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.