Heroes of Animation: Then and Now

Terry Gilliam (Pre- Digital era)

Terry Gilliam was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota United States in 1940. 
In 1952 Gilliam's family moved to Los Angeles, neighbourhood of Panorama City and he attended Birmingham high school where h was class president and he also achieved straight A's.
In 1962 he graduated from Occidental College with Bachelor of Art in Political Science.

In his twenties he worked on a British TV comedy show called Monty Pythons flying circus and since then he has directed huge films like the fisher king (1991), fear and loathing in, Las Vegas (1998) and Brazil (1985).

Many of the Monty Pythons flying circus sketches were linked together by cut out animations of Terry Gilliam's, he combined high art with images cut out from old catalogues and magazines. 

Terry Gilliam's key distinctive features of his animation is that he use his own art in his animations e.g. foot squash, jointed bodies and jointed mouth. 

This is one clip of Terry Gilliam's animations:

The Miracle of Flight (1974)

In this clip starts off with birds flying around and ever since a Man first saw it, he had a desire to fly.

After we see several attempts of people attempting to fly themselves. A shepherd attempts flying by flapping his wings, only to land on top of his sheep. Another man constructs a suit shaped like a bird to fly, only to crash upon leaping off a cliff. Two more try and also fall off the cliff (one has himself covered in tar and bird feathers, and another flattens his arms, so he can merely glide)

A man uses seagulls to lift him up into the air. From below, people watch in astonishment, while one elderly woman throws bread crumbs on the pavement, muttering, "Naughty birdies." This ends the man's flight, as the gulls dive to the ground.

300 years later, a man invents the airline ticket. Other people invent various items essential to air travel, such as stewardesses, in-flight movies, and the air terminal.

The last scene shows a man goes through the airport check-in, handing his boarding pass to a stewardess, and heads off on his flight... which is getting kicked off the same high cliff where the king kicked off all his scientists several years ago. The short ends with the line "Nope. Still not got it."

Tim Burton (Post digital)

Tim Burton was born in Burbank, California, United States in 1958.
As a pre-teen Burton would make short films in his backyard, using stop motion animation techniques (one of his oldest known films is The Island of Doctor Agor, that he made when he was 13 years old). 
He studied at Burbank High School and after graduating from there he attended the California Institute of the Art in Valencia, California, to study character animation. As a student he made the shorts Stalk of the Celey Monster and King and Octopous. 

Stalk of the Celery Monster attracted the attention of Walt Disney Productions' animation department, which offered Burton an animator's apprenticeship at the studio.He worked as an animator, storyboard artist and concept artist on films such as The Fox and the Hound (1981), The Black Cauldron and Tron but his concept art never made it into the finished films. At Disney in 1982, Burton made his first short, Vincent, a six-minute black-and-white.

Tim Burton's key distinctive features of his animation are:

• Monsters-  thing that goes bump in the night. Hardly ever the main character or real menace, these monsters are built to threaten
•  Punky Rebellious Young Lady- misunderstood ladies trapped in a world of their own
• Skittish Outcast- he has built his entire career on the twitchy outcast

This is a clip of Tim Burton''s movie animations

Corpse Bride (2005)

In this movie it starts off in an unspecified Victorian-era village. Victor Van Dortand Victoria Everglot, are preparing for their arranged marriage. After Victor ruins the wedding rehearsal, he runs away and practices his wedding vows in the nearby forest, placing the wedding ring on a nearby upturned tree root. The root turns out to be the finger of a murdered woman in a tattered bridal gown, who rises from the grave claiming that she is now Victor's wife. 

In order for their marriage to become valid, Victor must repeat his vows drink the Wine of Ages (a poison). 

Victoria follows them to the church. Emily notices Victoria and as Victor prepares to drink the cup of poison to kill himself, Emily stops him and reunites him with Victoria.

She sets Victor free of his vow to marry her, giving the wedding ring back to Victor and her wedding bouquet to Victoria before exiting the church finding peace. As Victor and Victoria look on wrapped in each other's embrace.

How Animation Works

The key Principles of Animations are:

• The Phi Phenomenon 

The phi phenomenon is a result of human instinct. Our brains strive to make meaning from what we perceive. When we see different images close together our brains quickly create a relationship between them our brains try and create movement are meaning between the two images.

• The Persistence of Vision 

The Persistence of vision was first noted in 1820 by peter mark roger. 

The Persistence of vision reefers to the length of time, the retina (the screen at the back of our eyes, which is sensitive to the light) retains an image, each flash of light remains on persists.

In this animation, when i wanted it to go fast I had to have less frames and when I wanted it to go slow I had to add more frames. 

The frames rate affects the speed of an animation. Frame rate, also known as frame frequency, is the frequency (rate) at which an imaging device displays consecutive images called frames. Frames rate is expressed in frames per second (FPS). The less frames there is the quicker the animation will be or the more frames there is the slower the animation will be. 

Animation Timeline: Technology Then and Now

The Zoetrope - (William Horner 1834)

The Zoetrope is a bit like a little cinema. It's a device that produces an illusion of action from a rapid succession of static pictures.

Zoetrope is a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. Beneath the slits on the inner surface of the cylinder, is a band where the user insets the strip of frames. As the cylinder spins the user looks through the slits to see the pictures on the opposites side of the cylinder interior.

Zoopraxinoscope - (Eadward Muybridge 1878)

The Zoopraxiscope is an early device for displaying motion pictures. In 1878 it may be considered the first movie projector. It projected images from a rotating glass disks in rapid succession to give the impression of motion. The stop-motion images were initially painted onto the glass, as silhouettes.

Cinematograph (Lumiere Brothers 1894)

The Lumière Brothers create a motion-picture camera superior to Thomas Edison's kinetograph, which did not have a projector. They corrected the flaws they perceived in the kinetograph to develop a machine with both sharper images and better illumination. It could project an image onto a screen so a large audience of people could view images simultaneously.

Rotograph - (Out of the Inkwell - Max Fleisher 1917)

The Rotoscope, which was a device consisting of a film projector and easel used as an aid for achieving realistic movement for animated cartoons. It would project motion picture film through an opening in the easel, covered by a glass pane serving as a drawing surface. The image on the projected film was traced onto paper, advancing one frame at a time as each drawing would be made.

 Sound in Animation (Steamboat Willie - Disney 1928)

Steamboat Willie is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney was produced in black-and-white. The cartoon is considered the debut of Mickey and Minnie mouse, it was the first to be distributed because Walt Disney had and was the first Disney cartoon with synchronized sound.

Computer Drawing Software e.g. CAD (Computer Aided Design)

CAD is the use of computer systems to aid in the creation, modification, analysis, or optimization of a design.  It can be used to design curves and figures in 2D and 3D shapes. Before Computer Drawing Software was created, animators had to create animations by hand using just paper and pens. By hand would have taken them a long time, but now there is computer drawing software which is used to make better and more advanced animations.

CGI animation e.g. Toy story (Pixar /Disney, 1995)

Computer animation, or CGI animation, is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. Modern computer animation usually uses 3D and 2D computer graphics and faster real-time renderings. Sometimes, the target of the animation is the computer itself, but sometimes it is another medium such as film.

Starting with Pixar's Toy Story in 1995, computer-based 3D animation has met with both critical and commercial success.

Cut out Animation

Cut Out Animation

To create a cut out animation I had to pair up with one of my class mates and we had to cut out pictures from magazines, catalogues and newspaper. Once we had cut out all the pictures we had to open 'istopmotion' and create a folder with our names and then, we had to uses a web cam and a tripod then position the pictures that we had cut out on the desk in front of the web cam and take a picture of it and slow move it and take a picture again we kept doing that until all the photos were taken after we watched it all back and add more thing that we need and remove the one that we didn't need until we were happy with what we had. Then we had to export it and open it on 'final cut pro' so we could edit it, we added different sound effects to it and also added music to the background that would go with the video. Once it was done and we were happy with it we had to export it and upload it onto You Tube. We took about 4 weeks to complete our Cut Out Animation.

3 Famous cut of animations are:

• Angela Anaconda - created by Jonna Ferrone and Sue Rose 
• Charlie and Lola - created by Lauren Child
• Blue's Clues - created by Traci Paige Johnson, Todd Kessler and Angela Santomero

Terry Gilliam's animations  
Terry Gilliam started his career as an animator and strip cartoonist. In his early twenties he worked on a British TV comedy show called 'Monty Pythons Flying Circus'. Since then he has directed huge films like 'The Fisher King', 'Fear', 'Loathing in Las Vegas' and 'Brazil'. 
Many of the Monty Pythons Flying Circus sketches were linked together by the cut out animations of Terry Gilliam, he combined high art with images cut out from old catalogues and magazines. 

Gilliam's signature techniques are:

• Foot Squash 
• Jointed Mouth 
• Jointed Bodies