Stop Start Research

Stop motions animation has a long history in film. It was often used to show objects moving as if by magic. The first instance of the stop motion technique can be credited to Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton for The Humpty Dumpty Circus (1898), in which a toy circus of acrobats and animals comes to life. In 1902, the film Fun in a Bakery Shop used clay for a stop motion "lightning sculpting" sequence. French trick film maestro Georges Méliès used it to produce moving title-card letters for one of his short films, but never exploited the process for any of his other films. The Haunted Hotel (1907) is another stop motion film by J. Stuart Blackton,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stop_motion

Development

Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau

(October 14, 1801 – September 15, 1883) was a Belgian physicist. He was the first person to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. To do this he used counter rotating disks with repeating drawn images in small increments of motion on one and regularly spaced slits in the other. He called this device of 1832 the phenakistoscope.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Antoine_Ferdinand_Plateau

Charles-Émile Reynaud

Charles-Émile Reynaud was a French science teacher, responsible for the first projected animated cartoon films. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888, and on 28 October 1892 he projected the first animated film in public, Pauvr Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris. This film is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-%C3%89mile_Reynaud

Eadweard Muybridge

In 1872, former Governor of California Leland Stanford, a businessman and race-horse owner, had taken a position on a popularly-debated question of the day: whether all four of a horse's hooves are off the ground at the same time during a gallop. Stanford sided with this assertion, called "unsupported transit", and took it upon himself to prove it scientifically. Stanford sought out Muybridge and hired him to settle the question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eadweard_Muybridge

William George Horner

William George Horner (1786 – 22 September 1837) was a British mathematician and schoolmaster. The invention of the zoetrope, in 1834 and under a different name (Daedaleum), has been attributed to him. The son of the Rev. William Horner, a Wesleyan minister, was born in Bristol. He was educated at Kingswood School, near Bristol, and at the age of sixteen became an assistant master there.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_George_Horner

Edison

(Kinetoscope) This camera was called the kinetograph. It used rolls of film about 35mm wide, and these film strips carried rows of holes down the sides to allow the film to be pulled through the camera at an even rate. These rows of holes still appear on both ciné-film and films for use in ordinary cameras.

http://www.exeter.ac.uk/bdc/young_bdc/movingpics/movingpics9.htm




The Lumières

The Lumières held their first private screening of projected motion pictures in 1895. Their first public screening of films at which admission was charged was held on December 28, 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris. This history-making presentation featured ten short films, including their first film, Sortie des Usines Lumière à Lyon (Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory). Each film is 17 meters long, which, when hand cranked through a projector, runs approximately 50 seconds.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_and_Louis_Lumi%C3%A8re



George Pal

George Pal (February 1, 1908 – May 2, 1980), born György Pál Marczincsak, was a Hungarian-born American animator and film producer, principally associated with the science fiction genre. He became an American citizen after emigrating from Europe. He was nominated for Academy Awards (in the category Best short subjects, Cartoon) no less than seven consecutive years (1942–1948) and received an honorary award in 1944. This makes him the second most nominated Hungarian exile (together with William S. Darling and Ernest Laszlo) after Miklós Rózsa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Pal

12 basic principles of animation

Strech and Squash

The most important principle is Squash and stretch the purpose of this priciple is to give a sense of weight and flexibility, its mainly used on a simple object such as a bouncy ball. although for more complex things such as a persons face it is a lot harder to apply.

Anticipation

Anticipation is where the audience is prepared for some kind of action, it also makes action appear more realistic, for example a ball being thrown at a persons face, where their hand is pulled back in anticipation of the throw. 

Staging

The purpose of staging is to draw attetion of the audience to a specific point, it gives a sense of importance and adds pupose, "Johnston and Thomas defined it as "the presentation of any idea so that it is completely and unmistakably clear", whether that idea is an action, a personality, an expression or a mood.

                                                                                                                        this is a picture of a stickman
                                                                                                                        staging with the focus on it.

Streight 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. Computer animation removes the problems of proportion related to "straight ahead action" drawing; however, "pose to pose" is still used for computer animation, because of the advantages it brings in composition.
                                                                                                                  this shows the pose to pose.

follow through and overlapping action                                                                                                        

this technique makes movement look more realistic, this gives the impression that charcters are following the laws of physics. follow through means that after a character has stopped moving other body parts will continue to move, overlapping means that the characters body parts will move all at different times often faster than one another.

 

Slow in and slow out

most objects need time to  accelerate and slow down beacuse of this an animation looks more real . it has more frames near the beginning and end of a movement, and fewer in the middle. it is used when a character is sitting down or starting to walk.

Arcs

Most human and animal actions happen along an arched course, and animation should reproduce these actions for superior realism. This can apply to a limb moving by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory. The exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines.

Secondary action

Adding secondary actions makes the characters in the scene look more realistic, this helps support main actions. for example a man walking with his arms swinging or his hands on his head, this adds realism to the scene.  The important thing about secondary actions is that they emphasize, rather than take attention away from the main action.

Timing

Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film. Timing is critical for establishing a character's mood, emotion, and reaction. It can also be a device to communicate aspects of a character's personality.

Exaggeration

Exaggeration is used in animation because if realism is used as a constant it can make a catoon look dull, "The classical definition of exaggeration, employed by Disney, was to remain true to reality, just presenting it in a wilder, more extreme form.^"

Solid drawing

The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight.  The animator needs to be a accomplished draughtsman and has to understand the basics of three-dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow etc.

Appeal

Appeal in a cartoon character resembles 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.