Task 2

Introduction

Throughout years, stop motion has been available and created for telling stories, truths educating and entertaining. There are many ways to present animation and ways of using it, from this, it will be a simple way to understand the different ways it can be used and presented.

Purpose

Educate

There are a lot of ways to educate people, a lot of them work harder than others to put messages across, this is because many people who like to watch educational videos that are presented in an animated way are children and they wouldn’t want lists of information, rather characters and an engaging story that by the end of it, would have learned something. There are far more TV shows than films that try to create an animation for this purpose; however there are companies such as Pixar that follow the line of entertainment yet teaches people young and old something that they never knew before, for example, their first film, Toy Story, has a group of toys that come alive but one goes missing and the other must bring him back, this film seems simple but it teaches children about abandonment, progress, reckless cruelty and friendship, films made by this studio deals large educational lessons for people of all ages making them a better person by the end. Moving onto shows, as there are far more of them than films that educate is something like Dora the explorer, a far more childish show than adult show, but it does teach children to read maps, new words in a different language and problem solving, shows like this teaches people about simplistic education, more to the side of education than entertainment and has people interact, having them repeat words and phrases, teaching them not only lessons after the showing, but also during.

Entertain

All shows attempt to do this, you must provide a fun experience for the viewer if not educational, or else what is the point? Shows that can entertain succeed far greater than the films and TV that doesn’t. This reason for animation must provide an escape for the viewer, and as stress can follow people through life and problematic occurrences happen through life, entertainment must be provided towards all ages, animated films have provided entertainment since its existence, popular movies that have been released from a studio such as Dream Works, BBC, Pixar, Warner Brothers, Disney etc. A very popular and long living programme that is drawn animation is ‘Looney Tunes’ this show is built up of the premise of expectation and the breaking of that expectation. It is a simplistic show, but very entertaining show that provides a space, no matter what age you are, language is rarely used, so a language barrier is hardly shown, it can provide entertainment for all ages and languages, a perfect way of giving entertainment for everyone with a breakneck pace, keeping concentration, not creating boredom.

Inform

Most people that want to be informed of the world would probably want to know by the time they become late teenagers, this can also be applied for animated information, a show that comes to mind that provides informative, relevant information for that time would be South Park, they have been able to tackle many instances of history and are able to tackle topics that happen straight away as they make a show before its due air date a week prior, keeping an in the moment catch up of what is going on without having to check the news for the information, this show is great for information and entertainment, more adult entertainment, and can be easily proven as they are already on their 22^nd season and show no stopping. Programs or films that can provide informative means in an animation is usually telling stories of present day or large historical instances.

Uses and Audience

Feature films are made to entertain most of all and provides escape with dilemmas in the film. A film such as ‘how to train your dragon’ provides entertainment and is made targeting towards children at eight and above, feature films provides a way of entertaining visual story telling. Other feature films that provide animation in them is Jason and the Argonauts, this way made far before the other example but does the same job, this film however adds real taken footage as well as animation, combining them to try and make it look realistic as possible rather than creating its own world, this proves that there are many reasons to create an animated film, the audience for ‘Jason and…’ is all ages preferable twelve and above as it contains action that may not be suitable for children and frightening images, the film has provided entertainment that would have taken a large amount of time to create. There are many positives to creating a feature film, people who work hard on the project, if goes well and all aspects of the film is don to a great standard, you have a film that will be remembered for large amounts of years, take 2001 A Space Odyssey as an example, a film just celebrating its 50^th year since release with all seats filled in cinemas to celebrate, a 1968 Kubrick film that still captivates after hundreds of viewings. If it goes well with critics and audiences and brings large amounts of people, you are guaranteed you money back and a profit from the film. However, there are some negatives to this way of showing, it can take years to decades for one film if done right, a lot of hard work from many people meaning large payments, losing money, if the film goes badly with people, they and the studios will remember that. It can take a very long time Harryhausen stating 

stating "we usually took six months to lay our pictures out". This proves that its not a few days task to create animaiton for a feature film, but if done right, money, offers and applause will be given to the film.

Advertising is a simple, quick and easy way of creating a way of informing people about the new or re-released products or services from the company. An example of animation used in an advert was when the muppets had been involved with an advert released by Warburtons, it is a short but memorable advert having the ability to separate themselves from other adverts as they have a recognisable feature and a often used product. The benefits of advertising is to sum up the new products with an ability of using a small amount of money and takes little amount time to create drawbacks to this is that it can become costly depending on what you’re making, another drawback is that the money would be coming out of the companies pocket, making no profit from the advert itself.

Computer games has the ability of providing mostly entertainment and sometimes education. Computer games creates an escape with a necessary interaction between the player and the game involving involvement with the audience. As all games are computer generated and has people working on graphics, it can be considered an animation as it isn’t usually live action and rather tries to imitate real life with realistic graphics, a game such as Red Dead Redemption provides entertainment for the player and education from the times its was set, it informs the audience of what used to happen at the times and what society was like during 1905 of the southern end of North America. Many games have been able to gain more money from the people buying than it takes to make the game. There are benefits to making a computer game, you can make an interactive based form of media having people taking long time involvement into the project with an established brand, you can bring in a large sum of money from one game. There are however many drawbacks to making a computer game and that is there must be a large involvement with the game, people may try to break or cheat the game ruining it for others such as a multiplayer based platform. Big amounts of money must be put into the game needing to set the game at a high amount of money for purchase, but people may be put off by the price so that reduces a positive amount of income, many things are at stake such as time and money into the use of animation for this sort of way, but if done well and noticed from many people, you can bring in more money than you would with something such as a feature film, depending on the price set for the  computer game, large scale games such as a Rockstar game would be priced around £50 but a large amount of money to put into it, you just have to have realistic expectations for the project and the amount of people that will pay for and play for, affecting the audience attitude to the game. 

Techniques and formats

Claymation is an animation that involves people molding and caring pieces of clay, usually wet during the creation of the object and is made into a desired shape with a addition objects such as buttons and once waited for dry you take a picture of it, then you can re mold it for the pieces you want to move for the next frame which is preferred than the later which is remaking the mold, which may be necessary if changing its color or scale of the object. A film such as ‘Coraline’ uses Claymation animation as a way for its storytelling, Claymation adds a certain way of animation and proves that work has been put into them, when seen in detail, you can find finger prints in places proving that it was sculpted with people, although taking you out of the story, but admiring the work put into it. Wallace and Gromit is also made from play and it shown to add a cartoony appearance to the short films. This takes little time and effort compared to other works of animation if you keep one sculptor for one thing such as one Wallace and one Gromit, making them isn’t entirely tricky but many things can go wrong such as parts breaking away and the mold becoming noticeably changed taking audiences out of the film experience.

Found objects is probably the easiest way of animating, it needs no screen involvement from people or changing or creating things, you just take an object such as a lamp and move it slightly through each frame 12 times per second (1 hot lingering for two or more frames). This style of animation is good for a simplistic way of introduction to animation on a practical level, you traditionally would work harder with larger objects when making a feature length film with a story and characters in a found object animation, but it is usually used for small projects such as small promotional adverts or video projects that you want to make in a day. You would then probably go onto showing friends and family and that is where the audience would start and end, it’s a simple way of animation but still a way for people to get into it in the easiest less time-consuming way.

Cut out animation is like found objects but way harder, you first must draw a rough design of the object, places and people, you usually make separate legs, arms etc to match the movement of a leg or an arm. As it is a cut out animation, it would be shot from a bird view of the flat pieces of card/paper. Shows such as South park had made its first episode as a cut out animation, and although quickly moving onto computer graphic design, they keep the cut-out design of the show. This process is very time consuming if you’re making a 10-20-minute project, you shoot it as a found object way (12 shots per second). Although what you make is dependent of what you can make, it can become very hard to replicate the same arm 12 times in a slightly different way. Cut out animation is like a combination of Claymation and found objects, you cut instead of carving and you shoot it at a 1 shot per 2 frame basis for traditional quick movement for animation.

Task 2 bibliography

https://www.dltk-kids.com/crafts/cartoons/dora_the_explorer-about.htm

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHpXle4NqWI

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/film-life/7593495/Ray-Harryhausen-interview-Stop-motion-animation-Clash-of-the-Titans-Jason-and-the-Argonauts.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp_WNfa7PGY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Red_Dead_Redemption

https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-does-clay-animation-work

Task 1

Introduction

Animation has gone through a large amount of stages to be where it is today, without many people adding their contribution, it may not be where it is today, this task is a simple way to understand of some of the techniques and the people who have made contributions to what animation has become through the early stages for its creation of moving images.

Techniques

Persistence of vision

The persistence of vision refers to the phenomenon that once you have seen an image for around a split second and goes away, you mind would still be able to imagine the picture. If you were to use a Thaumatrope, which would be something where somebody would draw on both sides of a piece of paper two different images, so if you were to draw a bird on one side and a cage in another and spin the paper, it would create the illusion of the bird being inside the cage. Throughout early years in animation and film, people had assumed that it was that technique which was what people were doing, instead of creating a sequence of pictures and connect run them in order. As early films had white and black points of nothing in the film, people had thought that was where other images would be.

Stop Frame

Stop framing is the technique where in animation, you would set up a physical object(s) and taking a picture of it, then you would move it slightly to another area and take another picture, when you do this enough times, you would collect a list of images, when you connect them and run them through a projector or video, it would seem like movement instead of a collection of still images, each image would last a frame or two, this technique can still be used today and during 1997 the show South park had used this technique for the cheapest way, however this can take an extreme amount of time to do.

Frame Rate 
It refers to the amount of frames, a still image, per second, if you were to pause a film, you would be paused at a specific frame of the second of the film, usually a film would consist of 24-25 frames per second, with TV standards being 30fps (frames per second). The more amount of frames per second means that it would be harder to create for animation, harder to edit but does make the film look smoother in movement. Frames have existed for as long as films has been around, the frame contains the still image and without frame rates you would just be watching a still image rather than a bunch per second to create the illusion of moving image.

Pioneers

Joseph Plateau (Phenakistoscope)

Joseph Plateau’s invention, the Phenakistoscope, was created in 1933 with him and his sons, the way that it had worked was that you would have a material such as or like paper, lay it horizontally and cut shallow slits along it and in-between them, you would draw images, each being similar with a small difference, once you had done that, you would lay the paper standing up and connect one side to another making a circle looking downwards, then, while looking at a specific part at the end of a side of the material, spin it, while looking through the slit, because of the subtle changes to images, it would look like natural movement. This invention was one of the first to make the illusion of moving images and had become a children’s toy during the era of its creation. As animation is a collection of drawn images, this would be known as one of the first to push the idea of animation to what it is today. At this point, this wouldn’t have been used for filming purposes, but would be one of the first steps in that direction. Most of the time, the Phenakistoscope would have stick figures doing gymnastic circus performances like back flips and juggling, they would choose to do this because it was a simple drawing and easy to replicate for each frame whilst proving movement on the page. Animation today, to create a smooth flow of images would replicate what Joseph Plateau did in 1933, they would very slightly alter the image, either physically or with digital software such as Trey Parker and Matt Stone have done both of with their TV show South Park, using construction paper and Mac computers, they lead a team that replicate Plateau's work, creating and altering each frame slightly to create a line of detailed images that creates the illusion of movement. However today, it has become much easier to get a longer strand of images and add more detail, how film and digital media can store more images to make hours of content instead of a 1 second loop, a far greater improvement since 1933.

Emile Raynaud (Praxinoscope)

Creating the invention, the Praxinoscope, had been created during the 19^th century, the Praxinoscope contained 12 frames of images slightly different than the other, the same kind of way the Phenakistoscope was, instead the images faced inwards and in the centre of the wheel an amount of mirrors, this way the mirrors can reach into a camera and when it goes through the lenses inside the camera, it can be projected onto a screen/ flat surface. Emile Reynaud had made seven short films from 1892-1896, his most famous short films was called Pauvre Pierrot (1892) it’s about two lovers an Pierrot comes into the room and starts singing and the two of them scare him away, during the 1800’s when film was just introduced to the world, it wasn’t used as  storytelling convention that it is today and more of a way of people to fool around with the new technology and test capabilities, hence why there is a shortage of storytelling in the film, the story is shot as an animation and was one of the first of its kind to be shown in film form. The film was originally 15 minutes long but today has been restored with 5 minutes’ length. The film is shot simplistically with one background and only the 3 characters moving.

George Pal

 An American animator/ director; he had been involved within the sci-fi, horror genre, he was mostly known for contribution to the films: The time machine (1960), The war of the worlds (1953) and When worlds collide (1951), he has made many other films from 1934-1964 collecting contribution credit from large amounts of films, his most popular three films are still held to high praise and had won many awards during their releases. George Pal is one of the most known pioneers that used models and stop motion in film while including raw footage, he would make the film and then add all of the models and have them effect the world. War of the Worlds had been created with the help of Shepperton Studios, and from that point, the studio had received huge popularity and had become one of the best film based studios in England. Academy Film Archives has been trying to preserve George Pal’s films, when George Pal had died at 72, he was working on a film called The Voyage to the Berg which has never been finished.

Developers

Willis O’Brien

Throughout his life he had always gravitated towards being a cartoonist, during his teen years and later in his life a sculptor, this would become key parts to his films and what makes his projects so iconic. He would create human and animal sculptures, practicing this craft only getting better at it. Willis had the idea of applying molded rubber on the outer layer of his sculptors, this way he could give a style and character to his creations and a good amount of movement and stability to them. Once he released films such as King Kong (1933) it had become a ground-breaking and iconic film, it was something that people had never seen before. To this day his work is still talked about, he has also contributed his work into other films such as ‘The Beast of Hollow Mountain’ (1956) and ‘The Lost World’ (1925).  He had made a great contribution to the development of stop motion animation. However, in current day, when compared to effects with computer graphics or other animated with real effects, such as 2005 King Kong, it becomes obvious that the effects that were appreciated at the time seem dated and wouldn’t be able to hold up to the standards of today’s time. His films had been able to tell stories that have been repeated by Spielberg and Peter Jackson, proving that he wouldn’t fall into putting animation onto the screen for no reason and he would try to impact the story and most of the screen time. The animations would interact with the real world creating the illusion that it there is actually a 500 ft gorilla swatting planes out of the sky, when you have the animation contribute to the world it becomes much more believable, Willis O’Brien’s work during the time created such an impact that most people consider him the best at the time with people still discovering and appreciating his work, as much as it is dated today, he brought animation effects into film in a big way, creating imitators of his work for decades since. Today there have been other creators that has used sculptors in the same approach, such as, a recent example was the 2015 film 'Shaun the Sheep', where the entire film was made with sculptors and used the approach of stop motion animation complex stage sets and character formations, slowly moving body parts at a time, going frame by frame to create an animation that would be as seamless as possible, the same approach Willis had used throughout his career.

Ray Harryhausen

R. Harryhausen has become one of the most recognizable names in developing visual effects of film, while on his first film he worked with George Pal he certainly became his own. Harryhausen had been able to revolutionize the realism of real and animation coming together. Everything in his films felt real and they still do today, he had fine detail to his work. He was able to capture the power of the effects that nobody had been able to since and many fail to recreate, to call him the master of visual effects is an understatement with effects from his films during 1970’s and 80’s still being able to hold up, nothing felt as so real at the time with animation and is still appreciated today for what a technical marvel it was and is. With color coming into film he was able to make effects seem more real than what George Pal could do at the time, while with George Pal you could separate belief between people and monsters, with Ry Harryhausen there wasn’t a difference, and everything seemed to just exist. His work still has the ability to capture attention and seem realistic today. Ray had brought back classic monsters into relevance with dinosaurs, Minotaur's and cyclops’s making appearances into his film, with the amount of detail having to be worked into his figures for months as they would need to be increased in size when adding it into the film it would seem like the hard work of millions to capture the effects he could pull off with each film. With the battle of seeming seamless, filmmakers today have tried to make the quickest work possible and yet still seem as realistic as what Ray had achieved throughout his career; introduce CGI, Computer generated effects have revolutionized what we could see, yet still keeps the basis of trying to seam realistic and still keeping the approach of small details at a time, a lot of films use CGI today, from large blockbuster films such as 'Transformers' to smaller films such as 'Pans Labyrinth' that uses a mix of CGI and practical effects, it is clear that Ray Harryhausen had impacted large amounts of filmmakers to try harder and get better and realistic results.

Jan Švankmajer

Jan S. had studied at the Institute of Industrial Arts during the 1950’s and soon became a theater director, quickly moving onto film making with animation/ Visual effects. Jan has contributed to very bizarre foreign film making, and something that doesn’t fit to mainstream audience and is very underappreciated for his work. He has a very specific way of using animation more precisely stop motion with real world people and objects. Jan S. would use specific ways characters would walk and interact with the world according to the character, with a film like Alice, most of the time animators would try to make as close to a replicate miniature size of the actor as accurate as they can, or if they had to use a doll, they would stay away from close ups or anything to slide the audiences belief for the effects. However, this is what sets him apart of the crowd, he has been able to develop his own way of using unrealistic and unconvincing objects to fit with the world, so instead of having the animation try to mimic realistic frame movement, as much as he has, he instead uses stop motion of real people just to blur the lines of realism on things that are in fact real, an effect that becomes obvious during the film ‘Alice’  (1988). Having to make the effects seem real is way too much work, but he tries to make it as convincing as possible but within the film ‘Alice’ he uses a close up on a look alike doll of the actor we see previously and with his style so out of the ordinary, it just becomes convincing in a bizarre way. When you watch his films, they don’t look realistic, but it doesn’t seem to matter, but when he uses dolls to represent dolls moving, or paintings moving in a book it looks real because that’s what he did and that is what it is.  His style could be compared with people such as Monty Python, you don’t believe that the animation exists, but his style is so out of the ordinary and made to not look realistic, you just have a new appreciation for this style of visual effects. Jan has made other films such as Greedy Guts and Lesson Faust, some of his early work easily grounding him in his own style of visual effects. His films hold up because he does the complete opposite as George Pal and Ray Harryhausen, he makes a world that you buy into in a weird way, he is still taking on projects today, with an opportunity to make better work he is a developer that’s still going strong in the industry.

Contemporary

Tim Burton

Tim Burton is one of the most famous directors making marks with films like Batman, Edward Scissorhands and other large successful films. But there is a part in his work that involves animation, weather that be recreating Gotham city, making an alien species in ‘mars attacks!’, or making fully animated films such as ‘Corpse Bride’ and ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ he is a working director today and is still announcing new projects. His films such as ‘Corpse Bride’ which is fully animated stop motion film is still an impressive film released in 2005, a film that cost 40 million dollars to make with only making back 53 million in the U.S gross, it had become a success worldwide bringing in 117 million dollars; Corpse Bride is still a film watched by many today, this shows that many people enjoy Burtons work and has his own kind of fan base that watches anything he releases when he can make things like Batman and Beetlejuice and still be able to make stop motion animated films that is still able to become an initial success. with impressive effects and obvious work and care put into the film as well as his other animated work. He is a respectful and successful filmmaker. As a contemporary animator he hasn’t really developed the animation filmmaking process as much as many before him has, instead he contributes to the art by widening the amount of entertainment and accessibility to the art he can, he has been able to tackle large challenges with a good crew and can provide entertaining content, that will probably still hold respect and relevancy for years to come. Tim Burton has added to the pile of animations used in films and I can respect what he does, if it cant be achieved in real form, he will animate what he want to show instead, many directors would call computer graphics teams and that would be the end of it with a pleasing finished effect, but instead he uses resources to capture the effect with real sources and therefore becomes more believable, because its actually there, this becomes notable with his 1988 film Beetlejuice. If there isn’t a Gotham city for his batman movie, he will build the set from scratch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6IPeC5xcmo , its large efforts like this that makes his films more enjoyable and can appreciate the work put into his film and animated films.

Nick Parks

Born in England, he had become a producer and writer for classic animation such as ‘Chicken run’ and ‘Wallace and Gromit’, classic English animations with a recognisable and unique design to them. With recent releases of curse of the were-rabbit in 2005 and a close shave in 1995, they seemed to leave a print on todays animation as they have become widely known as a household name. The curse of the were- rabbit having a budget of 20 million dollars, it had been able to bring in a large sum of 192 million dollars, https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312004/?ref_=nm_knf_i1 proving that it was heavily watched at the time of its cinema release, when viewing the behind the scenes footage of the animations https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLVSEVQlXPA it is clear to understand the work put into the film, how long it would take to set up a scene of a buildings exterior that would last around 2 minutes in the film can take months to film and moths to prepare. It is this kind of pain staking work put into the films that give this style of animation such fluidity and doesn’t seem to linger on frames as much as Tim Burtons work or George Pals work would. This sets a high expectation for the studio Nick Parks that they have created themselves that pressures them into not failing, as they have a very large audience that they are dependent on for the film’s success. It sure shows the work put into the film pays off with large recognition and respect for the large fanbase that Nick Parks and the crew of the film have been able to acquire over the years.

Bibliography

https://www.lifewire.com/persistence-of-vision-and-animation-140360

https://www.dragonframe.com/introduction-stop-motion-animation/

http://aframe.com/blog/2013/07/a-beginners-guide-to-frame-rates/

https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/phenakistoscopes-1833/

http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/exhibits/fancy-names-and-fun-toys/praxinoscope/

https://www.animateclay.com/index.php/articles/11-stop-motion-pioneers/44-willis-o-brien-the-man-who-created-kong

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366063/

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0657162/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38nSgWs26TE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MLafk3imk4

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000318/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0121164/?ref_=nm_flmg_dr_11

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6IPeC5xcmo

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0661910/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312004/?ref_=nm_knf_i1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLVSEVQlXPA

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0312004/?ref_=nm_knf_i1