Tag: cartoon

The Origins and Development of Animation

Animation has been around longer than anyone realize. Even though you may think it is something new that was developed over the last couple of centuries, it goes much further back than that. Different races, at different times in this world’s history, used primitive forms of animation to document events during their early lifetimes. You will learn more about this as you attend your classes at the online film school.

Animation is a method of taking different 3D and 2D artistic creations of images and forming them into a sequence, that when finished will give the illusion of the images moving. Hand drawn animation, Claymation, digital animation, CGI animation and stop motion animation are just a few of the animation types. You will learn about all of the different types and how each one is used.

During the Paleolithic area, our ancestors drew pictures of animals on cave walls. These images were normally of animals, and they would have several legs, more than the normal four legs. This was their way of indicating that the animal was moving since each leg would be in a different position. You can also see samples of animation on the walls of many Egyptian tombs. A good online animation school will cover all of this history.

During the 1900’s Claymation and animation became popular in the creation of short strips. Early inventions of animation included the Zoetrope, the Magic Lantern, The Thaumatrope, the Phenakistscope, and the flip book. Short films came into being around 1892 with a sequence of 12 pictures created by Musee Grevin in Paris. This was followed by short clips in the early 1900’s included “Humorous Funny faces”, “Fantasmagorie” by Emile Cohl and “the Cameraman’s Revenge” by Ladislas Starevitch.

El Apostal, made in 1917 was the first full length film to use animation. It was created by Quirino Cristiani from Argentina. The first film around that era to make an animation with colored, tinted scenes was the silhouette feature called the Adventures of Prince Achmed, produced by Lotte Reiniger and Berthold Barsosch.

CGI, Computer Generated Imagery, which has recently been re-titled as Computer animation is one of the biggest developments over the centuries. The Toy Story by Pixar was the very first to use this method of animation throughout the whole film. CGI and Traditional Animation are both tedious and time consuming. The only difference is that instead of hand drawn images, CGI uses 3D and 3D models for its characters and images.

There are many different courses you will take at a film school or an animation school. All of them relate to methods and techniques that you will use in animation and film production.

categories: animation,cartoon,illustration,history

Introduction to Claymation

While you were attending online film school, you took many different courses in animation. One of them should have been claymation. Although this method is not used much today, learning the skills and techniques are just as important as the rest of your course. Claymation, at some point in your career, may come into play with the other techniques you use.

Claymation is the method of taking clay figurines, posing them in different positions, filming them different films. When the film is run at the right speed, the clay figures appear to be moving. When this method used to be done with photographed frames, there are now computer enhanced programs that allow it to be done digitally.

Stop motion involves the creation of photographed frames, each one a little different from the previous one. Other frames that are masked so they aren’t double exposed. Stop motion, when done right makes the images and characters appear to be moving and interacting. Claymation is another form of using stop motion animation.

The technique used in claymation is the creation of images or characters made of clay. Plasticine clay is the most often used type. It is malleable, yet sturdy and allows the model to be readjusted many times. Then photos are taken of each change, played back at 10 to 12 frames per second, thus creating the illusion of movement by the figures. This is another course offered by your online animation school.

The Sculptors Welsh Rarebit Dream was produced in 1908 by Edison Manufacturing. This was the first film where claymation was used. Eight years later Helena Smith Dayton and Willie Hopkins combined their talents and produced films on many subjects using the technique of claymation. For several years this method fell to the wayside while other animation techniques survived. It was revived in 1921 in with the release of the film “Modeling”.

The Wallace and Gommit claymation productions, claymation once again became popular in the early 1970’s with their creations of “Closed on Mondays”, “Creature Comforts” and “Sand Castles” that were created by Nick Park of Aardman Animations. Nick Park was also well known for his claymations creations of “The Presentators” which were created for Nicktoons.

Going to a good film school and getting your animation degree, will bring you a giant step closer to that career in animation and films.