The History Of Animation Part 6 - Tim Burton

"I drew from the very beginning and it seemed during school your told how to draw a certain way, and when it comes to about 10 years old, kids are told they can't draw. I always liked drawing thats why I carried on after people told me I couldn't. I was lucky enough to have a teacher that didn't tell me to draw a certain way, and go with whatever strength and to get my own style. It was a way to explore my family life and emotional core.

 


I could really relate to OMEGA man with charles heston, fave movies, alone. Really responded to german expression, really responded to light and dark, george mielies, old films that really captured a spirit and a feeling of being inside a dreamscape. was strong to me. Use inspiration with Ray Harrausen. The Grinch was a use inspiration for The Nightmere Beofre Christmas Tim wanted to create the grinch in reverse.

I was a bit lucky as they started new disney program, I got a scholarship, I was very lucky to get that, and it was all about being there at the right time. The whole programme started to try and get people to develop in animation. It was considered the darker days of animation studio, even though I wasn't good at it, I got opportunities to draw things for a year, thats when I got the idea for vincent. At the same time I got the idea and started developing nightmare before christmas. But Ive been hired and fired by disney 4 different times.

I'm amazed how drawings freak out adults, I always felt fairy tales were always frighting stories but children relate to it because it's like how am I going to deal with something I don't quite understand, all these weird horrible images that are crucial to child hood.

The tools in animation have changed but I try and keep things as homemade as I can, keep the same approach. Giving yourself limitations, I feel like that really makes it fun. Now with so much technology at your disposable, knowing that I wanted to keep it has human and tactile as possible.

Warner brothers saw vincent and franaweeny, I got that job very strangely easily, that was great they saw something right away. They were all made in my 20's. made an unconventional and no point of reference. It was interesting because it made me balance.

Buton repeats certain shapes and symbols to communicate his characters emotions. For example the faces of his troubled heros are often geometic shapes. The eyes and faces and bodies of many characters are composed of circular or organic shapes. Burton often uses circles to suggest unhappiness. Burton talks about how trying to make sure the medium he choosed is right for the film, with The Nightmere Before Christmas, they made the whole set look like a drawing that came to life and stop motion was perfect for that. It fitted well with the characters and story line.

Tim Burton has been inspiring me creatively since I saw The Nightmare before Christmas when I was 13, he was defiantly one of my major artist obsessions. The way he made Jack move in the film was incredible, with the way he mixed all these known as bad and scary things into a character that was a “goody” really spoke to me.

"In going through my previous artwork, it really energized me, reconnects you with the world. Looking at who you are, what you've done, what you want to do. By looking back I kind of realised I was obsessed with a dramatic theme. A lot of it has to do with my family upbringing, and how you feel as an adult, and that sort of feeling of isolation, and being inside your own head and mind, I always felt very strongly like that. connection with people that fitted into society. Normal was scary, that indicated something that was terrifying in a way to me and I can't get rid of it. “I never considered my drawings art or artwork, it was allays just the process when thinking of ideas. All these things photographs, writings, sketches are the most important part of any project. Those things are essential for communication” When making nightmare before Christmas, the story boarding was perfecting, they drew every scene over and over again."

 
"From a young perspective of in transitioning into an adult, I allways felt like Tim was so hoenst about growing up with feelings of being an outcast and isolation and was really the start to focusng on my own style and not trying to draw perfectly and how incorpertating wierdness in art actually can be used as a really possitive thing." He allways had an underline message in his work that was “be true to yourself”

cool animations

Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

mi-piaci-web from EFFELLEPHOTOGRAPHY on Vimeo.


Garanti from RACECAR on Vimeo.

cool animations

Illusions (part one) from Animal on Vimeo.

The History Of Animation Part 5 - Aardman

Aardman began with Dave Sproxton and Peter, they met as childhood school friends, both mothers taught art and both fathers worked in the BBC. Pete and Dave became good friends, Dave was always interested in process. One day they just decided to play with cut out animation on the kitchen table, this was shot with absolutely no construction. But they laughed our socks off and loved it but there were also political udnertones. They pair were gratley inspired by the TV show Vision On broadcasted by the BBC, and after Daves father showed the BBC what his son was doing, they were given music and said do whatever you like to it. They found it great fun.

They then left surrey and went to Bristol, came up with a charcter that was a complete idiot. Aard man. the producer throuht it was great and the bbc baught it. Then got a check and had to open a bank account, so they called it Aardman. We wanted to do somthing that was fun all the way through, we started playing around with clay work. Gleebies 1975. this was broadcasted. the ancestors to morph. They were lucky to get that brake.

Take Hart 1977 asked can you come up with a chracter to mess up a desk. and it worked really well. They brought in Chaz, then we got the idea to make a series out of them both. They made a series of the amazing adventures of morph. which was pretty amazing at the time.  Aardman built a set downstairs from a georgian house. blu peter came to film them in the studio and how they worked and made a film. In 1981 they were aiming to shoot one episiode in 18 days.

Animted comercials were popular but you were learning on your own. it was a very small industry and were desperately looking for how do we learn this stuff. It wasn't taught in school. Aardman still do a lot of work in animations, and in one way it really does hold the business together

Then they came up with the idea of recording real voices and real situations and trying to do little films for them. Down and out was made in 1978 and found that was a really lovley way to work. with a real audio. Chanel 4 put money into an animation festival, as Channel 4 was just starting and they were aiming for minorities. Suddenly all these animtors came out of the wood work, they used these 5 films in the transmission of the festival.


This is a fantastic piece of animation, properly one of my favourite pieces by Aardman. It's so raw, the audio is completely untouched and the clay animation has a really dark way it's sculptured. Early bird 1983- we did a second series with live recordings. They found its hard to made stuff to people say spontaneously. 

Aardman has met Nick Park by that time, he was very naturally gifted. We helped him with the story boared.  Aaedman helped to make a film babylon 1986 about nuclear holocaust. 

Nick was very intrested in animals and he selected to do creature comforts. By this time Aardman had model makers and helped nick through it. In 1989 Nick didn't use video play back. it allways flowed out, it was magic it went together. Aardman created a completly different approach to what you can do with animation. Mixing children and adult viewers together.

Aardman had advertising agencies asking them to do adverts. They thought to just take the money and get some more equipment and carry out with short films. But it's something the business realies on still today today. In late 60s when television really began to build. They wanted high production value, they learnt so much and bring more model makers, designers and model men and built so many skills from it.

These animations raised the game at Aardman and so A Grand Day Out was realsed, an endearing real British animation. The wrong trousers and a close shave. you can see how the sophistication grew. In the train sequence, timing was flawless. Animation was becoming smoother and smoother.

Chicken run 2000 for nick was a realese of some nutty ness. A good 5 years in the making but by that time they learnt an awful lot on scale, management and writing. The legistics on how to bring this thing to life. Output per animator, how to keep the animators busy, keep them focus on the character when they are working on 3-4 seconds. Having 2 directors they could split the workload, which really helped. Remember why they were doing the scene and make sure the blueprint they put down works. Its good for the actors to see what they are voicing to get into that characecture mode.

Nick came back to wallace and gromit and bring more characters. Instead of a weerewolf it was going to be a rabbit. They locked themselves for 2 years in a victorian shed and had to really concentrate. 24 thousand story bord pictures. Every scene was re written 3 or 4 times. Writting is re writting and re writting only 4 thosand only got on the blueprint. It takes a long time, pixar takes 3-5 years and proberly 3 and a half of those years is in the creatiuve writting and design side. and maybe developing as you go on. It feels like an endless task is ahead of you, they didn't want star names just for the sake of star names we wanted them because they were the right voice. Giving a cinematic quialtiy with light control and depth of field in a small set of a few inches was a challenge and in creating a set you've got more control.

Flushed away 2006. It was an idea that came out of Pete's head. A posh character falls out if his perfect life to find out about reality. They realised it would be a massive thing to do it all in stop motion. So they have a CGI plan available, plugged into their pipe lines. They learnt so much with how the departments work in CGI. its incredibly powerfull tool. Aardman have since made a lot with it.


One of my favorite TV ad's by Aardman are the Serta commercials, the idea that the mattress are so comfortable you don't need to employ counting sheep. Advertising is masive in America, Aardman have worked for Hershys, dont stuff for Jpan, Spain and Swindon. Work needs to be produced a lot faster now, more boundaries are being pushed.

BBC the three blobs 2004 was another one of my favorites. Quirky and funny at the same time.

Aardman have also done change your life 2008 a campaign for the government.

Dave Sproxton says "we are allways trying to come up with ideas, allways chucking things away to keep coming up with the best. keep trying and exploring different media. Now all our departments are in the same building, so  its often that we interact with each other. it's very livley it's great. it reminds other people that how many people are in the company but we all link together and thats great"

In the beginging

Starting to make my animation and my eyes started to hurt due to the colours, i thought I wanted to create a really bold animation but the colours I thought were too strenuous to look at and that wasn't fitting to the music so I started to experiment

Artist Of The Week: Hornet Inc

Toyota | Auto Biography from Hornet Inc. on Vimeo.

Liquid Television Valentine's Day Card from Hornet Inc. on Vimeo.

Colosse - A Wood Tale, Full-Length from Hornet Inc. on Vimeo.

The History Of Animation Part 4 - Stop Motion models

Stop motion is intensive process the body is moved in very small increments. absolute concentration, normally means animating for hours on end without brakes. 1909 princess nicotine was made thus inspiraing minds into the field of stop motion


Willis O'brain made is first film in 1915 called he dinosaur and the missing link, he was one of the pioneers of stop motion animation. He made somthing spectacular. He astounded audiences. His animation was made with puppets and steel frames inside them to create joints. In1930 O'brian began to  work on CREATION which braught together live action and spot motion, he used this for he rest of his ceer using this system of layers of different media, for exaple the back layer would have live action projected onto it and then a layer of a still 2D dimension and then the puppet in the foreground. O'brain designed Kong's 18 inch steel skeleton, he was known for his precised animation that infused king kong with charcter. His greatest stregnths was attention to detail. It took O'brain over a year to animate King Kong, it broke box office records and inspired a new generation of artist. His hard work paid off.


 Ray Harryhausen found out about the glories of animation after watching King Kong. A young harryhousen made the cavebear, and made several short dinosuar films. After meet Obrain his idol, O'brain asked him to work with him on a sequel to King Kong called All Mighty Joe in1946 they worked on the film for almost 2 years.This fram had 150 moving parts on the steel frram and they spent spent many days studying gorrila behaviour. Although never equalling King Kong in popularity, many people see it as superior. Might joe young was just the begnning.



Jason and his argonaughts, Harryhausen animated 7 skeletons and was only able to make 13 frames a day taking 4 and a half months to do the scene. Today ray Harrygausen is reconised as a grand master of stop motion animation. He packed theaters, and the his basic process is still practiced in much the same way. Computers are now used to make reference points and to ensure smooth movement within the character.



Phill tippit designs heros and villans for popular hollywood films. He fell in love with the surreality with the objects moveing themselves. Tippit was put in charge for the stop motion in the Empire Strikes Back. His first project was to design the snowy machine walkers. The snow was created by baking soda. "we made little trap doors underneath each walker so every time we mad a fram we would pop our heads from the trap door nearest to the specific machine move it very slightly and then close the door" The tom toms we made with motion blur. dragon slayer was completly made this way, this process began the idea of refining the movment, getting it perfect. Tippit was dinosuar supervisor on jurassic park.

Whatever tool you use your learning how to work with limitations, trying to keep all this stuff move towards your minds eye.

Animation Techniques Introduction Part 2 - Stop Motion

Another way to make an image seem like it's moving, is by Stop Animation. This is a technique made by taking photo's, then using movement of the object in each photo, to make it seem like it's moving. A long process but very effective.

Puppet Stop Motion

Includes using puppets in a constructed enviroment, they have obvious atchements to their joins to contrain movement. The is the method Tim Burton used for films such as The Nightmere Before Christmas and Coroline. Tv series Robot Chicken also use this method.

Clay Animation
Or Claymation (which is a trademarked name) also known as Plastacine Animation, Wallace and Gromit, the creators of Morph and Chicken Run are the most well known names using this technique. This technique creates a real child friendly effect, and opens up wide moevements within the models used. I love the opening to this and the song really takes me back.



Cut Out Animation
Made by moving two pieces of material that are two dimensional made by Terry Gillian in Monty Python. There have been many different ways this technique has been used, but I'ts Jerry Time has to be one of my favorites, the wiredness in the cut out is amazing, not only is it well written and easy to realte to but the quirky cut out technique is really honest. Watch the first episiode here:



Silhoutte animation

Not very mainstream technique of animtion but still quite widley used. The use of Silhouttes really plays with the different between an image and a shadow and explores depth between darkness. A darker way to animate I believe, but if done well is extrondonarily effective, and I love dark and creepy animation. Lets take a look at The Moon Bird Trailer for a fifteen minute film about an Orphan who discovers magic. Using the perfect technique of animation for the story.





Model Animation
Models that are captured in Stop motion in a real life environment. Bill and Ben were a good example of this and many more. David Allen a model animator used it in Honey I Shrunk The Kids, heres a clip of it:



Object Animation
Using easily idedified objects such as lego, playmobile. Robot Chicken is a good example for this as is this elabrote lego animation. Brilliant timing with the music and nice 80s feel.



Graphic Animation

The simplest way is just by panning the camera around an image. Graphic Animation is non drawn flat visual graphic material. This is an Oscar award winning film by Frank Mouris 1973.

Brainstorm

Animation Techniques Introduction Part 1 - Traditional Animation

Full animation
This Tecnique is made by studios such a Walt Disney and Warner Brothers, this creates high quality animation, very detailed movement and drawings, using a high process and a long creative system to create. Studio Gibly is one of my favorite studios that creates beuaituly intrecitly deatiled animations, that are under this category, here is one of his more resent films. The japanese version of the English film The Borrowers.



Limited Animtion
This technique includes less detail and stylized drawings and methods of moevement. Pioneerd by the artist at the American Studio United Productions of America. I like this style, its more relaxed and I like the different angles involved.



Rotoscoping
Patened by Max Fleischer in 1917, this tecnique is using live film and drawing over each individual frame. Sometimes seen with not much respect in the past because animators said it was a tool for people who couldn't draw. But has gained good change in views over the years. This movie Heavy Mteal 1981 uses this technique.

The History of Animation: Disney

Success did not come easily to Walt Disney, In order to supplement their income the Walt and his brother worked for Cansas city film, making shorts. Disney approached Frank Newman
he offerd to supply Newman with shorts and acheived moderate succes. But eventually laughagram films incorpertaed when belly up. Disney left Cansas ity in 1923 he brought with him $40 and a copy of his work. The very next day after  Disney was comminiioned for 6 films he joined a company with his brother called the Walk & Disney and signed a contract with Margarot Winkler.



The 6 films under the Alive series was well recieved and disney  next created the character of Oswald the Rabbit to be realeased next by Universal. Within a year it became one of the popular cartoon series in America. However Disney did not own the rights and the character was taken away from him. The experience alienated Disney and he vowed never to let something like that happen again. But after 78 years Disney got the rights back.



It was shortly after this incident that he created a mouse named mickey, firstly no distributors were interested and made a bold move and joined the sound revolution. It was the first ever animation that was specifically made to have synchronised sound along with it. The era of silent animation was coming to an end, and Disney learning from his past mistakes trademarked his new star. Mickey's success brought Disney's studio success and frame, one of the factors that set apart Disney from other studios was his sacrifice of profits for quality. By the mid 1930's Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto joined Mickey, adding to the studios fame. Disney's brother wanted him to cut profits in order to spend less money, but Disney had another idea. He would make a feature length movie in order to increase profits. It was a bold move, he was finacialy jumping of a cliff and building a plane on the way down. The origional budget for snow white $2500, but after 3 years Disney had spend $3m on the movie, a astrological number for the mid 1930's. In order to complete his film he morgaged his house and took out loans from the bank of America.



On December of 1937 Snow White and the seven dwarfs was released  it made $8 and a half million and has become one of the highest grossing films of all time. On may 29th about one third of Disneys artists had gone on strike. He fired many of them and parted ways with some of his most trusting artists. The golden age of Disney's studios was coming to an end, despite this Disney continued to create some of the most endearing moments in cinema of all time.



Although Disney made animation history, he has become to be known as a racist, for example in The three little pigs was depicted for having an anti-Jewish views. Many reporters and articles came to the conclusion that Disney wasn't a racist but the views on black civil rights have changed since these cartoons got realized and other rights. There was never any factual evidence to prove that he had any hate against any race and hired people from all kinds of backgrounds, he also said he wished he could have a film like "To Kill A Mockingbird" a film that dealt with racial justice.

Favourite Fridays

Umbra (HD - 2010) from Malcolm Sutherland on Vimeo.

The History of Animation - The start of story telling Part 2

There was no one creator of animation, lots of artist were experimenting in different techniques all around the same time. Georges Melies created the technique of we call now Stop Motion, by complete accident when trying to film a bus driving by when his camera broke. The first ever stop motion short film is from England and was an advert for matches. Click here to watch it.

The first ever person to animate people was Blackton. In 1906 he made "Humorous faces" using stop motion to give the illusion that his illustrations on the blackboard are moving. This was mind blowing and was the first ever time the public had ever seen something like this. All animation after this was another version of Blackton's technique.


Next came MicCay also known as the father of american animation, he was a performer and a comic strip artist, he explored animation further and story telling. His rendering and skills in his drawing were extrordanairy. He got into animation as an experiement, he didn't see it as a career. In this animation of his comic strip character Little Nemo, before the animation begins, he really tells the story of how it's made. He was very open about the way he worked and leaves no secrets between the audience and the creator.

MicCay's second film was called "How a mosquito Operates", were he implied personality traites into this Mosquito that takes blood from a sleeping man. Ronnie Scheib says it was one of the scariest films I have ever seen. I even found it hard to watch being a very screemish person, the way that the mosquito swells up when he is taking the blood is horrible but the way it's animated and creates such an effect is amazing. 

MacCay was accused of tracing his drawings from photographs or projected live footage because they were so precise. So he made Gertie


Up intul the teens of the 20th century animators made all the production themselves, shoting, directing and photographing eveyrthing. But this all changed by John Randalf Bray, orgionally a reporter and a comic strip artist. He was a businessman and at times dishonest. Bray went to Michay as a reporter claimign he was doing an artical on animation and Michay showed him all his tips and secrets.

Bray came up with a new technique, by creating hundreds of etches on ink tracing paper leaving blank spaces for the moving images, saving hours. The was deminstrated in the animation "The artists dream"


Bray created and implimented a new method known as the cell system, which is the basis of what we use now in digital animation, using cells. In WW1 Bray was imployed by the army and created rotoscoping, when live footage is projected onto paper and traced. Which is also a technique we use now, he made WW1 training videos with this. On Febury 8th 1920 the first ever colour animation was realsed. The mid 1920's Bray began to loose intrest in animation and sold his shares.

The animated version of Felix the kat, based on a comic. The cat rocketed to fame, because children and adults could relate to him. This was the first character to be made into business, and merchandise. An assembelly of artists, etchers and inkers sketched out a new film, once every 2 weeks. with the arriavl of sound cartoons in the late 1920's had started to fade and by the 1930's had stopped production.

Fletchers studio went out of busines but ko ko the clown continued bein distributed by Paramount studios.



Eventually Ko ko the clown was replaced by a sexy new comer Betty Boop, Another Bray successeser was Walter Lance, 1918 and quickly became director general of Bray Productions. By the late 1927 Lance new that Bray studios would be going out of business and moved to hollywood to work with an up and coming animator Disney.

The history of animation - Part 1

"The desire to animate is as old as art itself.  The early man who drew picture on his cave wall depicting spear-waving hunters in pursuit of a wild boar attempt to convey the illusion of movement by showing the beast with multiple legs. The cases of anvient greece with their gods and heros, and the friezes of Rome with their battling warriors and galloping steeds, also sought to capture, in static images, the dynamics of action. Stories of pictures that came to life can be found in folklore and fairy tale, but it was not until the 19th century - in the years leading up to the invention of the motion picture - that animated pictures became a real possibility.

Among the many pioneers in Europe and America who explored ways of capturing images of real life, and attempted to analyse and replicate movement, where Britains William Henry Fox Talbot, who devised a photographic method for recording the images of the 'camera obsura' and English -born American, Eadweard Muybridge, who, in 1872, began producing a series of studies of human and animal life, photographed in front of a plain, calibrated back drop. The photographs, shot every few seconds, revealed what the human eye cannot register : the true complexity involved in the mechanics of physical locomotion.



In 1880 Muybridge conducted one of his most sophisticated experiments when he photographed a running horse using 24 still cameras set up alongside a race track and triggerd by a series of trip wires.  muybridge's photographes of horses, dogs and the naked human form would become an indispensable aid to later ganerations of animatiors. Indeed, while Peter Lord was working on some of the models such as the baseball player, Muybridge's book was a constant source of refernce.

"independent animator says animation began long before film, film was an engine that let animation come out" - George Griffin

The Invention of the first Zoetrop was developed in China in 180 AD. A mechanism to view moving image that was spun at great speed to reveal a sequence of images and for them to appear to move. firstly names Chao hua Chich Kuan which ment the pipe which makes fantasies appear was invented by Ting Huan. Later in 1833 English mathemcatician William George Horner created a modern Zoetrop but failed to become popular until the 1860's. The name Zeotrope was given by William F. Lincoln ment the "wheel of life" as opposed to the earlier name for it "Daedalum" by George Horner. Here is a version Cartoon Network have made using their own characters



Later versions like the Kissdacope were developed in Belgim and the sterscope and Phenakistocope there were experimentaion within the photographic and optical techniques. The video below is of the steroscopic Voyeur, these series of moving images create a 3D person inside an area of the page. I really like these, as creepy and wired as they seem. I love the effect they give and the use of these poses and the women create a really dark, odd and almost scary feel about animation.

These really old ways of creating moving images are really inspiring. I like the processes and the basic fundamentalism  I also think when people look and see these kind of things, there is more an aspect of the process that people can make more sense of and see how it works. With the Zoetrop the viewer has to spin it themselves, thus creating a connection from the animation to the audience, giving them control or the speed and being a part of it. I would like to explore on how to make my own and different techniques like this.

PRINT TO PIXEL: An introduction

Brief:
To create a 20 - 30 second animation with an allocated piece of music.

We consume motion design all the time, we are constantly coming into contact with graphic design that moves from adverts, to GIFs to movies. Within this breif I will exploring how to control motion and also be incorporating the element of time into graphic design and understanding how time based design works.

In this brief I must respond to the clip of music I have been given emotionally and this animation will be my personal response to audio. I have always loved animations that are perfectly in time with music, and really well in sync. So I will be exploring past animations and how I will combine movement and audio.

The first reactions to animation most people think of first is Disney and Pixar, although this is a great place to start, there is more to animation than that. Since I started experimenting within animation at 15, I have always been more inspired by abstract motion graphics. I started with stop motion and have made quite a few stop motion animations, using my photography skills. But with this project I want to really explore new aspects of animation I have always stayed clear due to the possibilities of risk factors  involved. Stop motion is something I have been doing for a while therefore I can really understand it, I love the way I have been able to manipulate real life and control what I want.

The difference between a narrative and a story will be investigated. Literal or illteral? Characters with faces or none at all, how to create a bad guy with symbols and minimalism. How to use colour? can colour depict innocence? The use of little colour? Black and white? what will red mean? How to make something as simple as walking, look real and have characteristics of the personality show through.

Mixed media is something I have recently been incorporating. Mixing illustration, graphical type and shapes and screen printing all in my previous project and I really enjoyed it. I typographic animation is something I have dabbled in quite a while ago now and I enjoyed. I have an obsession with type and that will defiantly be something I want to explore, additionally illustration has been also a route I've been taking recently and have had some nice outcomes with. But how to make my animtion origional will be a huge aspect of the route I take.


So here is my audio clip...

Developing Idea