Lesson-1: Animation- its history and variations.

The concept of Animation grew up with the popularly known theory called ‘Persistence of Vision’. It describes the optical phenomenon that makes animation possible. The human eye retains an image for a split second after the source of the image disappears, so when 24 frames per second of an animated film zip through a ponceprojector, the flow of motion on the screen looks seamless. The following example will help us in better understanding the concept:
animexample3edit

animexample
Pic: 1-a Pic: 1-b

Animation is a series of still drawings that, when viewed in rapid succession, gives the impression of a moving picture. The word animation derives from the Latin words anima meaning life, and animare meaning to breathe life into. Throughout history, people have employed various techniques to give the impression of moving pictures. Cave drawings depicted animals with their legs overlapping so that they appeared to be running. The properties of animation can be seen in Asian puppet shows, Greek bas-relief, Egyptian funeral paintings, medieval stained glass, and modern comic strips. Here is a running horse animation which is created through a series of paintings.
animhorse
Pic: 2: An animated horse

In 1640, a Jesuit monk named Althanasius Kircher invented a “magic lantern” that projected enlarged drawings on a wall. A fellow Jesuit, Gaspar Schott, developed this idea further by creating a straight strip of pictures, a sort of early filmstrip, that could be pulled across the lantern’s lens. Schott further modified the lantern until it became a revolving disk. A century later, in 1736, a Dutch scientist named Pieter Van Musschenbroek created a series of drawings of windmill vanes that, when projected in rapid succession, gave the illusion of the windmill circling around and around.

By 1845, Baron Franz von Uchatius invented the first movie projector. Images painted on glass were passed in front of the projected light. Forty-three years later, George Eastman introduced celluloid film, a strip of cellulose acetate coated with a light-sensitive emulsion that retained and projected images better than those painted on glass. The first animated cartoon Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by J. Stuart Blackton, of the New York Evening World, was shown in the United States in 1906. Two years later, French animator Emile Cohl followed suit with Phantasmagorie. Winsor McCay introduced Gertie the Dinosaur in 1911. Other cartoonists who brought their characters to the screen included George McManus (Maggie and Jiggs) and Max Fleischer (Betty Boop and Popeye). By 1923, Walt Disney, the world’s most famous animator, began turning children’s stories into animated cartoons. Mickey Mouse was introduced in Steamboat Willie in 1928. Disney’s first animated full-length film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, debuted in 1937.
mid-humorous_phases_of_funny_faces
Pic: 3: A still from ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’

Yellow Submarine, a 1968 animated film starring the Beatles, featured the process of pixilation, in which live people are photographed in stop-motion to give the illusion of humanly-impossible movements. In the film The Lord of the Rings, directed in 1978 by Ralph Bakshi using rotoscoping, live action was filmed first. Then each frame was traced and colored to create a series of animation cels. By the late twentieth century, many in the industry were experimenting with computer technology to create animation. In 1995, John Lassiter directed Toy Story, the first feature film created entirely with computer animation.

Animation means to give motion into a certain object. It may be either a graphics, text or any drawn character or model. When it is applied in a graphics, it is known as motion or animated graphics; while applied in text, it is called text animation and the animation applied in a character, it is said a character animation respectively. For example, the animated horse shown in Pic: 2 is defined as a character animation. The moving or animated graphics used in a TV program or the visual effects in a movie are good examples of Motion Graphics.

Animation varies in two major categories: 2D and 3D animation. 2D tends to look “flatter” than 3D (due to the natural limitations of the horizontal and vertical planes). As Joe-Speedy says, 3D introduces “depth perspective,” so we not only see a rectangle (2D) but a CUBE (3D). We may think of it like being the difference between a photograph of a glass of water (2D) and being able to reach out and actually pick up the glass of water (3D). Another good visual might be comparing a cartoon say, “Tom & Jerry”(2D) to “Shrek movies” (3D). Typically, 2D involves “drawing,”, say, a flat surface (sketch pad, etc.) or in the vertical and horizontal planes. 3D involves “modeling,” i.e., creating objects in 3-dimensions, residing in an expansive virtual environment, replete with lights, reflections, other objects, shadows, etc.

In short, we can say that 2D has only two dimensions i.e. X(width) and Y(height); where 3D consists of 3 dimensions i.e. X(width), Y(Height) and Z(Depth). The images given below will help us in better understanding of the concept.
tom jerry shrek

Pic:4: A still from ‘Tom & Jerry (2D)’ Pic:5: A still from the movie ‘Shrek’ (3D)

So, this is for today. We will discuss more about animation in our next lesson. Thank you.