Pixar!!

What is Pixar?

Pixar Animation Studios is an American computer animation film studio based in America. The studio has earned twenty-six Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammys, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide. It is best known for its Computer Generated Imagery-animated feature films created with Photo Realistic Render Man, its own implementation of the industry-standard Render Man image-rendering application programming interface used to generate high-quality images.

 

What films have they made?

Pixar has produced eleven feature films, beginning with Toy Story in 1995. It was followed by A Bug's Life in 1998, Toy Story 2 in 1999, Monsters, Inc. in 2001, Finding Nemo in 2003, The Incredibles in 2004, Cars in 2006, Ratatouille in 2007, WALL-E in 2008, Up in 2009 and Toy Story 3 in 2010.

Luxo Jr

Luxo Jr. is the first film produced in 1986 by Pixar Animation Studio, following its establishment as an independent film studio. It is a computer-animated short film (two and a half minutes, including credits), demonstrating the kind of things the newly-established company was capable of producing. It was the first Pixar short to release within a Pixar film.

It is the source of the small hopping desk lamp included in Pixar's corporate logo. In a subsequent re-release after Pixar became popular, a pretext was added to the film reading, "In 1986 Pixar produced its first film. This is why we have a hopping lamp in our logo".

Disney: The background!!

Disney has been around for many years, people would see Disney as the parents of animation. Walter Elias Disney was the founder of The Walt Disney Company and did many things for the company to work. One massive thing that Walter did was create the character Mickey Mouse and used his own voice for the productions.

Early Animation from Disney

In 1928, Steamboat Willie was the first animation with synchronized sound.

In 1932, Flowers and Trees was made as the fist Technicolour cartoon.

In 1937, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' was the first full animated feature film.

All of these some how have helped animation progress with what it has done in the past.

Principles of Animation

The 12 principles of animation is a set of principles introduced by Ollie Johnston and Frank Thomas in their book (1981) The illusion of Life: Disney Animation.

1. Squash and Stretch- the purpose of which is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects.

2. Anticipation- used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic.

3. Staging- its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is of greatest importance in a scene; what is happening, and what is about to happen.

4.Straight adea action and pose to pose- 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.

5.Follow through and overlapping action- These closely related techniques help render movement more realistic, and give the impression that characters follow the laws of phyics.

6.Slow in and out- the movement of the human body, and most other objects, needs time to accelerate and slow down.

7.Arcs- most human and animal actions occur along an arched trajectory and animation should reproduce these movements for greater realism. This can apply to a limb moving by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory

8.Secondry Action- 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 his arms or keep them in his pockets, he can speak or whistle, or he can express emotions through facial expressions.

9.Timing- refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film.

10.Exaggeration- is an effect especially useful for animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons. The level of exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular style, like a caricature or the style of an artist.

11.Solid Drawing- The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight.

12.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.

Objects: Let Sleeping Doe's Lie!!

In this Production, our task was to create a short animation (15-30 seconds long) using objects. Me and Matt decided to use dominoe's because we thought it would have been easy but also affective. We used a frame rate of 12. The short animation was aimed at children if they wanted to choose it. I thought the animation was really good and looked very fluid. The writing was very affective and worked very well with the animation because it explained the story and what was going on within the animation. The final production was quite successful because it was understandable and the use of camera angles was used well. The bad thing about the animation was that it would have been a lot better if we had more time to plan the animation. The principles of animation I have used is timing, exaggeration, staging and slow in and out.

Claymation: Morph and Chas' 'Freaky Friday'!!

In this animation (me and Tilly) used a different technique, this was claymation. I thought that remaking Morph and Chas was a good idea because it has got such a good background from TV and it was also really fun to make. In this case we sort have had an advantage because in our pre-production we didn't really need to think about character designs because we was just copied this idea from TV. The frame rate we used in this production was 24 because again it looked right to be at the frame rate because if it was any lower than 24 it looked too slow and jumpy but if it was over 24 fps it looked too fast. I feel that creating the characters went really well and they looked really affective but the problem we had with them was that when we moved them we had restrictions to how much we could actually move them so we had to create the animation quite quickly n rushed so the characters didn't break. Another problem we had was that in some clips you can see a reflection of my face. The overall production went ok but the animation could have been a bit better if we had more time on it. The principles of animation I have used in this animation are Exaggeration, slow in and out, staging, anticipation and squash and stretch.

Cut-out Animation: A Day at the Seaside!!

For this animation our group (me, Matt Clowes and Ben Morley) created a cut-out animation (see the video on this post). We used 24 fps because we thought it woudn't look as good if it was under 24 fps becuase it would have looked slow and not as affective as we wanted it to be. The results that we got from completing the animation were in some cases good but also bed. The good part was that it looked affected  and the animation was funny and had an understandable storyline. The bad part of the animation was that it looked a bit jumpy and the colours could have been used more effective. The colours of the animation was very affective but it would have been better if the characters of the animation could have been a distinctive colours to make them stand out. I feel the camera work on the production is really affective and have been used very well. If we had more time on our task to create the cut-out animation I would have spent more time making the animation to make it look more fluent and less jumpy and more time to work on the pre-production so we can fully understand what we are going to do on the final production. The principles of animation I used in this animation is staging, anticipation, exaggeration, slow in and out, timing and squash and stretch.

The Persistence of Vision and Frame Rates!!!!

What is the Persistence of Vision and How does it Work?

The Persistence of Vision is how the human eye see's moving image. This means the human eye see's a rapid succession of moving image and the images are retained in the brain. For a fraction of a second the images from before are with the images to what images the eye is seeing now.. The images will then blend and this will result into the image being the eye and mind being 'tricked' to thinking the image is moving like an optical illusion. For example, say if you had a bird on a piece of paper on one side and you had a cage on the other with string attached to both sides and you spin it at a certain speed, the bird looks like it is in the cage but it isn't. With anything that is filmed on camera the principle of Persistence of Vision will always be there because its the eye working to see the moving image. Frame rates have a big impact on the Peristence of Vision as well because if the frame rate isn't right it could look to slow and jumpy or too fast and not understandable.

What are Frame Rates and How do they work?

Frame rates are the main key to getting great quality animations as well  as films and tv shows. You always need to consider the frame rate setting, because it affects how smoothly your animation plays. For example, an animation set to 12 frames per second (fps) plays 12 frames (images) each second. If the frame rate is set to 24 fps (frames per second), the animation appears to animate more smoothly than if it ran at 12 fps. However, your animation at 24 fps also plays faster than it does at 12 fps, so the total duration (in seconds) is shorter. Therefore, to make a 5‑second animation using a higher frame rate, you must add additional frames to fill those five seconds than at a lower frame rate. In animation there is a specific technique to help create more fluid movement and this is known as '2's'. It means each movement is recorded twice.

Early Pioneer: Eadweard Muybridge

Who is Eadweard Muybridge?

Eadweard Muybridge was an English Photographer and working in photographic studies of motion and motion-picture projection. Muybridge moved to America as a Young man and lived in San Francisco.  Muybridge started his career as a publisher’s agent and bookseller, but developed an interest in photography that seems to been boosted when he was recovering in England in 1860 after nearly being killed in a stagecoach crash. Muybridge quickly became famous for his landscape photographs, which showed the grandeur and expansiveness of the West.

What is Eadweard Muybridge famous for?

Eadweard Muybridge wanted to prove to Leland Stanford that a galloping horse cannot lift up all four feet clear off the ground during its stride. Muybridge decided to go to Stanford’s race track to attempt the experiment using one of Leland prize horses. Muybridge set up a series of cameras so that when the horse went round the track it would set off the cameras to take the picture. When they put all the pictures together it showed that all four legs were off the floor. In 1893, Muybridge lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion and used his zoopraxiscope to show his moving pictures making this the very first commercial movie theatre.

When did Eadweard Muybridge create the motion picture?

The first actual modern motion picture camera was designed by Louis Le Prince in 1888. However, Muybridge developed the process of using a series of still photographs to stimulate motion for an experiment historically known as “The horse in Motion” in 1878.

What is the Zoopraxiscope?

The Zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. People considered it as the first movie projector. The zoopraxiscope projected images from rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes. A second series of discs, made in 1892-94, used outline drawings printed onto the discs photographically, then coloured by hand. Some of the animated images are very complex, featuring multiple combinations of sequences of animal and human movement.

What affected the Zoopraxiscope?

The things that affected the zoopraxiscope was that you had to set the camera up and it was huge, also you had to have complete darkness and as soon as you took a picture you had to treat it well straight away.

How this information has helped me

This information has helped me to understand Muybridge and his invention the Zoopraxiscope. The information that stands out in my mind is his experiment of ‘The horse in motion’. I was able to learn how the Zoopraxiscope came to be through him trying to prove a point about the horse and its legs being off the floor as it ran. Through him creating the Zoopraxiscope has inspired other inventors such as Thomas Edison and the Lumiere bros. Thomas Edison invented Kinetoscope and the Lumiere bros invented cinematography. These inventions paved the way to what we now know as cinema.

Early Pioneers: The Lumiere Brothers

Who are The Lumiere Bros?

Louis  and Auguste Lumiere were pioneer contributors to the birth of film in 1895. The Lumiere bros were born in France but then moved in 1870 to Lyon. Both of them attended the largest technical school in Lyon La Martiniere. Their father, Claude-Antoine Lumiere (1840-1911), ran a photographic firm and both brothers worked for him: Louis as a physicist and Auguste as a Manager. It wasn’t until their father retired in 1892 that the brothers began to create moving pictures. The Lumiere Bros were not the only ones to claim the title of the first cinematographers. The first scientific chronophotography devices developed by Eadweard Muybridge, Etienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschutz in the 1880 were able to produce moving photographs, as was Thomas Edison’s Kinetoscope premiered in 1891.

What are the Lumiere Bros famous for?

The lumiere bros are well known by a lot of people for inventing the Cinematograph. The Lumieres held their first private screening of projected motion pictures in 1895. Thier first public screening of films at which admission was held on 28th December 1895, at the salon indien du Grand Cafe which is in Paris. This history-making presentation featured a short film, including their first film, sortie des Usines Lumiere a Lyon (Workers leaving the Lumier Factory).

What is Cinematography?

A cinematograph is a film camera, which also is a film projector and developer and it was invented in the 1890’s.There are many arguments to find its real inventor. People say that the device was first invented as “Cinematographe” by French inventor Leon Bouly on 12^th February 1892. It is said, because theirs lack of money, Bouly was not able to pay the rent the following year, and the Lumiere bros engineers bought the license. Popular thought, however, Louis Lumiere was the first to convince the idea, and both Lumiere brothers shared the patent.

The Factors that affected the invention

The factors that effected the cinematograph camera was that it was very big and was very hard to carry around unlike the cameras today. The quality of the image wasn't that great either because it was only the start of the creation of fast moving image.

How this information has helped me

This information has helped me to understand The Lumiere bros and their followed on invention the cinematograph. The information that interests me the most is the first film ever made with the usage of Cinematography. I feel that it’s just unbelievable that the audience found that very short film amazing comparing to our technology today. Through my research I was able to earn about the Cinematograph and how you can create motion through this old camera. As the Lumiere Bros were inspired by the famous pioneer Eadweard Muybridge it makes me feel how the public in that time would have been feeling when these amazing inventions that have affected the world today. 

Earl Pioneer: Thomas Edison

Who is Thomas Edison?

Thomas Alva Edison did a lot of things in his time including an inventor, scientist and a businessman who developed many devices that had a massive impact on life around the world.

What is Thomas Edison Famous for?

Edison invented the Phonograph, the motion picture camera and a long-lasting practical electric light bulb. As we know today, the light bulb is probably one of the most needed electronics of all time. He was also the inventor of the Kinetoscope. This device was used in stop motion animation.

What is the Kinetoscope?

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture device, but not a movie projector. It was designed for films to be viewed individually through the window of a cabinet containing its components. This invention was the basic introduction that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before video. Watching it creates the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of film bearing images over a light source with a high speed shutter.

Factors that affected it 

The factors that affected the kinetoscope was that only one person could view the invention at a time and the moving image shown only lasted about 5-10 seconds long. Another bad thing about the kinetoscope was that it was a huge box 4 foot long and there was a small peep hole at the top for people to see and the lighting wasn't that great when you looked into it as well.

How this information has helped me

This information has helped me to understand the basic knowledge of Thomas Edison. I have found out how the Kinetoscope works and how we create the illusion of moving image. The thing that inspired me the most about Edison is that he invented the light bulb and I feel that it is one of the most important inventions to this day.

Early Pioneer: Charles- Emile Reynaud

Who is Charles- Emile Reynaud?

Charles- Emile Reynaud was a French science teacher and projected the first animated cartoon films. Reynaud died in a hospice on the banks of the Seine where he had been cared for since 29 March 1917.

What is Charles- Emile Reynaud Famous for?

Reynaud is mostly known for creating a device called the Praxinoscope in 1877 and also created the Theatre Optique in December 1888, he presented this first animated film in public at the Musee Grevin in Paris.  In his later years, his inventions were slowly going to an end as the cinematograph camera was being brought in by The Lumiere Brothers. 

What is the Praxinoscope?

The Praxinoscope is very similar to the zoetrope (created by William Horner), it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The Praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its very narrow very slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in the positioned as the wheel was turned.  A viewer would look in the mirrors and then therefore sees a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope.

Factors that affected the Praxinoscope

The factors that affected the Praxinoscope is that if it was spun to fast it would look very blurry and you wouldn’t be able to see the moving image, also if you spun it backwards the sequence wouldn’t make sense.  

There weren’t just bad things about the Praxinoscope because it was the successor of the zoetrope. A zoetrope could only view the moving image to one person at a time, but now the Praxinoscope can be viewed multiple times by different viewers because it has mirrors all around it and you could see it at every angle.

How the information has helped me

I feel that I have learn't a lot from this research that I have found. I now understand how the praxinoscope works and what it consists off. The factors that effected the praxinoscope was very similar to the zoetrope and I feel that I now fully understand the key terms of this.

Early Pioneer: Joseph Plateau

Who is Joseph Plateau?

Joseph Antoine Ferdinand Plateau was a Belgian Physicist (a scientist who is trained in physics). Plateau attended the University of Liege where he went on as a doctor of physical and mathematical scientist in 1829. He did research about the human eye and how it works. He focused on the retina because it lets the eye see colour.

What is Joseph Plateau Famous for?

In 1832, Plateau and his sons introduced the Phenakistoscope which is a spindle viewer. It was also invented independently in the same year by Simon von Stampfer who called his invention a stroboscope. As a famous Pioneer, Plateau had inspirations from other inventor’s work from Michael Faraday and Peter Mark Roget. The invention consisted of two disks that spun in opposite directions from each other. At first it was a toy which was called the Faraday’s wheel until later he named it the Phenakistoscope.

  What is the Phenakistoscope?


 



The Phenikistoscope

The Phenakistoscope is uses the persistence of vision to create an illusion of motion. Although this theory had been recognized by the Greek mathematician Euclid, it wasn’t until 1829 that this principle became firmly established by Plateau. The Phenakistoscope used two discs mounted on the same axis. The first disc had slots around the edge, and the second had drawings of action, drawn around the disc in circles. Unlike Faraday’s wheel, whose pair of discs spun in opposite directions, a Phenakistoscope discs spun together in the same direction.  When viewed in a mirror through the disc’s slots, the pictures on the second disc will appear to move.

The Factors that affected the Phenakistoscope

The factors that affected the Phenakistoscope was that only one person could view at a time, if it was spun to fast the image would become blurry, if it was spun backwards you wouldn’t see a correct moving image, it was only a very basic animation like a couple waltzing and you would have to rely on a mirror. This technology was only popular for 2 years as new technologies were arising which were influenced by the Phenakistoscope but gave a superior result.



How has this information helped me?

This information has helped me to understand the key points of Joseph Plateau and how he and his sons created the Phenakistoscope. I feel that I understand in a clear way how the Phenakistoscope works and how it was made. This pioneer has made a massive impact towards moving image because if he and his sons didn’t make this way of moving image then we may not have developed film and animation the way we have today.

Early Pioneer: William George Horner

Who is William Horner?

William George Horner was a famous pioneer. He was a British Mathematician and published a mode of solving numerical equations of any degree now known as Horner’s degree. 
 

What is William Horner famous for?



The Zoetrope

William Horner invented the Zoetrope in 1834 and he originally called it a Daedalum (wheel of the Devil).  The Zoetrope was based on another pioneers invention which was Plateau's phenakistoscope. Horner's invention strangely became forgotten for nearly thirty years until 1867, when it became patented in England by M. Bradley, and in America by William F. Lincoln.  Lincoln renamed the Daedalum, giving it the name of zoetrope, or wheel of life.

How does the Zoetrope work?

The zoetrope uses the persistence of vision principle to create an illusion of motion.  It works from a simple drum with an open top, supported on a central axis.  A sequence of pictures on strips of paper are placed around the inner bottom of the drum.  Slots are cut at equal distances around the outer surface of the drum, just above where the picture strips were positioned.

To create an illusion of motion, the drum is spun; the faster the rate of spin, the smoother the progression of images.  A viewer can look through the wall of the zoetrope from any point around it, and see a rapid progression of images.  Because of its design, more than one person could use the zoetrope at the same time.  

What are the factors that affected the Zoetrope?

The main factors that affected the Zoetrope from working successfully is if the drum was spun too fast, the viewer would not be able to see the moving image because it would just look like a blur, If the drum was spun backwards, it would not work because it was only made to spin one direction and when spun backwards it would just look rubbish, the image that was shown only lasted about 5 seconds of moving image and the slits were quite hard to look through because they were very thin.

How this information has helped me

Through the whole of my research, this information has helped me to understand the basic Knowledge and understanding of William George Horner.  The information that interests me the most is that how he invented the zoetrope and how you can see a picture moving just through looking in a little slit. In modern days they still use this method of motion picture.