Traditional animation
Encyclopedia
Traditional animation, (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation
technique where each frame is drawn
by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the advent of computer animation
.
, which is a script
of sorts written with image
s as well as word
s, similar to a giant comic strip
. The images allow the animation team to plan the flow of the plot and the composition of the imagery. The storyboard artists will have regular meetings with the director
, and may have to redraw or "re-board" a sequence many times before it meets final approval.
or "scratch track" is recorded, so that the animation may be more precisely synchronize
d to the soundtrack. Given the slow, methodical manner in which traditional animation is produced, it is almost always easier to synchronize animation to a pre-existing soundtrack than it is to synchronize a soundtrack to pre-existing animation. A completed cartoon soundtrack will feature music
, sound effects, and dialogue performed by voice actors. However, the scratch track used during animation typically contains only the voices, any vocal songs the characters must sing along to, and temporary musical score tracks; the final score and sound effects are added in post-production
.
In the case of most pre-1930 sound animated cartoons, the sound was post-synched; that is, the sound track was recorded after the film elements were finished by watching the film and performing the dialogue, music, and sound effects required. Some studios, most notably Fleischer Studios
, continued to post-synch their cartoons through most of the 1930s, which allowed for the presence of the "muttered ad-libs" present in many Popeye the Sailor and Betty Boop
cartoons.
In the mid 1970s, these were known as videomatics and used primarily for test commercial projects.
Advertising agencies today employ the use of animatics to test their commercials before they are made into full up spots. Animatics use drawn artwork, with moving pieces (for example, an arm that reaches for a product, or a head that turns). Video storyboards are similar to animatics, but do not have moving pieces. Photomatics are another option when creating test spots, but instead of using drawn artwork, there is a shoot in which hundreds of digital photographs are taken. The large amount of images to choose from may make the process of creating a test commercial a bit easier, as opposed to creating an animatic, because changes to drawn art take time and money. Photomatics generally cost more than animatics, as they require a shoot and on-camera talent.
s known as maquette
s may be produced, so that an animator can see what a character looks like in three dimensions. At the same time, the background stylists will do similar work for the settings and locations in the project, and the art director
s and colour stylists will determine the art style and colour schemes to be used.
While design is going on, the timing director (who in many cases will be the main director) takes the animatic and analyzes exactly what poses, drawings, and lip movements will be needed on what frames. An exposure sheet
(or X-sheet for short) is created; this is a printed table that breaks down the action, dialogue, and sound frame-by-frame as a guide for the animators. If a film is based more strongly in music, a bar sheet may be prepared in addition to or instead of an X-sheet. Bar sheets show the relationship between the on-screen action, the dialogue, and the actual musical notation
used in the score.
on a live-action film. It is here that the background layout artists determine the camera angles, camera paths, lighting, and shading of the scene. Character layout artists will determine the major poses for the characters in the scene, and will make a drawing to indicate each pose. For short films, character layouts are often the responsibility of the director.
The layout drawings and storyboards are then spliced, along with the audio and an animatic is formed (not to be confused by its predecessor the leica reel
). The term "animatic" was originally coined by Disney animation studios.
In the traditional animation process, animators will begin by drawing sequences of animation on sheets of transparent paper perforated to fit the peg bars in their desks, often using coloured pencil
s, one picture or "frame" at a time. A peg bar is an animation tool that is used in traditional (cel) animation to keep the drawings in place. The pins in the peg bar match the holes in the paper. It is attached to the animation desk or light table depending on which is being used. A key animator or lead animator will draw the key drawings
in a scene, using the character layouts as a guide. The key animator draws enough of the frames to get across the major points of the action; in a sequence of a character
jumping across a gap, the key animator may draw a frame of the character as he is about to leap, two or more frames as the character is flying through the air, and the frame for the character landing on the other side of the gap.
Timing is important for the animators drawing these frames; each frame must match exactly what is going on in the soundtrack at the moment the frame will appear, or else the discrepancy between sound and visual will be distracting to the audience. For example, in high-budget productions, extensive effort is given in making sure a speaking character's mouth matches in shape the sound that character's actor is producing as he or she speaks.
While working on a scene, a key animator will usually prepare a pencil test of the scene. A pencil test is a preliminary version of the final animated scene; the pencil drawings are quickly photographed or scanned and synced with the necessary soundtracks. This allows the animation to be reviewed and improved upon before passing the work on to his assistant animators, who will go add details and some of the missing frames in the scene. The work of the assistant animators is reviewed, pencil-tested, and corrected until the lead animator is ready to meet with the director and have his scene sweatbox
ed, or reviewed by the director, producer, and other key creative team members. Similar to the storyboarding stage, an animator may be required to re-do a scene many times before the director will approve it.
In high-budget animated productions, often each major character will have an animator or group of animators solely dedicated to drawing that character. The group will be made up of one supervising animator, a small group of key animators, and a larger group of assistant animators. For scenes where two characters interact, the key animators for both characters will decide which character is "leading" the scene, and that character will be drawn first. The second character will be animated to react to and support the actions of the "leading" character.
Once the key animation is approved, the lead animator forwards the scene on to the clean-up department, made up of the clean-up animators and the inbetweeners. The clean-up animators take the lead and assistant animators' drawings and trace them onto a new sheet of paper, taking care in including all of the details present on the original model sheets, so that it appears that one person animated the entire film. The inbetweeners will draw in whatever frames are still missing in between the other animators' drawings. This procedure is called tweening
. The resulting drawings are again pencil-tested and sweatboxed until they meet approval.
At each stage during pencil animation, approved artwork is spliced into the Leica reel.
This process is the same for both character animation
and special effects animation, which on most high-budget productions are done in separate departments. Effects animators animate anything that moves and is not a character, including props, vehicles, machine
ry and phenomena such as fire
, rain
, and explosion
s. Sometimes, instead of drawings, a number of special processes are used to produce special effects in animated films; rain, for example, has been created in Disney animated films since the late-1930s by filming slow-motion footage of water in front of a black background, with the resulting film superimposed over the animation.
, usually on black, and white film stock
. Nowadays, pencil tests can be made using a video camera
, and computer software.
s will paint
the sets over which the action of each animated sequence will take place. These backgrounds are generally done in gouache
or acrylic paint
, although some animated productions have used backgrounds done in watercolour, oil paint
, or even crayon
. Background artists follow very closely the work of the background layout artists and colour stylists (which is usually compiled into a workbook for their use), so that the resulting backgrounds are harmonious in tone with the character designs.
, a contraction of the material name celluloid
(the original flammable cellulose nitrate was later replaced with the more stable cellulose acetate
). The outline of the drawing is inked or photocopied onto the cel, and gouache
or a similar type of paint is used on the reverse sides of the cels to add colours in the appropriate shades. In many cases, characters will have more than one colour palette assigned to them; the usage of each one depends upon the mood and lighting of each scene. The transparent quality of the cel allows for each character or object in a frame to be animated on different cels, as the cel of one character can be seen underneath the cel of another; and the opaque background will be seen beneath all of the cels.
When an entire sequence has been transferred to cels, the photography process begins. Each cel involved in a frame of a sequence is laid on top of each other, with the background at the bottom of the stack. A piece of glass is lowered onto the artwork in order to flatten any irregularities, and the composite image is then photographed by a special animation camera
, also called rostrum camera
. The cels are removed, and the process repeats for the next frame until each frame in the sequence has been photographed. Each cel has registration holes, small holes along the top or bottom edge of the cel, which allow the cel to be placed on corresponding peg bars before the camera to ensure that each cel aligns with the one before it; if the cels are not aligned in such a manner, the animation, when played at full speed, will appear "jittery." Sometimes, frames may need to be photographed more than once, in order to implement superimpositions and other camera effects. Pans are created by either moving the cels or backgrounds one step at a time over a succession of frames (the camera does not pan; it only zooms in and out).
As the scenes come out of final photography, they are spliced into the Leica reel, taking the place of the pencil animation. Once every sequence in the production has been photographed, the final film is sent for development and processing, while the final music and sound effects are added to the soundtrack. Again, editing in the traditional live-action sense is generally not done in animation, but if it is required it is done at this time, before the final print of the film is ready for duplication or broadcast.
Among the most common types of animation rostrum cameras was the Oxberry. Such cameras were always made of black anodized aluminum, and commonly had 2 pegbars, one at the top and one at the bottom of the lightbox. The Oxberry Master Series had four pegbars, two above and two below, and sometimes used a "floating pegbar" as well. The height of the column on which the camera was mounted determined the amount of zoom achievable on a piece of artwork. Such cameras were massive mechanical affairs which might weigh close to a ton and take hours to break down or set up.
In the later years of the animation rostrum camera, stepper motors controlled by computers were attached to the various axes of movement of the camera, thus saving many hours of hand cranking by human operators. A notable early use of computer cameras was in Star Wars
(1977), using the Dykstra system at Lucas' Sun Valley facility. Gradually, motion control techniques were adopted throughout the industry. While several computer camera software packages became available in the early 1980s, the Tondreau System became one of the most widely adopted.
Digital ink and paint processes gradually made these traditional animation techniques and equipment obsolete.
into a computer
, where they are coloured and processed using one or more of a variety of software packages. The resulting drawings are composited in the computer over their respective backgrounds, which have also been scanned into the computer (if not digitally painted), and the computer outputs the final film by either exporting a digital video
file, using a video cassette recorder, or printing to film
using a high-resolution output device. Use of computers allows for easier exchange of artwork between departments, studios, and even countries and continents (in most low-budget animated productions, the bulk of the animation is actually done by animators working in other countries, including South Korea
, Japan
, Singapore
, Mexico
, and India
).
The last major feature film to use traditional ink and paint was Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke
(1997); the last major animation production to use the traditional process is Cartoon Network
's Ed, Edd n Eddy
(1999–2009), although it was forced to switch to digital paint in 2004. Minor productions such as Hair High
(2004) by Bill Plympton
have used traditional cels long after the introduction of digital techniques. Digital ink and paint has been in use at Walt Disney Feature Animation
since 1989, where it was used for the final rainbow shot in The Little Mermaid
. All subsequent Disney animated features were digitally inked-and-painted (starting with The Rescuers Down Under
, which was also the first major feature film to entirely use digital ink and paint), using Disney's proprietary CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) technology, developed primarily by Pixar
(the last Disney feature using CAPS was Home on the Range). Most other studios use one of a number of other high-end software packages such as Toon Boom Harmony
, Toonz, Animo, and even consumer-level applications such as Adobe Flash
, Toon Boom Studio and TVPaint
.
For a more complex example, consider a sequence in which a girl sets a plate upon a table. The table will stay still for the entire sequence, so it can be drawn as part of the background. The plate can be drawn along with the character as the character places it on the table. However, after the plate is on the table, the plate will no longer move, although the girl will continue to move as she draws her arm away from the plate. In this example, after the girl puts the plate down, the plate can then be drawn on a separate cel from the girl. Further frames will feature new cels of the girl, but the plate does not have to be redrawn as it is not moving; the same cel of the plate can be used in each remaining frame that it is still upon the table. The cel paints were actually manufactured in shaded versions of each colour to compensate for the extra layer of cel added between the image and the camera, in this example the still plate would be painted slightly brighter to compensate for being moved one layer down.
In very early cartoons made before the use of the cel, such as Gertie the Dinosaur
(1914), the entire frame, including the background and all characters and items, were drawn on a single sheet of paper, then photographed. Everything had to be redrawn for each frame containing movements. This led to a "jittery" appearance; imagine seeing a sequence of drawings of a mountain, each one slightly different from the one preceding it. The pre-cel animation was later improved by using techniques like the slash and tear system invented by Raoul Barre
; the background and the animated objects were drawn on separate papers. A frame was made by removing all the blank parts of the papers where the objects were drawn before being placed on top of the backgrounds and finally photographed. The cel animation process was invented by Earl Hurd
and John Bray in 1915.
. The process was popularized in theatrical cartoons by United Productions of America
and used in most television
animation, especially that of Hanna-Barbera
. The end result does not look very lifelike, but is inexpensive to produce, and therefore allows cartoons to be made on small television budgets.
Animation for television is usually produced on tight budgets. In addition to the use of limited animation techniques, television animation may be shot on "threes", or even "fours", i.e. three or four frames per drawing. This translates to only eight or six drawings per second.
Creating animation loops or animation cycles is a labor-saving technique for animating repetitive motions, such as a character walking or a breeze blowing through the trees. In the case of walking, the character is animated taking a step with his right foot, then a step with his left foot. The loop is created so that, when the sequence repeats, the motion is seamless.
However, since an animation loop essentially uses the same bit of animation over and over again, it is easily detected and can in fact become distracting to an audience. In general, they are used only sparingly by productions with moderate or high budgets.
Ryan Larkin
's 1969 Academy Award
nominated National Film Board of Canada
short Walking makes creative use of loops. In addition, a promotional music video from Cartoon Network's
Groovies featuring the Soul Coughing
song "Circles" poked fun at animation loops as they are often seen in The Flintstones
, in which Fred and Barney (along with various Hanna-Barbera characters that aired on Cartoon Network), supposedly walking in a house, wonder why they keep passing the same table and vase over and over again.
are examples of the effects a multiplane camera can achieve. Different versions of the camera have been made through time, but the most famous is the one developed by the Walt Disney studio beginning with their 1937 short The Old Mill
. Another one, the "Tabletop", was developed by Fleischer Studios. The Tabletop, first used in 1934's Poor Cinderella
, used miniature sets made of paper cutouts placed in front of the camera on a rotating platform, with the cels between them. By rotating the entire setup one frame at a time in accordance with the cel animation, realistic panoramas could be created. Ub Iwerks
and Don Bluth
also built multiplane cameras for their studios.
allowed the drawings to be copied directly onto the cels, eliminating much of the "inking" portion of the ink-and-paint process. This saved time and money, and it also made it possible to put in more details and to control the size of the xeroxed objects and characters (this replaced the little known, and seldom used, photographic lines technique at Disney, used to reduce the size of animation when needed). At first it resulted in a more sketchy look, but the technique was improved upon over time.
The xerographic method was first tested by Disney in a few scenes of Sleeping Beauty
, and was first fully used in the short film Goliath II
, while the first feature entirely using this process was One Hundred and One Dalmatians
(1961). The graphic style of this film was strongly influenced by the process. Some hand inking was still used together with xerography in this and subsequent films when distinct coloured lines were needed. Later, coloured toner
s became available, and several distinct line colours could be used, even simultaneously. For instance, in The Rescuers
the characters outlines are gray. White and blue toners were used for special effects, such as snow and water.
, the APT (Animation Photo Transfer) process was a technique for transferring the animators' art onto cels. Basically, the process was a modification of a repro-photographic process; the artists' work were photographed on high-contrast "litho" film, and the image on the resulting negative was then transferred to a cel
covered with a layer of light sensitive dye. The cel was exposed through the negative. Chemicals were then used to remove the unexposed portion. Small and delicate details were still inked by hand if needed. Spencer received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement
for developing this process.
moves into the animation studio, and the outline drawings are usually scanned into the computer and filled with digital paint instead of being transferred to cels and then coloured by hand. The drawings are composited in a computer program on many transparent "layers" much the same way as they are with cels, and made into a sequence of images which may then be transferred onto film or converted to a digital video
format.
It is now also possible for animators to draw directly into a computer using a graphics tablet
, Cintiq or a similar device, where the outline drawings are done in a similar manner as they would be on paper. The Goofy
short How To Hook Up Your Home Theater
(2007) represented Disney's first project based on the paperless technology available today. Some of the advantages are the possibility and potential of controlling the size of the drawings while working on them, drawing directly on a multiplane background and eliminating the need of photographing line tests and scanning.
Though traditional animation is now commonly done with computers, it is important to differentiate computer-assisted traditional animation from 3D computer animation
, such as Toy Story
and ReBoot
. However, often traditional animation and 3D computer animation will be used together, as in Don Bluth
's Titan A.E.
and Disney
's Tarzan
and Treasure Planet
. Most anime
still use traditional animation today. DreamWorks
executive Jeffrey Katzenberg
coined the term "tradigital animation" to describe films produced by his studio which incorporated elements of traditional and computer animation equally, such as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
.
Interestingly, many modern video games such as Viewtiful Joe
, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
and others use "cel-shading
" animation filters to make their full 3D animation appear as though it were drawn in a traditional cel style. This technique was also used in the animated movie Appleseed, and cel-shaded 3D animation is typically integrated with cel animation in Disney films and in many television shows, such as the Fox
animated series Futurama
.
is a method of traditional animation invented by Max Fleischer
in 1915, in which animation is "traced" over actual film footage of actors and scenery. Traditionally, the live action will be printed out frame by frame and registered. Another piece of paper is then placed over the live action printouts and the action is traced frame by frame using a lightbox. The end result still looks hand drawn but the motion will be remarkably lifelike. Waking Life
is a full-length, rotoscoped animated movie, as is American Pop
by Ralph Bakshi
. The popular music video
for A-ha
's song "Take On Me" also featured rotoscoped animation, along with live action, in addition, Kanye West's
music video for his song Heartless
, in homage to American Pop is fully rotoscoped. In most cases, rotoscoping is mainly used to aid the animation of realistically rendered human beings, as in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
, Peter Pan
, and Sleeping Beauty
.
A method related to conventional rotoscoping was later invented for the animation of solid inanimate objects, such as cars, boats, or doors. A small live action model of the required object was built and painted white, while the edges of the model were painted with thin black lines. The object was then filmed as required for the animated scene by moving the model, the camera, or a combination of both, in real time or using stop-motion animation. The film frames were then printed on paper, showing a model made up of the painted black lines. After the artists had added details to the object not present in the live-action photography of the model, it was xeroxed onto cels. A notable example is Cruella de Vil's car in Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The process of transferring 3D objects to cels was greatly improved in the 1980s when computer graphics advanced enough to allow the creation of 3D computer generated objects that could be manipulated in any way the animators wanted, and then printed as outlines on paper before being copied onto cels using Xerography or the APT process. This technique was used in Disney films such as Oliver and Company (1988) and The Little Mermaid
(1989). This process has more or less been superseded by the use of cel-shading.
Related to rotoscoping are the methods of vectorizing
live-action footage, in order to achieve a very graphical look, like in Richard Linklater
's film A Scanner Darkly
.
s and cartoons co-exist. Early examples include the silent Out of the Inkwell
(begun in 1919) cartoons by Max Fleischer
and Walt Disney
's Alice Comedies
(begun in 1923). Live-action and animation were later combined to successful effect in features such as The Three Caballeros
(1944), Anchors Aweigh
(1945), Song of the South
(1946), Mary Poppins
(1964), Bedknobs and Broomsticks
(1971), Heavy Traffic
(1973), Coonskin
(1975) Pete's Dragon
(1977), Who Framed Roger Rabbit
(1988), Rock-a-Doodle
(1992), Cool World
(1992), The Pagemaster
(1994) Space Jam
(1996), and Looney Tunes: Back In Action
(2003). Other significant live-action hybrids include the music video for Paula Abdul
's hit song "Opposites Attract
" and numerous television commercials, especially for breakfast cereal
s marketed to children. This technique was also recently used for the Geico commercial starring Foghorn Leghorn.
Notable examples can be found in movies such as Fantasia
, Wizards
, The Lord of the Rings
, The Little Mermaid
, The Secret of NIMH
and The Thief and the Cobbler
. Today the special effects are mostly done with computers, but earlier they had to be done by hand. To produce these effects, the animators used different techniques, such as drybrush
, airbrush
, charcoal, grease pencil
, backlit animation or, during shooting, the cameraman used multiple exposures with diffusing screens, filters or gels. For instance, the Nutcracker Suite segment in Fantasia has a fairy sequence where stippled cels are used, creating a soft pastel look.
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
technique where each frame is drawn
Drawing
Drawing is a form of visual art that makes use of any number of drawing instruments to mark a two-dimensional medium. Common instruments include graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoal, chalk, pastels, markers, styluses, and various metals .An artist who...
by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the advent of computer animation
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
.
Storyboards
Traditionally-animated productions, just like other forms of animation, usually begin life as a storyboardStoryboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
, which is a script
Screenplay
A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
of sorts written with image
Image
An image is an artifact, for example a two-dimensional picture, that has a similar appearance to some subject—usually a physical object or a person.-Characteristics:...
s as well as word
Word
In language, a word is the smallest free form that may be uttered in isolation with semantic or pragmatic content . This contrasts with a morpheme, which is the smallest unit of meaning but will not necessarily stand on its own...
s, similar to a giant comic strip
Comic strip
A comic strip is a sequence of drawings arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions....
. The images allow the animation team to plan the flow of the plot and the composition of the imagery. The storyboard artists will have regular meetings with the director
Film director
A film director is a person who directs the actors and film crew in filmmaking. They control a film's artistic and dramatic nathan roach, while guiding the technical crew and actors.-Responsibilities:...
, and may have to redraw or "re-board" a sequence many times before it meets final approval.
Voice recording
Before true animation begins, a preliminary soundtrackSoundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
or "scratch track" is recorded, so that the animation may be more precisely synchronize
Synchronization
Synchronization is timekeeping which requires the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. The familiar conductor of an orchestra serves to keep the orchestra in time....
d to the soundtrack. Given the slow, methodical manner in which traditional animation is produced, it is almost always easier to synchronize animation to a pre-existing soundtrack than it is to synchronize a soundtrack to pre-existing animation. A completed cartoon soundtrack will feature music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, sound effects, and dialogue performed by voice actors. However, the scratch track used during animation typically contains only the voices, any vocal songs the characters must sing along to, and temporary musical score tracks; the final score and sound effects are added in post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
.
In the case of most pre-1930 sound animated cartoons, the sound was post-synched; that is, the sound track was recorded after the film elements were finished by watching the film and performing the dialogue, music, and sound effects required. Some studios, most notably Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios
Fleischer Studios, Inc., was an American corporation which originated as an Animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York...
, continued to post-synch their cartoons through most of the 1930s, which allowed for the presence of the "muttered ad-libs" present in many Popeye the Sailor and Betty Boop
Betty Boop
Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick. She originally appeared in the Talkartoon and Betty Boop film series, which were produced by Fleischer Studios and released by Paramount Pictures. She has also been featured in...
cartoons.
Animatic
Often, an animatic or story reel is made after the soundtrack is created, but before full animation begins. An animatic typically consists of pictures of the storyboard synchronized with the soundtrack. This allows the animators and directors to work out any script and timing issues that may exist with the current storyboard. The storyboard and soundtrack are amended if necessary, and a new animatic may be created and reviewed with the director until the storyboard is perfected. Editing the film at the animatic stage prevents the animation of scenes that would be edited out of the film; as traditional animation is a very expensive and time-consuming process, creating scenes that will eventually be edited out of the completed cartoon is strictly avoided.In the mid 1970s, these were known as videomatics and used primarily for test commercial projects.
Advertising agencies today employ the use of animatics to test their commercials before they are made into full up spots. Animatics use drawn artwork, with moving pieces (for example, an arm that reaches for a product, or a head that turns). Video storyboards are similar to animatics, but do not have moving pieces. Photomatics are another option when creating test spots, but instead of using drawn artwork, there is a shoot in which hundreds of digital photographs are taken. The large amount of images to choose from may make the process of creating a test commercial a bit easier, as opposed to creating an animatic, because changes to drawn art take time and money. Photomatics generally cost more than animatics, as they require a shoot and on-camera talent.
Design and timing
Once the animatic has been approved, it and the storyboards are sent to the design departments. Character designers prepare model sheets for all important characters and props in the film. These model sheets will show how a character or object looks from a variety of angles with a variety of poses and expressions, so that all artists working on the project can deliver consistent work. Sometimes, small statueStatue
A statue is a sculpture in the round representing a person or persons, an animal, an idea or an event, normally full-length, as opposed to a bust, and at least close to life-size, or larger...
s known as maquette
Maquette
A maquette is a small scale model or rough draft of an unfinished architectural work or a sculpture...
s may be produced, so that an animator can see what a character looks like in three dimensions. At the same time, the background stylists will do similar work for the settings and locations in the project, and the art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
s and colour stylists will determine the art style and colour schemes to be used.
While design is going on, the timing director (who in many cases will be the main director) takes the animatic and analyzes exactly what poses, drawings, and lip movements will be needed on what frames. An exposure sheet
Exposure sheet
An exposure sheet is a traditional animation tool that allows an animator to organize his thinking and give instructions to the cameraman on how the animation is to be shot. It consists of five sections, and is a bit longer and a bit narrower, than A4...
(or X-sheet for short) is created; this is a printed table that breaks down the action, dialogue, and sound frame-by-frame as a guide for the animators. If a film is based more strongly in music, a bar sheet may be prepared in addition to or instead of an X-sheet. Bar sheets show the relationship between the on-screen action, the dialogue, and the actual musical notation
Musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
used in the score.
Layout
Layout begins after the designs are completed and approved by the director. The layout process is the same as the blocking out of shots by a cinematographerCinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
on a live-action film. It is here that the background layout artists determine the camera angles, camera paths, lighting, and shading of the scene. Character layout artists will determine the major poses for the characters in the scene, and will make a drawing to indicate each pose. For short films, character layouts are often the responsibility of the director.
The layout drawings and storyboards are then spliced, along with the audio and an animatic is formed (not to be confused by its predecessor the leica reel
Leica reel
In film, specifically animation, a leica reel is a type of storyboarding device used in the production of potential series or features. Unlike actual storyboards or pitches, leica reels are used later in the development process, usually after voice actors have been hired and recorded, and thus are...
). The term "animatic" was originally coined by Disney animation studios.
Animation
Once the Animatic is finally approved by the director, animation begins.In the traditional animation process, animators will begin by drawing sequences of animation on sheets of transparent paper perforated to fit the peg bars in their desks, often using coloured pencil
Pencil
A pencil is a writing implement or art medium usually constructed of a narrow, solid pigment core inside a protective casing. The case prevents the core from breaking, and also from marking the user’s hand during use....
s, one picture or "frame" at a time. A peg bar is an animation tool that is used in traditional (cel) animation to keep the drawings in place. The pins in the peg bar match the holes in the paper. It is attached to the animation desk or light table depending on which is being used. A key animator or lead animator will draw the key drawings
Key frame
A key frame in animation and filmmaking is a drawing that defines the starting and ending points of any smooth transition. They are called "frames" because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of film...
in a scene, using the character layouts as a guide. The key animator draws enough of the frames to get across the major points of the action; in a sequence of a character
Fictional character
A character is the representation of a person in a narrative work of art . Derived from the ancient Greek word kharaktêr , the earliest use in English, in this sense, dates from the Restoration, although it became widely used after its appearance in Tom Jones in 1749. From this, the sense of...
jumping across a gap, the key animator may draw a frame of the character as he is about to leap, two or more frames as the character is flying through the air, and the frame for the character landing on the other side of the gap.
Timing is important for the animators drawing these frames; each frame must match exactly what is going on in the soundtrack at the moment the frame will appear, or else the discrepancy between sound and visual will be distracting to the audience. For example, in high-budget productions, extensive effort is given in making sure a speaking character's mouth matches in shape the sound that character's actor is producing as he or she speaks.
While working on a scene, a key animator will usually prepare a pencil test of the scene. A pencil test is a preliminary version of the final animated scene; the pencil drawings are quickly photographed or scanned and synced with the necessary soundtracks. This allows the animation to be reviewed and improved upon before passing the work on to his assistant animators, who will go add details and some of the missing frames in the scene. The work of the assistant animators is reviewed, pencil-tested, and corrected until the lead animator is ready to meet with the director and have his scene sweatbox
Sweat box
"Sweat box" is the animation industry's equivalent to rushes, or dailies. Nowadays, when an animated scene has been approved by the animation lead, it is sent to the edit suite. The editor inserts the scene into the reel for viewing in context with other scenes...
ed, or reviewed by the director, producer, and other key creative team members. Similar to the storyboarding stage, an animator may be required to re-do a scene many times before the director will approve it.
In high-budget animated productions, often each major character will have an animator or group of animators solely dedicated to drawing that character. The group will be made up of one supervising animator, a small group of key animators, and a larger group of assistant animators. For scenes where two characters interact, the key animators for both characters will decide which character is "leading" the scene, and that character will be drawn first. The second character will be animated to react to and support the actions of the "leading" character.
Once the key animation is approved, the lead animator forwards the scene on to the clean-up department, made up of the clean-up animators and the inbetweeners. The clean-up animators take the lead and assistant animators' drawings and trace them onto a new sheet of paper, taking care in including all of the details present on the original model sheets, so that it appears that one person animated the entire film. The inbetweeners will draw in whatever frames are still missing in between the other animators' drawings. This procedure is called tweening
Tweening
Inbetweening or tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion...
. The resulting drawings are again pencil-tested and sweatboxed until they meet approval.
At each stage during pencil animation, approved artwork is spliced into the Leica reel.
This process is the same for both character animation
Character animation
Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process concerning the animation of one or more characters featured in an animated work. It is usually as one aspect of a larger production and often made to enhance voice acting. The primary role of a Character Animator is to be the...
and special effects animation, which on most high-budget productions are done in separate departments. Effects animators animate anything that moves and is not a character, including props, vehicles, machine
Machine
A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
ry and phenomena such as fire
Fire
Fire is the rapid oxidation of a material in the chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction products. Slower oxidative processes like rusting or digestion are not included by this definition....
, rain
Rain
Rain is liquid precipitation, as opposed to non-liquid kinds of precipitation such as snow, hail and sleet. Rain requires the presence of a thick layer of the atmosphere to have temperatures above the melting point of water near and above the Earth's surface...
, and explosion
Explosion
An explosion is a rapid increase in volume and release of energy in an extreme manner, usually with the generation of high temperatures and the release of gases. An explosion creates a shock wave. If the shock wave is a supersonic detonation, then the source of the blast is called a "high explosive"...
s. Sometimes, instead of drawings, a number of special processes are used to produce special effects in animated films; rain, for example, has been created in Disney animated films since the late-1930s by filming slow-motion footage of water in front of a black background, with the resulting film superimposed over the animation.
Pencil test
After all the drawings are cleaned-up, they are then photographed on an animation cameraAnimation camera
An animation camera, a type of rostrum camera, is a movie camera specially adapted for frame-by-frame shooting animation or stop motion. It consists of a camera body with lens and film magazines, a stand that allows the camera to be raised and lowered, and a table, often with both top and...
, usually on black, and white film stock
Film stock
Film stock is photographic film on which filmmaking of motion pictures are shot and reproduced. The equivalent in television production is video tape.-1889–1899:...
. Nowadays, pencil tests can be made using a video camera
Video camera
A video camera is a camera used for electronic motion picture acquisition, initially developed by the television industry but now common in other applications as well. The earliest video cameras were those of John Logie Baird, based on the electromechanical Nipkow disk and used by the BBC in...
, and computer software.
Backgrounds
While the animation is being done, the background artistBackground artist
A background artist or sometimes called a background stylist or background painter is one who is involved in the process of animation who establishes the color, style, and mood of a scene drawn by an animation layout artist. The methods used can either be through traditional painting or by digital...
s will paint
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
the sets over which the action of each animated sequence will take place. These backgrounds are generally done in gouache
Gouache
Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...
or acrylic paint
Acrylic paint
Acrylic paint is fast drying paint containing pigment suspension in acrylic polymer emulsion. Acrylic paints can be diluted with water, but become water-resistant when dry...
, although some animated productions have used backgrounds done in watercolour, oil paint
Oil paint
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. The viscosity of the paint may be modified by the addition of a solvent such as turpentine or white spirit, and varnish may be added to increase the glossiness of the...
, or even crayon
Crayon
A crayon is a stick of colored wax, charcoal, chalk, or other materials used for writing, coloring, drawing, and other methods of illustration. A crayon made of oiled chalk is called an oil pastel; when made of pigment with a dry binder, it is simply a pastel; both are popular media for color...
. Background artists follow very closely the work of the background layout artists and colour stylists (which is usually compiled into a workbook for their use), so that the resulting backgrounds are harmonious in tone with the character designs.
Traditional ink-and-paint and camera
Once the clean-ups and in between drawings for a sequence are completed, they are prepared for photography, a process known as ink-and-paint. Each drawing is then transferred from paper to a thin, clear sheet of plastic called a celCel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
, a contraction of the material name celluloid
Celluloid
Celluloid is the name of a class of compounds created from nitrocellulose and camphor, plus dyes and other agents. Generally regarded to be the first thermoplastic, it was first created as Parkesine in 1862 and as Xylonite in 1869, before being registered as Celluloid in 1870. Celluloid is...
(the original flammable cellulose nitrate was later replaced with the more stable cellulose acetate
Cellulose acetate
Cellulose acetate , first prepared in 1865, is the acetate ester of cellulose. Cellulose acetate is used as a film base in photography, as a component in some adhesives, and as a frame material for eyeglasses; it is also used as a synthetic fiber and in the manufacture of cigarette filters and...
). The outline of the drawing is inked or photocopied onto the cel, and gouache
Gouache
Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...
or a similar type of paint is used on the reverse sides of the cels to add colours in the appropriate shades. In many cases, characters will have more than one colour palette assigned to them; the usage of each one depends upon the mood and lighting of each scene. The transparent quality of the cel allows for each character or object in a frame to be animated on different cels, as the cel of one character can be seen underneath the cel of another; and the opaque background will be seen beneath all of the cels.
When an entire sequence has been transferred to cels, the photography process begins. Each cel involved in a frame of a sequence is laid on top of each other, with the background at the bottom of the stack. A piece of glass is lowered onto the artwork in order to flatten any irregularities, and the composite image is then photographed by a special animation camera
Animation camera
An animation camera, a type of rostrum camera, is a movie camera specially adapted for frame-by-frame shooting animation or stop motion. It consists of a camera body with lens and film magazines, a stand that allows the camera to be raised and lowered, and a table, often with both top and...
, also called rostrum camera
Rostrum camera
A rostrum camera is a specially designed camera used in television production and filmmaking to animate a still picture or object. It consists of a moving lower platform on which the article to be filmed is placed, while the camera is placed above on a column. Many visual effects can be created...
. The cels are removed, and the process repeats for the next frame until each frame in the sequence has been photographed. Each cel has registration holes, small holes along the top or bottom edge of the cel, which allow the cel to be placed on corresponding peg bars before the camera to ensure that each cel aligns with the one before it; if the cels are not aligned in such a manner, the animation, when played at full speed, will appear "jittery." Sometimes, frames may need to be photographed more than once, in order to implement superimpositions and other camera effects. Pans are created by either moving the cels or backgrounds one step at a time over a succession of frames (the camera does not pan; it only zooms in and out).
Among the most common types of animation rostrum cameras was the Oxberry. Such cameras were always made of black anodized aluminum, and commonly had 2 pegbars, one at the top and one at the bottom of the lightbox. The Oxberry Master Series had four pegbars, two above and two below, and sometimes used a "floating pegbar" as well. The height of the column on which the camera was mounted determined the amount of zoom achievable on a piece of artwork. Such cameras were massive mechanical affairs which might weigh close to a ton and take hours to break down or set up.
In the later years of the animation rostrum camera, stepper motors controlled by computers were attached to the various axes of movement of the camera, thus saving many hours of hand cranking by human operators. A notable early use of computer cameras was in Star Wars
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope
Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, originally released as Star Wars, is a 1977 American epic space opera film, written and directed by George Lucas. It is the first of six films released in the Star Wars saga: two subsequent films complete the original trilogy, while a prequel trilogy completes the...
(1977), using the Dykstra system at Lucas' Sun Valley facility. Gradually, motion control techniques were adopted throughout the industry. While several computer camera software packages became available in the early 1980s, the Tondreau System became one of the most widely adopted.
Digital ink and paint processes gradually made these traditional animation techniques and equipment obsolete.
Digital ink and paint
The current process, termed "digital ink and paint," is the same as traditional ink and paint until after the animation drawings are completed; instead of being transferred to cels, the animators' drawings are scannedImage scanner
In computing, an image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting, or an object, and converts it to a digital image. Common examples found in offices are variations of the desktop scanner where the document is placed on a glass...
into a computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
, where they are coloured and processed using one or more of a variety of software packages. The resulting drawings are composited in the computer over their respective backgrounds, which have also been scanned into the computer (if not digitally painted), and the computer outputs the final film by either exporting a digital video
Video
Video is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.- History :...
file, using a video cassette recorder, or printing to film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
using a high-resolution output device. Use of computers allows for easier exchange of artwork between departments, studios, and even countries and continents (in most low-budget animated productions, the bulk of the animation is actually done by animators working in other countries, including South Korea
South Korea
The Republic of Korea , , is a sovereign state in East Asia, located on the southern portion of the Korean Peninsula. It is neighbored by the People's Republic of China to the west, Japan to the east, North Korea to the north, and the East China Sea and Republic of China to the south...
, Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
, Singapore
Singapore
Singapore , officially the Republic of Singapore, is a Southeast Asian city-state off the southern tip of the Malay Peninsula, north of the equator. An island country made up of 63 islands, it is separated from Malaysia by the Straits of Johor to its north and from Indonesia's Riau Islands by the...
, Mexico
Mexico
The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...
, and India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
).
The last major feature film to use traditional ink and paint was Studio Ghibli's Princess Mononoke
Princess Mononoke
is a 1997 epic Japanese animated historical fantasy feature film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki of Studio Ghibli. is not a name, but a general term in the Japanese language for a spirit or monster...
(1997); the last major animation production to use the traditional process is Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
's Ed, Edd n Eddy
Ed, Edd n Eddy
Ed, Edd n Eddy is an original animated television series created by Danny Antonucci and produced by Canadian-based a.k.a. Cartoon. It premiered on Cartoon Network on January 4, 1999. Ed, Edd n Eddy was one of Cartoon Network's longest running and most successful franchises and the longest-running...
(1999–2009), although it was forced to switch to digital paint in 2004. Minor productions such as Hair High
Hair High
Hair High is a 2004 animated comedy-horror-romance by American filmmaker Bill Plympton.-Plot:A gothic high-school comedy with a Carrie-like story. Cherri and Rod are the high-school king and queen and they justifiably rule their domain...
(2004) by Bill Plympton
Bill Plympton
William "Bill" Calvin Plympton is an American animator, former cartoonist, director, screenwriter and producer best known for his 1987 Academy Award-nominated animated short Your Face. and his series of shorts Guard Dog, Guide Dog, Hot Dog and Horn Dog.- Biography :Bill Plympton was born in...
have used traditional cels long after the introduction of digital techniques. Digital ink and paint has been in use at Walt Disney Feature Animation
Walt Disney Feature Animation
Walt Disney Animation Studios is an American animation studio headquartered in Burbank, California. The studio, founded in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio by brothers Walt and Roy Disney, is the oldest subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
since 1989, where it was used for the final rainbow shot in The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...
. All subsequent Disney animated features were digitally inked-and-painted (starting with The Rescuers Down Under
The Rescuers Down Under
The Rescuers Down Under is a 1990 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution on November 16, 1990...
, which was also the first major feature film to entirely use digital ink and paint), using Disney's proprietary CAPS (Computer Animation Production System) technology, developed primarily by Pixar
Pixar
Pixar Animation Studios, pronounced , is an American computer animation film studio based in Emeryville, California. The studio has earned 26 Academy Awards, seven Golden Globes, and three Grammy Awards, among many other awards and acknowledgments. Its films have made over $6.3 billion worldwide...
(the last Disney feature using CAPS was Home on the Range). Most other studios use one of a number of other high-end software packages such as Toon Boom Harmony
Toon Boom Animation
Toon Boom Animation Inc. is a Canadian software company that specializes in animation production software. Founded in 1994 and based in Montreal, Quebec, Toon Boom develops animation and storyboarding software for film, television, web animation, games, mobile devices, and training applications...
, Toonz, Animo, and even consumer-level applications such as Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash
Adobe Flash is a multimedia platform used to add animation, video, and interactivity to web pages. Flash is frequently used for advertisements, games and flash animations for broadcast...
, Toon Boom Studio and TVPaint
TVPaint
TVP Animation is a 2D, bitmap-based digital animation software package, developed and distributed by TVPaint Developpement ....
.
Computers and digital video cameras
Computers and digital video cameras can also be used as tools in traditional cel animation without affecting the film directly, assisting the animators in their work and making the whole process faster and easier. Doing the layouts on a computer is much more effective than doing it by traditional methods. Additionally, video cameras give the opportunity to see a "preview" of the scenes and how they will look when finished, enabling the animators to correct and improve upon them without having to complete them first. This can be considered a digital form of pencil testing.Cels
The cel is an important innovation to traditional animation, as it allows some parts of each frame to be repeated from frame to frame, thus saving labor. A simple example would be a scene with two characters on screen, one of which is talking and the other standing silently. Since the latter character is not moving, it can be displayed in this scene using only one drawing, on one cel, while multiple drawings on multiple cels will be used to animate the speaking character.For a more complex example, consider a sequence in which a girl sets a plate upon a table. The table will stay still for the entire sequence, so it can be drawn as part of the background. The plate can be drawn along with the character as the character places it on the table. However, after the plate is on the table, the plate will no longer move, although the girl will continue to move as she draws her arm away from the plate. In this example, after the girl puts the plate down, the plate can then be drawn on a separate cel from the girl. Further frames will feature new cels of the girl, but the plate does not have to be redrawn as it is not moving; the same cel of the plate can be used in each remaining frame that it is still upon the table. The cel paints were actually manufactured in shaded versions of each colour to compensate for the extra layer of cel added between the image and the camera, in this example the still plate would be painted slightly brighter to compensate for being moved one layer down.
In very early cartoons made before the use of the cel, such as Gertie the Dinosaur
Gertie the Dinosaur
Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 American animated short film by Winsor McCay. Although not the first feature-length animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality...
(1914), the entire frame, including the background and all characters and items, were drawn on a single sheet of paper, then photographed. Everything had to be redrawn for each frame containing movements. This led to a "jittery" appearance; imagine seeing a sequence of drawings of a mountain, each one slightly different from the one preceding it. The pre-cel animation was later improved by using techniques like the slash and tear system invented by Raoul Barre
Raoul Barré
Raoul Barré was a Canadian and American cartoonist, animator of the silent film era, and artist.Barré was born in Montreal, Quebec, the only artistic child of an importer of communion wine...
; the background and the animated objects were drawn on separate papers. A frame was made by removing all the blank parts of the papers where the objects were drawn before being placed on top of the backgrounds and finally photographed. The cel animation process was invented by Earl Hurd
Earl Hurd
Earl Hurd was a pioneering American animator and film director. He is noted for creating and producing the silent Bobby Bumps animated short subject series for early animation producer J.R. Bray's Bray Productions...
and John Bray in 1915.
Limited animation
In lower-budget productions, shortcuts available through the cel technique are used extensively. For example, in a scene in which a man is sitting in a chair and talking, the chair and the body of the man may be the same in every frame; only his head is redrawn, or perhaps even his head stays the same while only his mouth moves. This is known as limited animationLimited animation
Limited animation is a process of making animated cartoons that does not redraw entire frames but variably reuses common parts between frames. One of its major trademarks is the stylized design in all forms and shapes, which in the early days was referred to as modern design...
. The process was popularized in theatrical cartoons by United Productions of America
United Productions of America
United Productions of America, better known as UPA, was an American animation studio of the 1940s through present day, beginning with industrial films and World War II training films. In the late 1940s, UPA produced theatrical shorts for Columbia Pictures, most notably the Mr. Magoo series. In...
and used in most television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
animation, especially that of Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera
Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. was an American animation studio that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century...
. The end result does not look very lifelike, but is inexpensive to produce, and therefore allows cartoons to be made on small television budgets.
"Shooting on twos"
Moving characters are often shot "on twos", that is to say, one drawing is shown for every two frames of film (which usually runs at 24 frames per second), meaning there are only 12 drawings per second. Even though the image update rate is low, the fluidity is satisfactory for most subjects. However, when a character is required to perform a quick movement, it is usually necessary to revert to animating "on ones", as "twos" are too slow to convey the motion adequately. A blend of the two techniques keeps the eye fooled without unnecessary production cost.Animation for television is usually produced on tight budgets. In addition to the use of limited animation techniques, television animation may be shot on "threes", or even "fours", i.e. three or four frames per drawing. This translates to only eight or six drawings per second.
Animation loops
However, since an animation loop essentially uses the same bit of animation over and over again, it is easily detected and can in fact become distracting to an audience. In general, they are used only sparingly by productions with moderate or high budgets.
Ryan Larkin
Ryan Larkin
Ryan Larkin was a Canadian animator, artist, and sculptor who rose to fame with the psychedelic 1969 Oscar-nominated short Walking and the acclaimed Street Musique . He was the subject of the Oscar-winning film Ryan.-Home life and education:Ryan Larkin's father was an airline mechanic...
's 1969 Academy Award
Academy Award for Animated Short Film
The Academy Award for Animated Short Film is an award which has been given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as part of the Academy Awards every year since the 5th Academy Awards, covering the year 1931-32, to the present....
nominated National Film Board of Canada
National Film Board of Canada
The National Film Board of Canada is Canada's twelve-time Academy Award-winning public film producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary, animation, alternative drama and digital media productions...
short Walking makes creative use of loops. In addition, a promotional music video from Cartoon Network's
Cartoon Network
Cartoon Network is a name of television channels worldwide created by Turner Broadcasting which used to primarily show animated programming. The channel began broadcasting on October 1, 1992 in the United States....
Groovies featuring the Soul Coughing
Soul Coughing
Soul Coughing was a popular New York-based alternative rock band. The band found modest mainstream success during the mid-to-late 1990s. Soul Coughing developed a devout fanbase and have garnered largely positive response from critics. Steve Huey describes the band as "one of the most unusual cult...
song "Circles" poked fun at animation loops as they are often seen in The Flintstones
The Flintstones
The Flintstones is an animated, prime-time American television sitcom that screened from September 30, 1960 to April 1, 1966, on ABC. Produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, The Flintstones was about a working class Stone Age man's life with his family and his next-door neighbor and best friend. It...
, in which Fred and Barney (along with various Hanna-Barbera characters that aired on Cartoon Network), supposedly walking in a house, wonder why they keep passing the same table and vase over and over again.
Multiplane camera
The multiplane camera is a tool used to add depth to scenes in 2D animated movies, called the multiplane effect or the parallax process. The art is placed on different layers of glass plates, and as the camera moves vertically towards or away from the artwork levels, the camera's viewpoint appears to move through the various layers of artwork in 3D space. The panorama views in PinocchioPinocchio (1940 film)
Pinocchio is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the story The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi. It is the second film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics, and it was made after the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and was released to theaters by...
are examples of the effects a multiplane camera can achieve. Different versions of the camera have been made through time, but the most famous is the one developed by the Walt Disney studio beginning with their 1937 short The Old Mill
The Old Mill
The Old Mill is a 1937 Silly Symphonies cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Wilfred Jackson, scored by Leigh Harline, and released to theatres by RKO Radio Pictures on November 5, 1937...
. Another one, the "Tabletop", was developed by Fleischer Studios. The Tabletop, first used in 1934's Poor Cinderella
Poor Cinderella
Poor Cinderella is a 1934 Fleischer Studio animated short film featuring Betty Boop. The first entry in the Color Classics series, Poor Cinderella was Fleischer Studio's first color film, and the only appearance of Betty Boop in color during the Fleischer era.-Synopsis:In this retelling of the...
, used miniature sets made of paper cutouts placed in front of the camera on a rotating platform, with the cels between them. By rotating the entire setup one frame at a time in accordance with the cel animation, realistic panoramas could be created. Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks
Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, creator of Mickey Mouse, and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
and Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
also built multiplane cameras for their studios.
Xerography
Applied to animation by Ub Iwerks at the Walt Disney studio during the late 1950s, the electrostatic copying technique called xerographyXerography
Xerography is a dry photocopying technique invented by Chester Carlson in 1938, for which he was awarded on October 6, 1942. Carlson originally called his invention electrophotography...
allowed the drawings to be copied directly onto the cels, eliminating much of the "inking" portion of the ink-and-paint process. This saved time and money, and it also made it possible to put in more details and to control the size of the xeroxed objects and characters (this replaced the little known, and seldom used, photographic lines technique at Disney, used to reduce the size of animation when needed). At first it resulted in a more sketchy look, but the technique was improved upon over time.
The xerographic method was first tested by Disney in a few scenes of Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)
Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "La Belle au bois dormant" by Charles Perrault...
, and was first fully used in the short film Goliath II
Goliath II
Goliath II is an animated short film, produced by Walt Disney Productions and was released on January 21, 1960. It was the first time the Xerox process was used in a Disney cartoon. Sterling Holloway narrates this cartoon film, starring Kevin Corcoran. It was released to theaters in the U.S.,...
, while the first feature entirely using this process was One Hundred and One Dalmatians
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
One Hundred and One Dalmatians, often abbreviated as 101 Dalmatians, is a 1961 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the novel The Hundred and One Dalmatians by Dodie Smith...
(1961). The graphic style of this film was strongly influenced by the process. Some hand inking was still used together with xerography in this and subsequent films when distinct coloured lines were needed. Later, coloured toner
Toner
Toner is a powder used in laser printers and photocopiers to form the printed text and images on the paper. In its early form it was simply carbon powder. Then, to improve the quality of the printout, the carbon was melt-mixed with a polymer...
s became available, and several distinct line colours could be used, even simultaneously. For instance, in The Rescuers
The Rescuers
The Rescuers is a 1977 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Productions and first released on June 22, 1977. The 23rd film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film is about the Rescue Aid Society, an international mouse organization headquartered in New York and shadowing...
the characters outlines are gray. White and blue toners were used for special effects, such as snow and water.
The APT process
Invented by Dave Spencer for the 1985 Disney film The Black CauldronThe Black Cauldron (film)
The Black Cauldron is a 1985 American animated fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and originally released to theatres on July 24, 1985...
, the APT (Animation Photo Transfer) process was a technique for transferring the animators' art onto cels. Basically, the process was a modification of a repro-photographic process; the artists' work were photographed on high-contrast "litho" film, and the image on the resulting negative was then transferred to a cel
Cel
A cel, short for celluloid, is a transparent sheet on which objects are drawn or painted for traditional, hand-drawn animation. Actual celluloid was used during the first half of the 20th century, but since it was flammable and dimensionally unstable it was largely replaced by cellulose acetate...
covered with a layer of light sensitive dye. The cel was exposed through the negative. Chemicals were then used to remove the unexposed portion. Small and delicate details were still inked by hand if needed. Spencer received an Academy Award for Technical Achievement
Academy Award for Technical Achievement
The Technical Achievement Award is a kind of Scientific and Technical Award given by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to those whose particular technical accomplishments have contributed to the progress of the motion picture industry and who are given a certificate, which describes...
for developing this process.
Cel overlay
A cel overlay is a cel with inanimate objects used to give the impression of a foreground when laid on top of a ready frame. This creates the illusion of depth, but not as much as a multiplane camera would. A special version of cel overlay is called line overlay, made to complete the background instead of making the foreground, and was invented to deal with the sketchy appearance of xeroxed drawings. The background was first painted as shapes and figures in flat colours, containing rather few details. Next, a cel with detailed black lines was laid directly over it, each line drawn to add more information to the underlying shape or figure and give the background the complexity it needed. In this way, the visual style of the background will match that of the xeroxed character cels. As the xerographic process evolved, line overlay was left behind.Computers and traditional animation
The methods mentioned above describe the techniques of an animation process that originally depended on cels in its final stages, but painted cels are rare today as the computerComputer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
moves into the animation studio, and the outline drawings are usually scanned into the computer and filled with digital paint instead of being transferred to cels and then coloured by hand. The drawings are composited in a computer program on many transparent "layers" much the same way as they are with cels, and made into a sequence of images which may then be transferred onto film or converted to a digital video
Digital video
Digital video is a type of digital recording system that works by using a digital rather than an analog video signal.The terms camera, video camera, and camcorder are used interchangeably in this article.- History :...
format.
It is now also possible for animators to draw directly into a computer using a graphics tablet
Graphics tablet
A graphics tablet is a computer input device that enables a user to hand-draw images and graphics, similar to the way a person draws images with a pencil and paper. These tablets may also be used to capture data or handwritten signatures...
, Cintiq or a similar device, where the outline drawings are done in a similar manner as they would be on paper. The Goofy
Goofy
Goofy is a cartoon character created in 1932 at Walt Disney Productions. Goofy is a tall, anthropomorphic dog, and typically wears a turtle neck and vest, with pants, shoes, white gloves, and a tall hat originally designed as a rumpled fedora. Goofy is a close friend of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck...
short How To Hook Up Your Home Theater
How to Hook Up Your Home Theater
How to Hook Up Your Home Theater is a 2007 theatrical cartoon from Walt Disney Animation Studios, directed by Kevin Deters and co-directed by Stevie Wermers-Skelton. This is the first theatrical Goofy solo cartoon short made in 46 years, since Aquamania...
(2007) represented Disney's first project based on the paperless technology available today. Some of the advantages are the possibility and potential of controlling the size of the drawings while working on them, drawing directly on a multiplane background and eliminating the need of photographing line tests and scanning.
Though traditional animation is now commonly done with computers, it is important to differentiate computer-assisted traditional animation from 3D computer animation
3D computer graphics
3D computer graphics are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images...
, such as Toy Story
Toy Story
Toy Story is a 1995 American computer-animated film released by Walt Disney Pictures. It is Pixar's first feature film as well as the first ever feature film to be made entirely with CGI. The film was directed by John Lasseter and featuring the voices of Tom Hanks and Tim Allen...
and ReBoot
ReBoot
ReBoot is a Canadian CGI-animated action-adventure cartoon series that originally aired from 1994 to 2001. It was produced by Vancouver-based production company Mainframe Entertainment, Alliance Communications, BLT Productions and created by Gavin Blair, Ian Pearson, Phil Mitchell and John Grace,...
. However, often traditional animation and 3D computer animation will be used together, as in Don Bluth
Don Bluth
Donald Virgil "Don" Bluth is an American animator and independent studio owner. He is best known for his departure from The Walt Disney Company in 1979 and his subsequent directing of animated films such as The Secret of NIMH , An American Tail ,The Land Before Time , and All Dogs Go to Heaven ,...
's Titan A.E.
Titan A.E.
Titan A.E. is an American animated post-apocalyptic science fiction film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman released in 2000. The title refers to the spacecraft that is central to the plot, with A.E. meaning "After Earth."...
and Disney
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company is the largest media conglomerate in the world in terms of revenue. Founded on October 16, 1923, by Walt and Roy Disney as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Walt Disney Productions established itself as a leader in the American animation industry before diversifying into...
's Tarzan
Tarzan (1999 film)
Tarzan is a 1999 American animated feature film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures on June 18, 1999...
and Treasure Planet
Treasure Planet
Treasure Planet is a 2002 animated science fiction film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, and released by Walt Disney Pictures on November 27, 2002...
. Most anime
Anime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
still use traditional animation today. DreamWorks
DreamWorks
DreamWorks Pictures, also known as DreamWorks, LLC, DreamWorks SKG, DreamWorks II Distribution Co., LLC, DreamWorks Studios or DW Studios, LLC, is an American film studio which develops, produces, and distributes films, video games and television programming...
executive Jeffrey Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katzenberg is an American film producer and CEO of DreamWorks Animation. He is perhaps most famous for his period as chairman of The Walt Disney Company's film division, and for producing DreamWorks animated films such as Shrek, Antz, The Prince of Egypt, The Road to El Dorado, Chicken...
coined the term "tradigital animation" to describe films produced by his studio which incorporated elements of traditional and computer animation equally, such as Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron
Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron is a 2002 American animated film that was released by DreamWorks. It follows the adventures of a young Kiger mustang stallion living in the 19th century wild west. The film, written by John Fusco and directed by Kelly Asbury and Lorna Cook, was nominated for the...
and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas is a 2003 American animated swashbuckling fantasy aventure film produced by DreamWorks Animation, using traditional 2D animation with some 3D...
.
Interestingly, many modern video games such as Viewtiful Joe
Viewtiful Joe
is a video game developed by Capcom's Production Studio 4 for the Nintendo GameCube. It was originally released in 2003 as a part of the Capcom Five under director Hideki Kamiya and producer Atsushi Inaba. Viewtiful Joe was later ported to the Sony PlayStation 2 by the same design team under the...
, The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker
The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, released as in Japan, is an action-adventure game and the tenth installment in The Legend of Zelda series. It was released for the Nintendo GameCube in Japan on December 13, 2002, in North America on March 24, 2003, in Europe on May 2, 2003, and in Australia on...
and others use "cel-shading
Cel-shaded animation
Cel-shaded animation is a type of non-photorealistic rendering designed to make computer graphics appear to be hand-drawn. Cel-shading is often used to mimic the style of a comic book or cartoon. It is a somewhat recent addition to computer graphics, most commonly turning up in video games...
" animation filters to make their full 3D animation appear as though it were drawn in a traditional cel style. This technique was also used in the animated movie Appleseed, and cel-shaded 3D animation is typically integrated with cel animation in Disney films and in many television shows, such as the Fox
Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox Broadcasting Company, commonly referred to as Fox Network or simply Fox , is an American commercial broadcasting television network owned by Fox Entertainment Group, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. Launched on October 9, 1986, Fox was the highest-rated broadcast network in the...
animated series Futurama
Futurama
Futurama is an American animated science fiction sitcom created by Matt Groening and developed by Groening and David X. Cohen for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series follows the adventures of a late 20th-century New York City pizza delivery boy, Philip J...
.
Rotoscoping
RotoscopingRotoscope
Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator...
is a method of traditional animation invented by Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
in 1915, in which animation is "traced" over actual film footage of actors and scenery. Traditionally, the live action will be printed out frame by frame and registered. Another piece of paper is then placed over the live action printouts and the action is traced frame by frame using a lightbox. The end result still looks hand drawn but the motion will be remarkably lifelike. Waking Life
Waking Life
Waking Life is an American animated film , directed by Richard Linklater and released in 2001. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame.The film focuses on the nature of dreams, consciousness, and...
is a full-length, rotoscoped animated movie, as is American Pop
American Pop
American Pop is a 1981 American animated musical drama film produced and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film tells the story of four generations of a Russian Jewish immigrant family of musicians whose careers parallel the history of American popular music....
by Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi
Ralph Bakshi is an Israeli-American director of animated and live-action films. In the 1970s, he established an alternative to mainstream animation through independent and adult-oriented productions. Between 1972 and 1992, he directed nine theatrically released feature films, five of which he wrote...
. The popular music video
Music video
A music video or song video is a short film integrating a song and imagery, produced for promotional or artistic purposes. Modern music videos are primarily made and used as a marketing device intended to promote the sale of music recordings...
for A-ha
A-ha
A-ha were a Norwegian pop band formed in Oslo in 1982. The band was founded by Morten Harket , Magne Furuholmen , and Pål Waaktaar...
's song "Take On Me" also featured rotoscoped animation, along with live action, in addition, Kanye West's
Kanye West
Kanye Omari West is an American rapper, singer, and record producer. West first rose to fame as a producer for Roc-A-Fella Records, where he eventually achieved recognition for his work on Jay-Z's album The Blueprint, as well as hit singles for musical artists including Alicia Keys, Ludacris, and...
music video for his song Heartless
Heartless (Kanye West song)
"Heartless" is a song by American hip hop artist Kanye West, released on November 4, 2008 digitally as the second single for his fourth studio album, 808s & Heartbreak. It debuted at the number four spot on the Billboard Hot 100 where it eventually peaked at number two and reached number-one on the...
, in homage to American Pop is fully rotoscoped. In most cases, rotoscoping is mainly used to aid the animation of realistically rendered human beings, as in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated film based on Snow White, a German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full-length cel-animated feature in motion picture history, as well as the first animated feature film produced in America, the first produced in full...
, Peter Pan
Peter Pan (1953 film)
Peter Pan is a 1953 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the play Peter Pan, or The Boy Who Wouldn't Grow Up by J. M. Barrie. It is the fourteenth film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series and was originally released on February 5, 1953 by RKO Pictures...
, and Sleeping Beauty
Sleeping Beauty (1959 film)
Sleeping Beauty is a 1959 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and based on the fairy tale "La Belle au bois dormant" by Charles Perrault...
.
A method related to conventional rotoscoping was later invented for the animation of solid inanimate objects, such as cars, boats, or doors. A small live action model of the required object was built and painted white, while the edges of the model were painted with thin black lines. The object was then filmed as required for the animated scene by moving the model, the camera, or a combination of both, in real time or using stop-motion animation. The film frames were then printed on paper, showing a model made up of the painted black lines. After the artists had added details to the object not present in the live-action photography of the model, it was xeroxed onto cels. A notable example is Cruella de Vil's car in Disney's One Hundred and One Dalmatians. The process of transferring 3D objects to cels was greatly improved in the 1980s when computer graphics advanced enough to allow the creation of 3D computer generated objects that could be manipulated in any way the animators wanted, and then printed as outlines on paper before being copied onto cels using Xerography or the APT process. This technique was used in Disney films such as Oliver and Company (1988) and The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...
(1989). This process has more or less been superseded by the use of cel-shading.
Related to rotoscoping are the methods of vectorizing
Vector graphics
Vector graphics is the use of geometrical primitives such as points, lines, curves, and shapes or polygon, which are all based on mathematical expressions, to represent images in computer graphics...
live-action footage, in order to achieve a very graphical look, like in Richard Linklater
Richard Linklater
-Early life:Linklater was born in Houston, Texas. He studied at Sam Houston State University and left midway through his stint in college to work on an off-shore oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. While working on the rig he read a lot of literature, but on land he developed a love of film through...
's film A Scanner Darkly
A Scanner Darkly (film)
A Scanner Darkly is a 2006 science fiction thriller directed by Richard Linklater based on the novel of the same name by Philip K. Dick. The film tells the story of identity and deception in a near-future dystopia constantly under intrusive high-technology police surveillance in the midst of a drug...
.
Live-action hybrids
Similar to the computer animation and traditional animation hybrids described above, occasionally a production will marry both live-action and animated footage. The live-action parts of these productions are usually filmed first, the actors pretending that they are interacting with the animated characters, props, or scenery; animation will then be added into the footage later to make it appear as if it has always been there. Like rotoscoping, this method is rarely used, but when it is, it can be done to terrific effect, immersing the audience in a fantasy world where humanHuman
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
s and cartoons co-exist. Early examples include the silent Out of the Inkwell
Out of the Inkwell
Out of the Inkwell was a major animated series of the silent era produced by Max Fleischer from 1918 to 1929.The series was the result of three short experimental films that Max Fleischer independently produced in the period of 1914-1916 to demonstrate his invention, the Rotoscope, which was a...
(begun in 1919) cartoons by Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an American animator. He was a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios...
and Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's Alice Comedies
Alice Comedies
The "Alice Comedies" are a series of animated cartoonscreated by Walt Disney in the 1920s, in which a live action little girl named Alice and an animated cat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape....
(begun in 1923). Live-action and animation were later combined to successful effect in features such as The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros
The Three Caballeros is a 1944 American animated feature film, produced by Walt Disney and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures. The film premiered in Mexico City on December 21, 1944. It was released in the United States on February 3, 1945...
(1944), Anchors Aweigh
Anchors Aweigh (film)
Anchors Aweigh is a 1945 American musical comedy film directed by George Sidney in which two sailors go on a four-day shore leave in Hollywood, accompanied by music and song, meet an aspiring young singer and try to help her get an audition at MGM...
(1945), Song of the South
Song of the South
Song of the South is a 1946 American musical film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures. The film is based on the Uncle Remus cycle of stories by Joel Chandler Harris. The live actors provide a sentimental frame story, in which Uncle Remus relates the folk tales of the...
(1946), Mary Poppins
Mary Poppins (film)
Mary Poppins is a 1964 musical film starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, produced by Walt Disney, and based on the Mary Poppins books series by P. L. Travers with illustrations by Mary Shepard. The film was directed by Robert Stevenson and written by Bill Walsh and Don DaGradi, with songs by...
(1964), Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a 1971 musical film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Buena Vista Distribution Company which combines live action and animation and was released in North America on December 13, 1971...
(1971), Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic
Heavy Traffic is a 1973 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi. The film, which begins, ends, and occasionally combines with live-action, explores the often surreal fantasies of a young New York cartoonist named Michael Corleone, using pinball imagery as a metaphor for...
(1973), Coonskin
Coonskin (film)
Coonskin is a 1975 American animated film written and directed by Ralph Bakshi, about an African American rabbit, fox, and bear who rise to the top of the organized crime racket in Harlem, encountering corrupt law enforcement, con artists and the Mafia...
(1975) Pete's Dragon
Pete's Dragon
Pete's Dragon is a 1977 live-action/animated musical film from Walt Disney Productions and the first Disney film to be recorded in the Dolby Stereo sound system...
(1977), Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a 1988 American fantasy-comedy-noir film directed by Robert Zemeckis and released by Touchstone Pictures. The film combines live action and animation, and is based on Gary K. Wolf's novel Who Censored Roger Rabbit?, which depicts a world in which cartoon characters...
(1988), Rock-a-Doodle
Rock-A-Doodle
Rock-a-Doodle is a 1992 American animated re-telling of Edmond Rostand's comedy, Chantecler. This film was directed by Don Bluth, produced by Goldcrest Films for The Samuel Goldwyn Company, and originally released in the United States on April 3, 1992.-Plot:Chanticleer is a proud rooster whose...
(1992), Cool World
Cool World
Cool World is a 1992 American live-action/animated film directed by Ralph Bakshi, and starring Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne, and Brad Pitt. It tells the story of a cartoonist who finds himself in the animated world he created, and is seduced by one of his characters, a comic strip vamp who wants to...
(1992), The Pagemaster
The Pagemaster
The Pagemaster is a 1994 adventure fantasy film starring Macaulay Culkin, Christopher Lloyd, Patrick Stewart, Whoopi Goldberg, Frank Welker, and Leonard Nimoy...
(1994) Space Jam
Space Jam
Aside from Jordan, a number of NBA players and coaches appeared in the film. Larry Bird portrays a friend of Jordan who joins him for a game of golf. When the Monstars steal the NBA players' talent, they invade a game between the Phoenix Suns and the New York Knicks, causing the Knicks' Patrick...
(1996), and Looney Tunes: Back In Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action
Looney Tunes: Back in Action is a 2003 American live action/animated adventure comedy film directed by Joe Dante and starring Brendan Fraser, Jenna Elfman, Timothy Dalton, and Steve Martin. The film is essentially a feature-length Looney Tunes cartoon, with all the wackiness and surrealism typical...
(2003). Other significant live-action hybrids include the music video for Paula Abdul
Paula Abdul
Paula Julie Abdul is an American singer-songwriter, dancer, choreographer, actress and television personality.In the 1980s, Abdul rose from cheerleader for the Los Angeles Lakers to highly sought-after choreographer at the height of the music video era before scoring a string of pop music-R&B hits...
's hit song "Opposites Attract
Opposites Attract
"Opposites Attract" is a song recorded by Paula Abdul, featured on her debut album Forever Your Girl. It was written and produced by Oliver Leiber, who came up with the title after browsing a bookstore. Vocals on the song, in addition to Abdul, were provided by Bruce DeShazer and Marv Gunn, aka...
" and numerous television commercials, especially for breakfast cereal
Cereal
Cereals are grasses cultivated for the edible components of their grain , composed of the endosperm, germ, and bran...
s marketed to children. This technique was also recently used for the Geico commercial starring Foghorn Leghorn.
Special effects animation
Besides traditional animated characters, objects and backgrounds, many other techniques are used to create special elements such as smoke, lightning and "magic", and to give the animation in general a distinct visual appearance.Notable examples can be found in movies such as Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
, Wizards
Wizards (film)
Wizards is a 1977 American animated post-apocalyptic science fantasy film about the battle between two wizards, one representing the forces of magic and one representing the forces of industrial technology. It was written, produced, and directed by Ralph Bakshi...
, The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings (1978 film)
J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is a 1978 American fantasy film directed by Ralph Bakshi. It contains both animation and live action footage which is rotoscoped to give it a more consistent look throughout the length of the movie. It is an adaptation of the first half of the high fantasy...
, The Little Mermaid
The Little Mermaid (1989 film)
The Little Mermaid is a 1989 American animated film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and based on the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name. Distributed by Walt Disney Pictures, the film was originally released to theaters on November 14, 1989 and is the twenty-eighth film in...
, The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of NIMH is a 1982 animated film directed by Don Bluth in his directorial debut. It is an adaptation of Robert C. O'Brien's 1971 children's novel Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. The film was produced by Aurora Pictures and released by United Artists. While released to critical acclaim,...
and The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler is an animated feature film, famous for its animation and its long, troubled history. The film was conceived by Canadian animator Richard Williams, who worked 28 years on the project. Beginning production in 1964, Williams intended The Thief and the Cobbler to be his...
. Today the special effects are mostly done with computers, but earlier they had to be done by hand. To produce these effects, the animators used different techniques, such as drybrush
Drybrush
Drybrush is a painting technique in which a paint brush that is relatively dry, but still holds paint, is used. Load is applied to a dry support such as paper or primed canvas...
, airbrush
Airbrush
An airbrush is a small, air-operated tool that sprays various media including ink and dye, but most often paint by a process of nebulization. Spray guns developed from the airbrush and are still considered a type of airbrush.-History:...
, charcoal, grease pencil
Grease pencil
The grease pencil, a wax writing tool also known as a wax pencil, china marker, , is made of hardened colored wax and is useful for marking on hard, glossy non-porous surfaces such as porcelain, glass, polished stone, plastic, ceramics and other glazed, lacquered or polished surfaces, as well as...
, backlit animation or, during shooting, the cameraman used multiple exposures with diffusing screens, filters or gels. For instance, the Nutcracker Suite segment in Fantasia has a fairy sequence where stippled cels are used, creating a soft pastel look.
See also
- Computer generated imagery
- Stop motionStop motionStop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
- Rubber hose animationRubber hose animationRubber hose animation was the first animation style that became standardized in the American animation industry. The defining feature of the style is "rubber hose limbs" — arms, and sometimes legs, that are typically simple, flowing curves, without articulation .In the early days of the hand...
- List of animated feature-length films
- List of animated short series
- List of animated television series
- List of animation studios