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

Lazer cutting workshop