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Art and History of Animation

"Animation can Explain What the Mind Can Conceive"
Walt Disney

(note: these notes took a whole week in class)

Reading for today

Lasseter - Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation.
This is a graphics paper version of the famous chapter from the book "The Illusion of Life."
Unfortunately, the Illusion of Life is out of print, so I couldn't tell you to buy it. It is such an important resource for animators that copies are coveted (they are quite expensive on EBay).

Assignment after today:

Watch some animation, see how principles apply. Discuss this with someone else from class.
Read Catmull for next time. (There is a lot of reading for Friday, you might want to get a head start).
Art assignment is coming soon.

Resources:

An amazing resource for early animation is the page at the Library of Congress. They have Quicktime movies of many famous, early films!
For a great timeline of the history of animation, see Dan McLaughlin's web page.
A great page about Melies.

Outline:

Goal: Understand (well, begin to) what makes great motion, so we can see how to get a computer involved.

What is animation?
Where do the animation principles come from?
What are the principles of animation?

What is Animation?

To animate: to bring to life.

Animation is about storytelling by bringing things to life (making them move)

What kinds of stories to tell?

Scientific Visualization, Entertainment, ...

What is different/unique about animation?

Unprecedented control!
Anything can happen
control over how things look
control over how things move
What do you do with all of this control?

The History

1880 - 1900

Early moving picture gadgets.

1893s - Edison's Kinetsocope.

One viewer at a time.
No intermittent mechanism.

1894 -Lois Lumiere invents the cinematograph

combination camera -projector - printer,
it was the first machine to show movies successfully on a screen
used a claw movement and perforated film that
synced to an intermittent shutter movement.

1895 - Méliès sees a cinematograph and buys one

stage magician
invented special effects
multiple exposures
one of the first to assemble multiple shots
1896 The Vanishing Lady
1896 Un Nuit Terrible (giant insect, first horror film)

1900 - Blackton's Enchanted Drawing (video)

working with Edison
first animation

1906 - Blackton's Humorous Faces

Basic animation common

1911 - Winsor McKay start's animating

First real character animation

1914 - Bray and Hurd animation patents

Hurd - cell animation
Bray - lots of other patents, partners with Hurd
Patents give a virtual monopoly

1914 - Gertie the Dinosaur

Often thought to be the first animated character

1916 - Lots of animation

Krazy Kat, Bobby Bump, ...

1920 - A big year...

Lutz's book Animated Cartoons
Disney gets first animation job (after reading Lutz's book)
Felix the cat debuts (first "personality" - merchandise, ...)

1924 - Disney's first studio goes bankrupt

moves from Kansas to LA

1927 - Disney starts making Oswald the Lucky Rabbit

$2500 per episode

1928 - Disney loses Oswald

distributor decides that he can do it cheaper
steals Disney's staff
does Oswalk on the cheap

1928 - Disney creates Mickey Mouse

owns character (didn't own Oswald)
had to compete on quality

Felix was the only popular cartoon of this period, and even he was considered a filler before a movie, not a real character. This would all change in 1928. Winkler decided to squeeze Disney out of the production of the "Oswald" cartoons by cutting his payments and stealing his animators. Disney had to come up with something different. Which he did, resulting in the birth of Mickey Mouse. However, the first Mickey short "Plane Crazy" was a failure. This short was silent and very much like an "Oswald" short. Why buy an imitation Oswald when you could have the real thing? Disney had to come up with something else fast.

Plane Crazy - first Mickey Mouse short
The Steamboat Willie Tests - fake sound sync, find audiences loved it
November, Steamboat Willie released

1929 - Skelleton Dance (Silly Symphony #1) (Disney)

First tight synchronization of music and animation

1930 - Looney Toons as a competitor 1931 - Disney starts animation school

First use of story boards by disney

1933 - Disney's three little Pigs

Disney realizes that there's no money in shorts

1936 - Disney develops multi-plane camera

key technical innovation
first films to use it appear in 1937

1937 - Snow White

From: Stephane Blardone  
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2002 12:45:27 -0600 
To: gleicher@cs.wisc.edu 
it seems that the very first technicolor movie was "La Cucaracha" 
in 1934 and the first feature length three-strip technicolor production
was "Becky Sharp" in 1935. I understand that they were acouple other
'color' movies before then (1922) but these movies only used a two-strip
technology (red and green) which   did not reproduce colors very faithfully 
(we can certainly argue that three-strip didn't either)  

From what I understand "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) and "Gone With The Wind"
(1939) were filmed around the same time new technology came up that
reduced the cost of color movies and reduced the amount of light
that was needed but were not the first color feature length movies.

Disney signed a contract with technicolor in 1931. The first color
cartoon by disney was "Flowers and Trees" for wich they won an
oscar (best cartoon)

What's the Big Deal about
Snow White?

First Feature Film: 75 minutes
has to hold attention
characters have to be convincing
have to act / tell story - not just a sequence of gags
needed to produce a LOT of animation
Had to develop the art of animation: needed good art (drawing and painting)
needed motion
Had to codify art: needed to teach people to animate
needed to make it efficient
needed to be consistent with quality
Had to assemble a large amount of talent: they were figuring it out as they went along

The "reference" for this is:
   The Illusion of Life
   by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnson
   Two of Disney's "Nine Old Men"

This book is a big coffee table book of Disney stuff.
Lots of History.
Two chapters on the principles of animation.
    and the story of its development

John Lasseter:
Disney animator (what did he do?)
Lured away from Disney in early 80's to work with Ed Catmull
Important early computer animation
tried to bring Disney animation style to computers

1987 paper
basically a rewrite of Illusion of Life chapter
uses examples from Pixar movies (not Disney movies)

The Pixar Shorts - we'll see them over the course of the semester
1984 The Adventures of Wally and Andre B
1985 Pixar splits from Lucasfilm (no movie)
1986 Luxo Jr.
1987 Red's Dream
1988 Tin Toy
1989 KnickKnack
1998 Geri's Game
2001 For the Birds (I can't show this one)

Why Principles of Animation

Why not just reality?

Anything can happen

we can do better than reality

we need to guide the viewer

only a suprise if we want to give a suprise

wierd stuff happens - need to make sure the viewer can understand it

Why do animated characters HAVE to be "more real than real"?

Real cinema: real actors
Expressive, we're used to looking at it, experience
expectations
subtlety of real actors
personalities of actors

The 12 Principles of Animation

Solid Drawing (lasseter skips this one)
Squash and Stretch
things in world are not rigid
way too easy to make things rigid w/computer or drawings
Timing
1s and 2s - more than just economics
speed, evenness
Anticipation
no suprises - unless you want them
Staging
clarity in presentation
blocking
Follow Through
overlap
keep flow
Straight Ahead vs. Pose to Pose
different ways to create animation
leads to different looks
Slow In and Slow Out
non-linear timing
Arcs
things don't move in straight lines
Exageration
pantomime
more real than real
Secondary Action
add interest and complexity
Appeal
why can't this one be codified?

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