Drawn Animation

Traditional animation, also referred to as classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation, is the oldest and historically the most popular form of animation. In a traditionally-animated cartoon, each frame is drawn by hand.

Frame rate, or frame frequency, is the frequency (rate) at which an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. The term applies equally well to computer graphics, video cameras, film cameras, and motion capture systems.

In animation each drawing per second is used twice and animation frame rate is 24 frames per second. Because each drawing is used twice only 12 seperate frames are used a second. This makes sure the animation runs soothly.

Examples of famous cell animation would be Walt Disney, Cartoon Network's series Ed Edd n Eddy, and the Simpsons.

Cel animation is very time consuming aswell as rewarding. Everything has to be percise in order for the animation to be smooth. Cel animation in comparison to Cut out animation are very different. Although both techniques are seen as cartoons, both can be altered to be viewed otherwise. The process of cut out animation is stop motion, taking pictures of the cut outs and moving them slightly each frame. Both animation techniques obviously use frames, but only cel animation can use certain frames numerous times unlike cut out animation.

In class we did a little experiment. The whole class got into pairs, I was paired with Proy. The expirement for us was that Proy had to pretend to write a cheque and I would time how long it took her to write it. We repeated this experiment 3 times, the first attemp took 10 seconds, the second attempt took 6 and the last attempt took 8 seconds. Afterwards we calculated the average time it took her to write the cheque, and the result was 8 seconds. The reason for this was to see how many drawings had to be made to create a cartoon of Proy writing a cheque. We concluded that we would need 96 drawings if we were to make a short animated clip of Proy writing her cheque.

The last exercise we did in class today was to draw cartoons. We were given a sheet that guides us to draw the head of a cartoon bear.

Object Animation!

Object animation is a form of stop motion animation that involves the animated movements of any non-drawn objects such as toys, blocks, dolls, etc. which are not fully malleable, such as clay or wax, and not designed to look like a recognizable human or animal character.

Attempted to create a short clip of stop motion animation today with my media class, and I must say I think it was a huge SUCCESS.
CHECK IT OUT!

Cut Out Animation!

Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs. The world's earliest known animated feature films were cutout animations (made in Argentina by Quirino Cristiani); as is the world's earliest surviving animated feature.

Today, cutout-style animation is frequently produced using computers, with scanned images or vector graphics taking the place of physically cut materials. The TV series South Park is a notable example (though first episodes were made with actual paper cutouts) as are Angela Anaconda and more recently, Charlie and Lola. South Park is now made with Maya and Corel Draw. One of the most famous animators still using traditional cutout animation today is Yuriy Norshteyn.

persistance of Vision!

Persistence of vision is the phenomenon of the eye by which an afterimage is thought to persist for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second on the retina.

The myth of persistence of vision is the mistaken belief that human perception of motion (brain centered) is the result of persistence of vision (eye centred). The myth was debunked in 1912 by Wertheimer but persists in many citations in many classic and modern film-theory texts.A more plausible theory to explain motion perception (at least on a descriptive level) are two distinct perceptual illusions: phi phenomenon and beta movement.

A visual form of memory known as iconic memory has been described as the cause of this phenomenon. Although psychologists and physiologists have rejected the relevance of this theory to film viewership, film academics and theorists generally have not. Some scientists nowadays consider the entire theory a myth.

In contrasting persistence of vision theory with phi phenomena, a critical part of understanding that emerges with these visual perception phenomena is that the eye is not a camera. In other words vision is not as simple as light passing through a lens, since the brain has to make sense of the visual data the eye provides and construct a coherent picture of reality. Joseph Anderson and Barbara Fisher argue that the phi phenomena privileges a more constructionist approach to the cinema (David Bordwell, Noël Carroll, Kirsten Thompson), whereas the persistence of vision privileges a realist approach (Andre Bazin, Christian Metz, Jean-Louis Baudry).

The discovery of persistence of vision is attributed to the Roman poet Lucretius, although he only mentions it in connection with images seen in a dream. In the modern era, some stroboscopic experiments performed by Peter Mark Roget in 1824 were also cited as the basis for the theory.

Phi Phenomenon!

The phi phenomenon is a perceptual illusion described by Max Wertheimer in his 1912 Experimental Studies on the Seeing of Motion, in which a disembodied perception of motion is produced by a succession of still images. In discussions of the perception of film and video it is often confused with beta movement, but it is a distinct phenomenon not directly involved in the perception of motion pictures.

The classic phi phenomenon experiment involves a viewer or audience watching a screen, upon which the experimenter projects two images in succession. The first image depicts a line on the left side of the frame. The second image depicts a line on the right side of the frame. The images may be shown quickly, in rapid succession, or each frame may be given several seconds of viewing time. Once both images have been projected, the experimenter asks the viewer or audience to describe what they saw.

At certain combinations of spacing and timing of the two images, a viewer will report a sensation of motion in the space between and around the two lines, even though the viewer also perceives two distinct lines and not the continuous motion of objects referred to as Beta movement. The phi phenomenon looks like a moving zone or cloud of background color surrounding the flashing objects. The discovery of the phi phenomenon was a significant milestone in Gestalt psychology.

Zoetropes!

The zoetrope is a mechanical optical device invented in 1834 by William George Horner, a British mathematician. It became a popular Victorian parlor toy until it was replaced by modern film technology.



Before the Zoetrope

Horner originally called the device a daedalum, which means "wheel of the devil." It was similar to the earlier phenakistoscope (invented by Joseph Plateau in 1831), but did not require mirrors. Unlike the phenakistoscope, the daedalum could be viewed by more than one person.



How the Zoetrope Works

The zoetrope looks like a drum with an open top on a centered axis. A strip of hand-drawn pictures is attached to the bottom of the inside. When the drum is spun on its axis, the viewer looks in through slots on the side, and the pictures seem to move. Looking at the pictures through the slots keeps the images from blurring together. The faster the drum is spun, the smoother the "movie" appears.



Persistence of Motion

The zoetrope is the third optical toy, after the thaumatrope and the phenakistoscope, to use the principle of persistence of vision to create the illusion of motion. The slightly-changing pictures inside the zoetrope fool the eye into thinking that the minute changes are actually the object moving.



Zoetrope Becomes Obsolete

The zoetrope lost popularity when the praxinoscope was invented by Emile Reynaud in 1877. The praxinoscope's picture was clearer and brighter than the zoetrope's.

Animation! {@_@}

explain: zoetropes
phi phenomenon
persistance of vision

explain, evalutate and give examples for cut out animation and object animation

upload and embeb video to blog.