1.
Traditional animation
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Traditional 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, Animation productions begin by deciding on a story. The oral or literary source material must then be converted into a film script. The storyboard has a somewhat similar to a comic book, and it shows the sequence of shots as consecutive sketches that also indicate transitions, camera angles. The images allow the team to plan the flow of the plot. The storyboard artists will have meetings with the director and may have to redraw or re-board a sequence many times before it meets final approval. Before true animation begins, a soundtrack or scratch track is recorded. A completed cartoon soundtrack will feature music, sound effects, 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 and 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, 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, 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 may require a shoot, however, the emergence of affordable stock photography and image editing software permits the inexpensive creation of photomatics using stock elements and photo composites. 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 are used to help standardize appearance, poses, and gestures. These model sheets will show how a character or object looks from a variety of angles with a variety of poses, sometimes, small statues known as maquettes may be produced, so that an animator can see what a character looks like in three dimensions. While design is going on, the director takes the animatic and analyzes exactly what poses, drawings. An exposure sheet is created, this is a table that breaks down the action, dialogue
2.
Animated cartoon
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Animated cartoons are still created for commercial, educational, and personal purposes to this day. The first animated projection was created in France, by Charles-Émile Reynaud, Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888. On 28 October 1892, he projected the first animation in public, Pauvre Pierrot and this film is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used. His films were not photographed, but drawn directly onto the transparent strip, in 1900, more than 500,000 people had attended these screenings. The first animated projection was Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by newspaper cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton, in the movie, a cartoonists line drawings of two faces were animated on a blackboard. The two faces smiled and winked, and the man blew smoke in the ladys face, also. The first animated projection in the sense was Fantasmagorie by the French director Émile Cohl in 1908. This was followed by two films, Le Cauchemar du fantoche and Un Drame chez les fantoches, all completed in 1908. One of the very first successful animated cartoons was Gertie the Dinosaur by Winsor McCay and it is considered the first example of true character animation. At first, animated cartoons were black-and-white and silent, felix the Cat and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit are notable examples. From the 1920s to 1960s, theatrical cartoons were produced in huge numbers, MGM, and UPA were the largest studios producing these 5- to 10-minute shorts. Other studios included Walter Lantz, DePatie-Freleng, Charles Mintz Studios, Famous Studios, the first cartoon to use a soundtrack was in 1926 with Max Fleischers My Old Kentucky Home. However the Fleischers used a De Forest sound system and the sound was not completely synchronized with the film, walt Disneys 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie starring Mickey Mouse was the first to use a click track during the recording session, which produced better synchronism. Mickey Mousing became a term for any action that was perfectly synchronized with music. The music used is original most of the time, but musical quotation is often employed, animated characters usually performed the action in loops, i. e. drawings were repeated over and over. Although other producers had made films earlier using 2-strip color, Disney produced the first cartoon in 3-strip Technicolor, Flowers and Trees, technicians at the Fleischer studio invented rotoscoping, in which animators trace live action in order to make animation look more realistic. However, rotoscoping made the animation look stiff and the technique was used more for studying human and animal movement. Today, traditional animation uses traditional methods, but is aided by computers in certain areas and this gives the animator new tools not available that could not be achieved using old techniques
3.
Winsor McCay
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Zenas Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur, for contractual reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific and he started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and began illustrating newspapers and magazines in 1898. He joined the New York Herald in 1903, where he created comic strips such as Little Sammy Sneeze. In 1905, his signature strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted, the strip demonstrated McCays strong graphic sense and mastery of color and linear perspective. McCay experimented with the elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact. McCay also produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit. McCay was an animation pioneer, between 1911 and 1921 he self-financed and animated ten films, some of which survive only as fragments. The first three served in his act, Gertie the Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur. McCay and his assistants worked for months on his most ambitious film, The Sinking of the Lusitania. Lusitania did not enjoy as much success as the earlier films. In his drawing, McCay made bold, prodigious use of perspective, particularly in detailed architecture. He textured his editorial cartoons with copious fine hatching, and made color a central element in Little Nemo and his comic strip work has influenced generations of cartoonists and illustrators. The technical level of McCays animation—its naturalism, smoothness, and scale—was unmatched until Walt Disneys feature films arrived in the 1930s and he pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that were to become standard. McCays paternal grandparents, farmers Donald and Christiana McKay, immigrated from Scotland to Upper Canada in the mid-1830s, McCays father, Robert McKay was born in Woodstock, Upper Canada, the third of six children. McCays maternal grandparents, Peter and Mary Murray, were also Scottish immigrants and their daughter Janet was the third of nine children. Robert was a member of King Solomons No.43 Masonic Lodge in Woodstock, in 1862, Robert first traveled to the U. S. Robert and the twenty-five-year-old Janet married on January 8,1866, at Woodstocks Methodist Episcopal Church. The couple moved across the Canada–US border later in the year and settled in Spring Lake, Michigan, Robert was employed by American entrepreneur Zenas G. Winsor, with whom he had made contact in Canada
4.
Gertie the Dinosaur
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Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. It is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur, McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaudeville act, the frisky, childlike Gertie did tricks at the command of her master. McCays employer William Randolph Hearst later curtailed McCays vaudeville activities, so McCay added an introductory sequence to the film for its theatrical release. McCay abandoned a sequel, Gertie on Tour, after producing about a minute of footage, although Gertie is popularly thought to be the earliest animated film, McCay had earlier made Little Nemo and How a Mosquito Operates. The American J. Gertie was the first film to use techniques such as keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer. It influenced the next generation of such as the Fleischer brothers, Otto Messmer, Paul Terry. John Randolph Bray unsuccessfully tried to patent many of McCays animation techniques and is said to have been behind a plagiarized version of Gertie that appeared a year or two after the original. Gertie is the best preserved of McCays films—some of which have been lost or survive only in fragments—and has been preserved in the US National Film Registry. Winsor McCay had worked prolifically as a commercial artist and cartoonist by the time he started making comic strips such as Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. In 1906, McCay began performing on the circuit, doing chalk talks—performances in which he drew before live audiences. Inspired by the books his son brought home, McCay came to see the possibility of making moving pictures of his cartoons. He claimed that he was the first man in the world to make animated cartoons, though he was preceded by the American James Stuart Blackton, McCays first film starred his Little Nemo characters and debuted in movie theatres in 1911, he soon incorporated it into his vaudeville act. He followed it in 1912 with How a Mosquito Operates, in which a giant, McCay gave the mosquito a personality and balanced humor with the horror of the nightmare situation. McCay conferred with the American Historical Society in 1912, and announced plans for the presentation of pictures showing the great monsters that used to inhabit the earth and he spoke of the serious and educational work that the animation process could enable. McCay considered a number of names before settling on Gertie, his production notebooks used Jessie the Dinosaurus. in a sweet voice. He thought it was a name, but wanted it to be a girls name instead of a boys. Gertie the Dinosaur is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur and its star Gertie does tricks much like a trained elephant. She is animated in a naturalistic style unprecedented for the time, she breathes rhythmically, she shifts her weight as she moves, McCay imbued her with a personality—while friendly, she could be capricious, ignoring or rebelling against her masters commands
5.
The Sinking of the Lusitania
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The Sinking of the Lusitania is a silent animated short film by American cartoonist Winsor McCay. It is a work of propaganda re-creating the never-photographed 1915 sinking of the British liner RMS Lusitania, at twelve minutes it has been called the longest work of animation at the time of its release. The film is the earliest surviving animated documentary and serious, dramatic work of animation, in 1915 a German submarine torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania,128 Americans were among the 1,198 dead. In 1916, McCay rebelled against his employers stance and began work on the patriotic Sinking of the Lusitania on his own time with his own money, the film followed McCays earlier successes in animation, Little Nemo, How a Mosquito Operates, and Gertie the Dinosaur. McCay and his assistants spent twenty-two months making the film, the film opens with a live-action prologue in which McCay busies himself studying a picture of the Lusitania as a model for his film-in-progress. Intertitles boast of McCay as the originator and inventor of Animated Cartoons, McCay is shown working with a group of anonymous assistants on the first record of the sinking of the Lusitania. The liner passes the Statue of Liberty and leaves New York Harbor, after some time, a German submarine cuts through the waters and fires a torpedo at the Lusitania, which billows smoke that builds until it envelops the screen. Passengers scramble to lower lifeboats, some of which capsize in the confusion, the liner tilts from one side to the other and passengers are tossed into the ocean. A second blast rocks the Lusitania, which sinks slowly into the deep as more passengers fall off its edges, the liner vanishes from sight, and the film closes with a mother struggling to keep her baby above the waves. An intertitle declares, The man who fired the shot was decorated for it by the Kaiser, and yet they tell us not to hate the Hun. Winsor McCay produced prodigiously detailed and accurate drawings since early in life and he earned a living as a young man drawing portraits and posters in dime museums, and attracted large crowds with his ability to draw quickly in public. He began working as a newspaper illustrator full-time in 1898, and his greatest comic strip success was the childrens fantasy comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland, which he began in 1905. In 1906, McCay began performing on the circuit, doing chalk talks—performances during which he drew in front of a live audience. Inspired by the books his son brought home, McCay said he came to see the possibility of making moving pictures of his cartoons. His first animated film, Little Nemo, was composed of four thousand drawings on rice paper and his next film, How a Mosquito Operates, naturalistically shows a giant mosquito draw blood from a sleeping man until it burst. McCay followed this with a film that became a part of his vaudeville shows, in Gertie the Dinosaur. The British liner RMS Lusitania briefly held the record for largest passenger ship upon its completion in 1906, the Germans employed submarines in the North Atlantic during World War I, and in April 1915 the German government issued a warning that it would target British civilian ships. The Lusitania was torpedoed on May 7,1915, during a voyage from New York,128 Americans were among the 1,198 who lost their lives
6.
Merrie Melodies
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Merrie Melodies is an American animated series of comedy short films produced by Warner Bros. between 1931 and 1969, during the golden age of American animation. As with its parent series, Looney Tunes, Merrie Melodies featured some of the most famous cartoon characters ever created, including Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig and Elmer Fudd. Merrie Melodies was originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures from 1931 to 1933, Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944, and the newly renamed Warner Bros. Merrie Melodies was outsourced to DePatie-Freleng Enterprises and Format Films from 1964 to 1967, cartoons resumed production for the series final two years. Three of the Merrie Melodies films won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film, in 2013, TV Guide ranked the Warner Bros. Cartoons the third Greatest Cartoon of All Time, producer Leon Schlesinger had already produced one cartoon in the Looney Tunes series, based on music, and its success prompted him to try to sell a sister series to Warner Bros. His selling point was that the new cartoons would feature music from the soundtracks of Warner Bros. films and would serve as advertisements for Warner Bros. recordings. The studio agreed, and Schlesinger dubbed the series Merrie Melodies, walt Disney Productions had already scored with their Silly Symphonies. Since cartoon production usually began with a soundtrack, animating a piece of music made it easier to plot elements. The origins of the Merrie Melodies series begin with the failure of an action series of musical shorts called Spooney Melodies. These shorts were basically a type of music video that included segments with a popular artist singing along with appropriate background sequences. Warner Bros. wanted to promote this music because they had acquired the ownership of Brunswick Records along with four music publishers for US $28 million. Because of the success of their Looney Tunes series, Warner Bros. decided to develop a new series of animated shorts called Merrie Melodies. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising led the development and it was meant to be a series of musical cartoons that featured hit songs of the day, especially those then owned by Warner Bros. and featured in their musical films. In 1931, many of the featured the orchestra of Abe Lyman. The first cartoon of the new Merrie Melodies series was Lady, Ising attempted to introduce several characters in his Merrie Melodies films, such as Piggy, Foxy, and Goopy Geer. Eventually however, the series continued without any recurring characters, the shorts proved to be enormously popular with the public. In 1932, a Merrie Melodies cartoon, entitled Its Got Me Again. was nominated for the first Academy Award to be given for animation, when Harman and Ising left Warner Bros. in 1933, they took with them all rights to the characters they had created
7.
The Dover Boys
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The Dover Boys at Pimento University or The Rivals of Roquefort Hall is a 1942 Merrie Melodies cartoon produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions and directed by Chuck Jones. It was released by Warner Bros. on September 19,1942, the cartoon is a parody of the Rover Boys, a popular juvenile fiction book series of the early 20th century. Jones would later remark that The Dover Boys was the first cartoon of his he found to be funny, in 1994, the cartoon was voted #49 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons of all time by members of the animation field. The cartoon is one of a handful from WB to enter the public domain, the three Dover Boys, Tom, Dick, and Larry, who attend Pimento University, are introduced. A gay outing at the park has been planned by the merry trio, the Boys are called upon to rescue Dora when she is kidnapped by the nefarious stock villain Dan Backslide. The former sneak of Roquefort Hall, coward, bully, cad, and thief and he and Dora proceed to shuffle off into the sunset as the cartoon concludes with the familiar iris-out. From time to time throughout the cartoon, the Boys lapse into various renditions of their alma mater, sung to the tune of George Cooper and Henry Tuckers Sweet Genevieve, Pimento U and your fragrant odor scents the air etc. Jones would go on to use animation techniques in later cartoons he directed starring Bugs Bunny. Stylized animation would later be famous by the artists at startup animation studio UPA. According to Jones, Schlesinger and the Warner Bros, a replacement for Jones could not be easily found, so he was kept aboard. Although voice credits from Warner Bros. cartoons are not easy to find beyond Mel Blanc, the voice of Tom Dover was performed by long-time Termite Terrace writer Tedd Pierce, who also provided the story. Vocal harmonies were provided by The Sportsmen Quartet, from Jack Bennys radio program, Dora was voiced by Bea Benaderet. Dan Backslide was a caricature of Jones animator Ken Harris, a short clip of this cartoon is featured in the opening credits of Less Than Hero, an episode of another Fox TV show, Futurama. They also appeared cheering in the late in the mixed animation/live-action movie Space Jam. A segment of the cartoon is featured briefly in an episode of Agent Carter where it is used as part of a subliminal messaging tool of the Black Widow program
8.
Flash animation
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A Flash animation or Flash cartoon is an animated film that is created with the Adobe Flash platform or similar animation software and often distributed in the SWF file format. The term Flash animation refers to both the format and the medium in which the animation is produced. This allowed artists to release shorts and interactive experiences well under 1 MB, some hallmarks of poorly produced Flash animation are jerky natural movements, auto-tweened character movements, lip-sync without interpolation, and abrupt changes from front to profile view. Flash animations are typically distributed by way of the World Wide Web, in case they are often referred to as Internet cartoons, online cartoons. Web Flash animations may be interactive and are created in a series. A Flash animation is distinguished from a Webcomic, which is a comic strip distributed via the Web, Flash animation is now taught in schools throughout the UK and can be taken as a GCSE and A-level. The first prominent use of the Flash animation format was by Ren & Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi, on October 15,1997, he launched The Goddamn George Liquor Program, the first cartoon series produced specifically for the Internet. The series starred George Liquor and his dim-witted nephew Jimmy The Hapless Idiot Boy, later, Kricfalusi produced more animated projects with Flash including several online shorts for Icebox. com, television commercials, and a music video. Soon after that, web cartoons began appearing on the Internet with more regularity, the series originally launched in the spring of 1997 as a web comic with limited animation and sound. After gaining online syndication partners including Lycos. com and WebTV, following her Showtime debut, the titular heroine appeared in over 50 Flash webisodes on the Showtime website and starred in a million-dollar multimedia Showtime marketing campaign. The Von Ghouls went live in November 1999, featuring the first music group with cartoon episodes online including original songs, in the vein of Saturday morning cartoons of the 1970s. A number of portal sites featured Flash animation during the dot-com boom of the late 1990s, including Newgrounds, Icebox, MondoMedia, CampChaos, MediaTrip, Bogbeast. Stan Lee of Marvel Comics launched a comics site. The Internet also saw the proliferation of many adult-only Flash cartoon sites, some of the shows from that period made the transition to traditional media, including Queer Duck, Gary the Rat, Happy Tree Friends, and the politically minded JibJab shorts. Occasionally, the trend has reversed, after being canceled from both ABC and Fox, Atom Films and Flinch Studio created net-only episodes of The Critic in 2000–2001. In another instance, Flash almost made the transition to the big screen, in 2001, production began on what would have been the first Flash-animated feature film, the ill-fated Lil Pimp, which also began life as an Internet series. As potentially controversial as its subject matter was, it had a large budget, a number of well-known actors, a full crew. Although Sony Pictures decided not to release the film, it was released on DVD by Lions Gate
9.
PowerPoint animation
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PowerPoint animation is a form of animation which uses Microsoft PowerPoint and similar programs to create a game or movie. The artwork is created using PowerPoints AutoShape features, and then animated slide-by-slide or by using Custom Animation. These animations can then be shared by transferring the PowerPoint file they were created in, Custom Animation is a set of effects which can be applied to objects in PowerPoint so that they will animate in the Slide Show Power Point. They can be added under the Custom Animation function or through the use of Visual Basic for Applications, PowerPoint 2000 and earlier versions introduced basic effects such as Appear, Dissolve, Fly In and so forth. In PowerPoint 2002/XP and later versions, the Custom Animation feature was improved, adding new animation effects grouped into four categories, Entrance, Emphasis, Exit, Microsoft Is Created Maaz Ahmed Ali The effects were later modified in PowerPoint 2010. More slide transitions were added to the selection in PowerPoint 2010, Entrance effects can be set to objects so that they enter with animations during Slide Show. Emphasis effects animate the objects on the spot, Exit effects allow objects to leave the Slide Show with animations. Motion Paths allow objects to move around the Slide Show, each effect contains variables such as start, delay, speed, repeat and trigger. This makes animations more flexible and interactive, similar to Adobe Flash, Animation Trigger is another feature introduced in Microsoft PowerPoint 2002/XP and the later versions. This feature allows animators to apply effects that can be triggered when an object on the Slide Show is clicked. This feature is the basis for the majority of PowerPoint games, using hyperlinks and Animation Triggers, one can create games such as Jeopardy. Using the tools to maneuver from question to answer, taking this same principle, the animator can also make more complex games similar to a dungeon game or escape-the-room game. In this format, the animator can create a domain where the player chooses to go right or left, or pick up objects, the process takes time, but is generally cheaper and easier than using multimedia software such as Adobe Flash. For more experienced users, Visual Basic for Applications can be used to program animations with more flexibility, PowerPoint can also function as a movie maker program. The animator using PowerPoint works similarly to an animator using cels, many tools within the PowerPoint program can be easily used for maximum effect. Drawing tools such as AutoShapes, contains lines, connectors, basic shapes, block arrows, flowchart components, freeforms and banners, callouts and action buttons, help draw out a slide. Custom Animations and sound tools can also be used to add excitement to the project. The process of drawing out multiple slides takes time, but, again, it is considered to be less expensive, another way to produce these animations is by animating a cartoon as a single slide acting as a frame of film
10.
Stock footage
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Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material, a single piece of stock footage is called a stock shot or a library shot. Stock footage may have appeared in previous productions but may also be outtakes or footage shot for previous productions, examples of stock footage which might be utilized are moving images of cities and landmarks, wildlife in their natural environments, and historical footage. Suppliers of stock footage may be either Rights Managed or royalty-free, many websites offer direct downloads of clips in various formats. Stock footage companies began to emerge in the mid-1980s, offering clips mastered on Betacam SP, VHS, stock footage can be used to integrate news footage or notable figures into a film. Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and John Lennon, news programs use film footage from their libraries when more recent images are not available. Such usage is often labeled on-screen with an indication that the footage being shown is file footage, television and movies series also often recycle footage taken from previous installments. That kept production costs down as models, mattes, and explosions were expensive to create, some series, particularly those made for children, such as Power Rangers or Teletubbies, reuse footage that is shown in many episodes. Meant for an audience, the approach increases viewers familiarity between shows. This introduces problems such as the requirement to, for example, wear the same clothing, when cleverly filmed it is possible to avoid many of these problems. Many broadcast shows use stock-footage clips as establishing shots of a particular city, stock footage is often used in commercials when there is not enough money or time for production. More often than not these commercials are political or issue-oriented in nature, sometimes it can be used to composite moving images which create the illusion of having on-camera performers appear to be on location. B-roll is also another term for stock footage and is used in reference to film making. Stock footage that appears on television screens or monitors shown in movies or television shows is referred to as playback, the playback footage of a hurricane featured in Disneys Smart House came from the vaults of the same San Diego firm. One of the most common uses of stock footage is in documentaries, several films that would otherwise be completely lost have surviving footage due to the film being used a stock footage. For example, The Cat Creeps has some preserved in the movie Boo. If not for the use of footage, these films would be lost entirely. Stock Footage are also used in live reality TV Shows such as Im a Celebrity, most of the stock footage used in that show is footage that is related to jungle creatures and insects
11.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
12.
Animation
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Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and the illusion of change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon, animators are artists who specialize in the creation of animation. Animation can be recorded with either analogue media, a book, motion picture film, video tape, digital media, including formats with animated GIF, Flash animation. To display animation, a camera, computer, or projector are used along with new technologies that are produced. Animation creation methods include the traditional animation creation method and those involving stop motion animation of two and three-dimensional objects, paper cutouts, puppets and clay figures, Images are displayed in a rapid succession, usually 24,25,30, or 60 frames per second. Computer animation processes generating animated images with the general term computer-generated imagery, 3D animation uses computer graphics, while 2D animation is used for stylistic, low bandwidth and faster real-time renderings. An earthen goblet discovered at the site of the 5, 200-year-old Shahr-e Sūkhté in southeastern Iran, the artifact bears five sequential images depicting a Persian Desert Ibex jumping up to eat the leaves of a tree. They may, of course, refer to Chinese shadow puppets, in the 19th century, the phenakistoscope, zoetrope and praxinoscope were introduced. A thaumatrope is a toy with a small disk with different pictures on each side. The phenakistoscope was invented simultaneously by Belgian Joseph Plateau and Austrian Simon von Stampfer in 1831, the phenakistoscope consists of a disk with a series of images, drawn on radi evenly space around the center of the disk. John Barnes Linnett patented the first flip book in 1868 as the kineograph, the first animated projection was created in France, by Charles-Émile Reynaud, who was a French science teacher. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Théâtre Optique in December 1888, on 28 October 1892, he projected the first animation in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Musée Grévin in Paris. This film is notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used. His films were not photographed, they were drawn directly onto the transparent strip, in 1900, more than 500,000 people had attended these screenings. Stuart Blackton, who, because of that, is considered the father of American animation, in Europe, the French artist, Émile Cohl, created the first animated film using what came to be known as traditional animation creation methods - the 1908 Fantasmagorie. The film largely consisted of a figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects. There were also sections of live action in which the hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, the author of the first puppet-animated film was the Russian-born director Wladyslaw Starewicz, known as Ladislas Starevich
13.
Chinese animation
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Chinese animation or Donghua, in a narrow sense, refers to animation made in China. Modern animation in China began in 1918 when a piece from the United States titled Out of the Inkwell landed in Shanghai. Cartoon clips were first used in advertisements for domestic products, though the animation industry did not begin until the arrival of the Wan brothers in 1926. The Wan brothers produced the first Chinese animated film with sound, The Camels Dance, the first animated film of notable length was Princess Iron Fan in 1941. Princess Iron Fan was the first animated film in Asia and it had great impact on wartime Japanese Momotaro animated feature films. China was relatively on pace with the rest of the world up to the mid-1960s, Chinas golden age of animation would come to an end following the onset of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Many animators were forced to quit, if not for harsh economic conditions, the mistreatment of the Red Guards would threaten their work. The surviving animations would lean closer to propaganda, by the 1980s, Japan would emerge as the animation powerhouse of the Far East, leaving Chinas industry far behind in reputation and productivity. Though two major changes would occur in the 1990s, igniting some of the biggest changes since the exploration periods, the first is a political change. The implementation of a socialist market economy would push out traditional planned economy systems, no longer would a single entity limit the industrys output and income. The second is a change with the arrival of the Internet. New opportunities would emerge from flash animations and the became more open. Today China is drastically reinventing itself in the industry with greater influences from Hong Kong. Chinese animations today can best be described in two categories, the first type are Conventional Animations produced by corporations of well-financed entities. These content falls along the lines of traditional 2D cartoons or modern 3D CG animated films distributed via cinemas and this format can be summarized as a reviving industry coming together with advanced computer technology and low cost labor. The second type are Webtoons produced by corporations or sometimes just individuals and these contents are generally flash animations ranging anywhere from amateurish to high quality, hosted publicly on various websites. While the global community has always gauged industry success by box office sales and this format cannot be denied when measured in hits among a population of 1.3 billion in just mainland China alone. Most importantly it provides freedom of expression on top of potential advertising
14.
Anime
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Anime is Japanese hand-drawn or computer animation. The word is the pronunciation of animation in Japanese, where this term references all animation. Arguably, the abstract approach to the words meaning may open up the possibility of anime produced in countries other than Japan. For simplicity, many Westerners strictly view anime as a Japanese animation product, some scholars suggest defining anime as specifically or quintessentially Japanese may be related to a new form of orientalism. The earliest commercial Japanese animation dates to 1917, and Japanese anime production has continued to increase steadily. Anime is distributed theatrically, by way of television broadcasts, directly to home media and it is classified into numerous genres targeting diverse broad and niche audiences. Anime is an art form with distinctive production methods and techniques that have been adapted over time in response to emergent technologies. It consists of an ideal story-telling mechanism, combining art, characterization, cinematography. The production of anime focuses less on the animation of movement and more on the realism of settings as well as the use of effects, including panning, zooming. Being hand-drawn, anime is separated from reality by a gap of fiction that provides an ideal path for escapism that audiences can immerse themselves into with relative ease. Diverse art styles are used and character proportions and features can be quite varied, the anime industry consists of over 430 production studios, including major names like Studio Ghibli, Gainax, and Toei Animation. Despite comprising only a fraction of Japans domestic film market, anime makes up a majority of Japanese DVD sales and it has also seen international success after the rise of English-dubbed programming. This rise in popularity has resulted in non-Japanese productions using the anime art style. Anime is an art form, specifically animation, that all genres found in cinema. In Japanese, the term refers to all forms of animation from around the world. In English, anime is more used to denote a Japanese-style animated film or television entertainment or as a style of animation created in Japan. The etymology of the anime is disputed. The English term animation is written in Japanese katakana as アニメーション and is アニメ in its shortened form, in English, anime—when used as a common noun—normally functions as a mass noun
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Malaysian animation
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Animation in Malaysia has origins in the puppetry style of wayang kulit, wherein the characters are controlled by the puppeteer, or Tok Dalang. Chinese shadow play inspired German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger to create the animated The Adventures of Prince Achmed in 1926 that was based on one of the stories in the 1001 Nights stories. Many of the animators have credited Prince Achmeds recognizable style for generating their initial interest in animation as well as in their works. A set designer working for the Unit named Anandam Xavier was asked to handle an animation project in 1961, Xavier set to work on the first in-country animation short subject Hikayat Sang Kancil until 1978, although the short would not see a release until 1983. The surge in Malaysian animation products resulted in the founding of two studios, FilmArt, established in 1984 and Lensamation, which opened its doors in 1987. Having these production companies in the led to the legitimization of animation as an art form and career path. The year 1995 saw the debut of the first animated television series, the animation industry in Malaysia received some attention from Tun Mahathir bin Mohamad, the fourth Prime Minister of Malaysia with plans for rapidly modernizing the country. This extended to the use of technology in production houses. The first computer-animated animation efforts in Malaysia were the 2000 film Nien Resurrection, bhd. However, in the late 1990s, Kamn Ismail had already included 3D elements in his Keluang Man animation series. This era also saw an increase in efforts to promote locally produced animation efforts. Since 2000, the Malaysian animation industry has gone far globally when Multimedia Development Corporation produced Saladin, since then, many Malaysian animation companies marketed their works to globally. Their animation has succeeded in promoting Malaysia globally by creating content that was based on Malaysian culture, the grants include Start-up Funds, Intellectual Property Grant Scheme and MAC3 Co-Production Fund. This grant was launched in 2009 to support the creation and development or co-development of Intellectual Properties under the Animation, some of local animation has a tendency to copy foreign elements, especially anime. This can be seen in the design of TV animation series such as Anak-anak Sidek, Edi & Cici and this is because, most of the animators were once trained by Japanese animators. However, Kampung Boy, based on the characters of international-known cartoonist and it is seen as the best animation that portrays Malaysian cultures in the eyes of its own creator. In the making of Kampung Boy, Lat was actively involved on the project, Animation Society of Malaysia, ANIMAS is a non-profit government organization that promotes animation in Malaysia. ANIMAS was officially registered as an organization on May 29,2007, the idea towards the foundation of ANIMAS was first discussed at the Hiroshima Animation Film Festival in 1997. The idea was discussed in 2001 during a meeting with Hassan Abd Muthalib, James Ooi
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Filipino cartoon and animation
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It also delves into relying on traditional and common Filipino “sense of going about things” or manner of coping with Filipino life and environment. Original Filipino cartoons began with the publication of comic books. During the late 1920s, Filipino writer Romualdo Ramos and Filipino visual artist Antonio “Tony” Velasquez created the character named Kenkoy. It appeared in the pages of the Tagalog-language Liwayway magazine as a comic strip entitled Mga Kabalbalan ni Kenkoy or Kenkoys antics. Because of its popularity it became a Filipino icon and was translated into regional languages in the Philippines. Since then, other characters were created by other Filipino comic book artists. This influence of Kenkoy gave birth to original Filipino language vocabulary, such as Barok, Jeproks, and Pinoy, Kenkoy also survived the arrival of the Japanese during World War II. Kenkoy became a tool of the Japanese occupiers for disseminating health programs, other Filipinos who excelled in the Philippine komiks and cartoon industry are Francisco Coching, Elito Circa and his Minggan and Alex Niño. The first Filipino-made cartoon for television was Panday, created by Gerry Garcia in the 1980s based on the book character of the same name produced by Carlo J. Caparas. RPN-9 began airing in November 1986, Garcia is considered as the pioneer of Filipino animation industry. From 1995 to 1997, Garcia also brought into life Adarna, Garcia wrote the story and directed Adarna under FLT Productions and Guiding Light Productions. Adarna received recognition from the Metro Manila Film Festival on December 27,1997 as the first animated movie in Philippine cinema, in 1998, it was also included in the Asian Collection of Japan’s 7th Hiroshima Animation Festival. Another known Filipino pioneer cartoonist is Lauro Alcala, more known as Larry Alcala. One more is Alfredo P. Alcala who, apart from creating several comic strips in the Philippines, worked for American comic book firms, namely DC Comics, Dark Horse Comics, and Marvel Comics. Another recognized Filipino animator is Benedict Carandang, the co-founder of Tuldok Animation Studios, Carandang produced the animation of Ramon del Prados short-film entitled, Libingan or “The Burial”, an animated cartoon inspired by the hanging coffins of Sagada, Mountain Province. The beginnings of Philippine animation industry began as early as the 1980s, the local Philippine animation industry has been established for twenty years. Among the first animation offices in the country were Burbank Animation, Asian Animation, Fil-Cartoons, Toei Animation Philippines, Roadrunner, Toon City Animation Inc. and Tuldok Animation Studios among others totaling to greater than 50 animation companies. The clientele of Philippine studios supply the demand coming from the United States, today, the country is regarded as one of the main and “stronger players” in outsourced and global animated cartoon production
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History of animation
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Animation is the process of making the illusion of motion and the illusion of change by means of the rapid display of a sequence of images that minimally differ from each other. Humans have probably attempted to depict motion as far back as the paleolithic period, while there were several predecessors, the 17th century invention of the magic lantern provided the first apparatus with which convincing moving images have been created. However, the movement of images were the result of moving parts rather than a rapid succession of sequential images. The introduction of the phenakistiscope in 1833 marks the start of true animation and it has been claimed that the flickering light of flames can induce an illusion of motion in these paintings. Most of these examples only allow a low frame rate when they are animated by modern means. Nonetheless, the practice of art may have provided some foundation for the development of the art of animation. One early example is a 5, 200-year old pottery bowl discovered in Shahr-e Sukhteh, the bowl has five sequential images painted around it that seem to show phases of a goat leaping up to nip at a tree. The sequence shows multiple angles of the figure as it rotates, because the drawings show only small changes from one image to the next, together they imply the movement of a single figure. Since before 1000 CE the Chinese had a lantern which had silhouettes projected on its thin paper sides that appeared to chase each other. This was called the trotting horse lamp as it would typically depict horses, the cut-out silhouettes were attached inside the lantern to a shaft with a paper vane impeller on top, rotated by heated air rising from a lamp. Some versions added extra motion with jointed heads, feet or hands of figures triggered by a transversely connected iron wire and these and other occurrences of moving images, like for instance shadow play with jointed puppets or moving parts in book illustrations, are not considered true animation. Technically they lack the rapid display of images and the results are usually not very lifelike. Moving images were projected with the magic lantern immediately since its invention by Christiaan Huygens in 1659. His sketches for magic lantern slides have been dated to year and are the oldest known document concerning the magic lantern. Dotted lines indicate the intended movements, techniques to add motion to painted glass slides for the magic lantern were described since circa 1700. These usually involved parts painted on one or more pieces of glass moved by hand or small mechanisms across a stationary slide which showed the rest of the picture. A more complex 19th century rackwork slide showed the then known eight planets, in 1770 Edmé-Gilles Guyot detailed how to project a magic lantern image on smoke to create a transparent, shimmering image of a hovering ghost. This technique was used in the shows that became very popular in several parts of Europe between 1790 and the 1830s
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History of Chinese animation
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The history of Chinese Animation began in the 20th century in the Republic of China when the people became fascinated with the idea of animation. A lengthy history interlocks between the art, politics and the ever-changing economy, Chinese animation has long been under the shadow of Disney and Japanese animations, but it once played a very important role in world animation. The modern animation industry began in France in 1888, invented by Charles-Émile Reynaud, Chinese animation started in the 1920s, inspired by French, German, Russian and mostly American productions. One of the first examples of animation did not land in Shanghai until 1918. This piece of animation from the US was titled, known today as Out of the Inkwell, in 1922 Wan Laiming produced the first animation in a cartoon advertisement for the Shuzhendong Chinese Typewriter. Followed by the 1924 animation short Dog Treat, Shanghai tobacco company also produced an animation called New Year. These are the earliest known cartoon shorts, in 1926 the 4 Wan brothers, Wan Laiming, Wan Guchan，Wan Chaochen and Wan Dihuan worked under the Great Wall Film Company in China, not to be confused with Great Wall Movie Enterprises Ltd. Wan Laiming and Wan Guchan were then recognized as Chinas animation pioneers when they produced the first animation short Uproar in the Studio running 10 to 12 minutes long in black, the brothers believed that Chinese animation should be instructive, logical and thought-provoking besides being entertaining to its audience. They wanted to emphasize the development of a style that was uniquely Chinese. It was a trend at the time to combine live action film footages with 2D animation. By 1932 one of the Wan brothers, Wan Di-huan, would leave the Great Wall Film company for his own photography studio. Some of the first wave of influential American animations that reached Shanghai were Popeye, by 1935 the Wan brothers would launch the first animation with sound titled The Camel’s Dance. Four years later in 1939, Americas Disneys Snow White would also be introduced in Shanghai, while there were overlapping progress made in the Asian regions with Japanese anime at the time, they were not geographically or artistically influential to China directly. During the Japanese invasion period, the brothers produced more than 20 animated propaganda shorts focusing on various topics from resistance against Japanese troops, opium. On October 1,1946 a northeast motion picture studio was established in the Nenjiang province and it is the first known studio established by a communist party. In 1947 productions such as Emperors Dream used puppets in a way to expose corruption of the Kuomintang Chinese nationalist party. The idea of using political content in films was becoming acceptable. An example of such documentary-type cartoons can be found in Go After an Easy Prey, in 1948 the Northeast studio would change its name to Shanghai Picture Studio Group
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History of anime
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The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the oldest surviving anime being Namakura Gatana. The first generation of animators in the late 1910s included Ōten Shimokawa, Junichi Kōuchi and Seitaro Kitayama, propaganda films, such as Momotarō no Umiwashi and Momotarō, Umi no Shinpei, the latter being the first anime feature film, were made during World War II. During the 1970s, anime developed further, separating itself from its Western roots, typical shows from this period include Astro Boy, Lupin III and Mazinger Z. During this period several filmmakers became famous, especially Hayao Miyazaki, Space Battleship Yamato and The Super Dimension Fortress Macross also achieved worldwide success after being adapted respectively as Star Blazers and Robotech. The film Akira set records in 1988 for the costs of an anime film. Later, in 2004, the same creators produced Steamboy, which took over as the most expensive anime film, according to Natsuki Matsumoto, the first animated film produced in Japan may have stemmed from as early as 1907. Known as Katsudō Shashin, from its depiction of a boy in a sailor suit drawing the characters for Katsudō Shashin and it consists of fifty frames stenciled directly onto a strip of celluloid. This claim has not been verified though and predates the first showing of animated films in Japan, Film titles have surfaced over the years, but none have been proven to predate this year. The first foreign animation is known to have found in Japan in 1910. Yasushi Watanabe found a film known as 不思議のボールド in the records of the 吉沢商店 company, the description matches James Blackton’s Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, though academic consensus on whether or not this is a true animated film is disputed. According to Kyokko Yoshiyama, the first animated film called ニッパールの変形 was shown in Japan at the 浅草帝国館 in Tokyo sometime in 1911, Yoshiyama did not refer to the film as animation though. The first confirmed animated film shown in Japan was Les Exploits de Feu Follet by Émile Cohl on April 15,1912. While speculation and other films have been found in Japan. During this time, German animations marketed for home release were distributed in Japan, few complete animations made during the beginnings of Japanese animation have survived. The reasons vary, but many are of commercial nature, after the clips had been run, reels were sold to smaller cinemas in the country and then disassembled and sold as strips or single frames. The first anime that was produced in Japan was made sometime in 1917 and it has been confirmed though that Dekobō shingachō – Meian no shippai was made sometime during February,1917. At least two unconfirmed titles were reported to have made the previous month. The first anime films were made by three leading figures in the industry
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History of Russian animation
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The History of Russian animation is the film art produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russias production of animation for film|cinema and television were created during Soviet times and it remains a nearly unexplored field in film theory and history outside Russia. The first animator in Russia was Aleksander Shiryayev, who was a dancer at the Imperial Russian Ballet. He made a number of pioneering puppet-animated ballet films between 1906 and 1909 and he only showed them to a few people, and they were forgotten until their re-discovery in 1995. The second person in Russia to independently discover animation was Ladislas Starevich and his first few films, made in 1910, were dark comedies on the family lives of cockroaches, and were so revolutionary that they earned Starevich a decoration from the Tsar. In 1934, Walt Disney sent a film reel with some shorts of Mickey Mouse to the Moscow Film Festival, when Nikita Khrushchev in 1956 proclaimed the end of the personality cult of Joseph Stalin, he started a process of political and cultural renewal in the country. Even though animators still needed a while to free themselves from the tradition of Éclair, from the 1960s onwards. The starting point for this was Fyodor Khitruks film The Story of a Crime, Khitruks revolutionary approach paved the way for a vast number of young animation directors that in the following years developed their own distinctive styles and approaches. One of the most political was Andrei Khrzhanovsky, whose surrealist film The Glass Harmonica was severely cut by censors, anatoly Petrov is known as the founder of the cinema journal Vesyolaya Karusel that gave an opportunity to many young directors to make their first own films. Among them were Leonid Nosyrev, Valery Ugarov, Eduard Nazarov, Ivan Ufimcev, the 1970s saw the birth of the Soviet Unions most popular animation series, Nu, Pogodi. These seemingly simple miniatures about a wolf chasing a hare through Soviet-style cartoon worlds owe a deal of their popularity to the cunning subtexts built into their parts. During the Stalin period, puppet animation had come to a halt, only in 1953 was a puppet division was refounded at Soyuzmultfilm. Its first head of department was Boris Degtyarev, under whose direction young animators tried to recover the knowledge that had been lost since the time of Aleksandr Ptushko. Among the most outstanding of these artists were Vadim Kurchevskiy and Nikolay Serebryakov. One generation later, Stanislav Sokolov started to make movies that brought the art of animation to a new height. His approach, characterized by complex structures and multiple special effects can well be observed in The Big Underground Ball or Black and White Film. Adventures of Mowgli made by Soyuzmultfilm was released as five animated shorts between 1967 and 1971, the movie was not conceived as a reaction to the Disney adaptation, even the first episode was also released in 1967. It appeared more adult and on spirit is closer to Kiplings book
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Animator
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An animator is an artist who creates multiple images, known as frames, which give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, Animation is closely related to filmmaking and like filmmaking is extremely labor-intensive, which means that most significant works require the collaboration of several animators. The methods of creating the images or frames for an animation piece depends on the artistic styles. Other artists who contribute to animated cartoons, but who are not animators, include layout artists, storyboard artists, in hand-drawn Japanese animation productions, such as in Hayao Miyazakis films, the key animator handles both layout and key animation. Some animators in Japan such as Mitsuo Iso take full responsibility for their scenes, one important distinction is between character animators and special effects animators. Usually, a young artist seeking to break into animation is hired for the first time in one of these categories, historically, the creation of animation was a long and arduous process. Each frame of a scene was hand-drawn, then transposed onto celluloid. These finished cels were placed together in sequence over painted backgrounds and filmed. Animation methods have become far more varied in recent years, todays cartoons could be created using any number of interesting methods, mostly using computers to make the animation process cheaper and faster. These more efficient animation procedures have made the job less tedious. Audiences generally find animation to be more interesting with sound. Voice actors and musicians, among other talent, may contribute vocal or music tracks, some early animated films asked the vocal and music talent to synchronize their recordings to already-extant animation. Nowadays, visual development artists will design a character as a 2D drawing or painting, texture artists paint the character with colorful or complex textures, and technical directors set up rigging so that the character can be easily moved and posed. For each scene, layout artists set up cameras and rough blocking. Despite those constraints, the animator is still capable of exercising significant artistic skill, more recently, Chris Buck has remarked that animators have become actors with mice. Some studios bring in acting coaches on feature films to help work through such issues. Each finished film clip is then checked for quality and rushed to a film editor, Animation Computer animation Computer graphics Key frame Sweat box Animation Toolworks Glossary, Who Does What In Animation How An Animated Cartoon Is Made
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Animation studio
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An animation studio is a company producing animated media. They also own rights over merchandising and creative rights for characters created/held by the company, in some early cases, they also held patent rights over methods of animation used in certain studios that were used for boosting productivity. Overall, they are business concerns and can function as such in legal terms, currently there are about 201 animation studios dedicated to the production and distribution of animated films that are active. Few are actual production house where as others are corporate entities, many of these animation studios help with the fulfillment of animation works for big brand names and have carried out outsourced projects including Nemo. Though beaten to the post of being the first studio, Brays studio employee, Earl Hurd, the patents for animation systems using drawings on transparent celluloid sheets and a registration system that kept images steady were held under this firm. Bray also developed the basic division of labor used in animation studios. The biggest name in animation studios during this time was Disney Brothers Animation Studio, co-founded by Walt. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which laid the foundation for other studios to try to make full-length movies. In 1932 Flowers and Trees, a production by Walt Disney Productions and United Artists, won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Disney continued to lead in technical prowess among studios for a long time afterwards, as can be seen with their achievements. In 1941, Otto Messmer created the first animated television commercials for Botany Tie ads/weather reports and they were shown on NBC-TV in New York until 1949. This marked the first forays of animation designed for the screen and was to be followed by the first animated series specifically made for television, Crusader Rabbit. It was in 1958 that The Huckleberry Hound Show claimed the title of being the first all new half-hour cartoon show, in 2002, Shrek, produced by DreamWorks and Pacific Data Images won the first Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Since then, Disney/Pixar have produced the most number of either to win or be nominated for the award. Direct-to-video animation has seen a rise, as a concept, in the Western markets, current studios such as Warner Bros. and early ones such as Fleischer Studios, started life as small, independent studios, being run by a very small core group. After being bought out or sold to companies, they eventually consolidated with other studios. The drawback of this setup was that there was now a major thrust towards profitability with the management acting as a damper towards creativity of these studios, examples of such co-operation are the joint ventures between DreamWorks and Paramount Pictures and that of Blue Sky Studios and 20th Century Fox. In 1961, these began to be aired in the USA. Toei Animation, formed in 1956, was the first Japanese animation studio of importance, after the formation of Toei Animation Co. Ltd. in 1956, the Japanese studios churned out minor works of animation
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Animation database
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An animation database is a database which stores fragments of animations or human movements and which can be accessed, analyzed and queried to develop and assemble new animations. Early examples of animation databases include the system MOVE which used an object oriented database, modern animation databases can be populated via the extraction of skeletal animations from motion capture data. Other examples include crowd simulation in which a number of people are simulated as a crowd, given that in some applications the people need to be walking at different speeds, say on a sidewalk, the animation database can be used to retrieve and merge different animated figures. The method is known as motion graphs. Animation databases can also be used for storytelling in which fragments of animations are retrieved from the animation database and are recycled to combine into new stories. For instance, the animation database called Animebase is used within the system Words Anime to help generate animations using recycled components, in this approach, the user may input words which form parts of a story and queries against the database help select suitable animation fragments. This type of system may indeed use two databases, a database, as well as a story knowledge database. The story knowledge database may use subjects, predicates and objects to refer to story fragments, the system then assists the user in matching between story fragments and animation fragments. Animation databases can also be used for the generation of visual scenes using humanoid models, an example application has been the development of an animated humanoid-based sign language system to help the disabled. Another application of a database is in the synthesis of idle motion for human characters. g. Each person has a way of standing and this needs to be represented in a realistic way throughout an animation. One of the problems is that idle motion affects all joints and simply showing statistical movements at each joint results in less than realistic portrayals
