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
