taken by hand and one by one which would take a long period of time.

What is Frame Rates?
Frame Rates is how fast images appear on display. For example, having a ball fall lower on each piece of paper and then speeding up how fast you see them after one another and it will look like the ball is falling or bouncing.
Frame Rates helped the understanding of animation today because of the study that the amount of speed the images appear on screen will determine how realistic the movement looks. We use Frame Rates today as each camera captures a certain amount of frames a second in photo form and when looking back at the video it is automatically put into a video from with the right speed as well as captures audio to match the video.

Examples of Frame Rates are:

The numbers are how many times the ball is on a new piece of paper,
for this image to work there will need to be 31 pieces of paper.

This image shows a game being modified so it can
be played on the newest gaming consoles.