We all grew up on the good old Soviet cartoons. But, seeing Dunno, Funtik or other favorite characters on the screen, no one thought about how much effort goes into creating one minute of a cartoon. Where did her story begin? Puppet and hand-drawn animation - which one is older? You will find answers to these questions in this article.
What is animation?
Animation is a set of technical techniques that are based on the creation of moving images, or rather the illusion of their movement, since many still pictures and scenes are used for this. That is, in essence, it is shooting pictures or dolls depicting individual moments of movement. Animation appeared much earlier than cinema was invented. Modern animation is increasingly called the term “animation”, from the English “revival”. Animation and animation are concepts that are close, but not identical. Their relationship can be characterized as follows. Animation is the creation of animation when drawings, scenes, paper structures, etc. are shot frame by frame.
Invention of animation
What is animation? Part of the childhood of many children. But where did it start?
In 1877, self-taught engineer Emile Reynaud designed a praxinoscope - a mechanical toy with a mirrored rotating drum and a tape on which pictures were printed. Hand-drawn animation originated from this invention. Later, Reynaud improved his unit: now hand-painted pantomimes lasted from 7 to 15 minutes, although it must be admitted that this device for synchronizing image and sound was primitive, but not for those times
Moving pictures
The animation technology looks like this: in each subsequent frame, the hero’s figure is presented in a slightly different phase of movement. Individual pictures are photographed one by one and projected onto the screen. Broadcast speed is 24 frames per second.
What is animation? This is a creative work, the creation of which takes a lot of time and labor of hundreds of people. Producers determine general plan films, screenwriters work on the plot and write a script, which is then broken down into scenes and episodes, illustrated by a series of sketches. Afterwards, all this goes to the desk of the animator director, who distributes the scenes among the animator artists: each of them draws a certain position of the characters in the episode. Intermediate scenes will be drawn by junior animators. The remaining artists are engaged in creating the background against which the action takes place.
Then the contour drawings need to be painted. They are transferred to transparent plastic, outlined with ink and painted. After this, the operator photographs the drawings using a special camera. The last stage is synchronizing the image and sound.
There is another technique for creating a cartoon.
Puppet animation
Russia is the birthplace of puppet, or three-dimensional, animation. With the development of this type of cartoons, new technology making films. Nevertheless, the process of creating the tape remained no less labor-intensive.
The first stage of creating a cartoon is writing a script and thinking through the images of the characters. Based on the sketches of the characters, dolls, their costumes and shoes are sewn, which will match the image of each of the characters. This is the most labor-intensive stage of work, since each doll must be movable.
The second stage is filming the phases of movement of the dolls corresponding to the script. One episode can be filmed for several days, or maybe several months. A full-length puppet cartoon can be filmed for 3 years or even longer. But basically, voluminous animation lasts 5-15 minutes, but even this takes several months.
Why is this happening? For example, according to the cartoon script, the hero runs along a forest path. To film this scene, the character doll is placed against the backdrop of a moving set that depicts trees, the sun, clouds, sky, and birds. To create the effect of a running character, the animator manually moves the hero’s legs and arms and turns his head. In this way, each phase of the character's running is gradually filmed. Along with the body, the movement phases of clothing and hair are also removed. So, during one day of filming a cartoon, when all the photographs are combined into one video sequence, the creators of the film shoot only a couple of seconds of screen time.
When computer technology came into animation, puppet cartoons began to be produced much faster.
Electronic animation - animation
Electronic animation, or animation, is created using a computer: pre-prepared graphic files are arranged sequentially in the form of a slide show. Flash animation is no less popular, when the cartoon is created using the special Macromedia Flash program. It is easy to use and configure, which explains its popularity.
Every person has a tendency to reflect their movement in work or creativity. This can be achieved using various animation techniques. The term "animation" was translated from Latin as "animation".
Classification
Let's try to figure out what types of animation exist. They are also called animation process technology.
- Animation using the freeze-frame principle. It is also called puppet animation. The object is framed, for example, using a camera, then the position of the object in the frame changes, then the fixation occurs again.
- Morphing is the transformation of an object. The existing one is being replaced with another one, according to the principle of quantitative generation of the personnel structure.
- The classic type is a video created from a number of individual frame-by-frame images, with their alternating changes. The main disadvantage is high degree labor intensity of the process. This direction is one of the most frequently used. It represents the types of animations that were (and are) typically used in most animated films.
- Color revitalization - characterized by color transformation without changing the overall spatial position.
- 3D animation - a cartoon created using a specialized software(3DS MAX, XSI, MAYA), in which they are created key scenes for a future video.
- Sprite - the embodiment of this type of animation is produced by using a programming language.
- Motion capture is a type that most accurately conveys all the nuances of natural movement and facial expressions. Special sensors placed on human actors are aligned with the model's control points. When moving, the coordinates are transferred to them. Thanks to such methods, cartoon models come to life.
All the main types of animation presented in the list can be created using various technical means or manually. But today, most often, special computer programs are used for these purposes to optimize the process of creating animated objects and works. Computer methods for creating cartoons expand the boundaries of expression. The degree of impact on the viewer is increased by applying various effects that are not available manually.
Computer animation. Principles
Creating a cartoon using computer capabilities requires adherence to certain rules. Their key principles are: raster, fractal, vector. There is also a separation of 2D and 3D animation software. Two-dimensional programs are usually used for Flash animation, while three-dimensional ones allow you to set the degree and type of object lighting, textures, and perform automatic rendering (visualization).
The main types of computer animation have the same principles in operation. All of the above types apply to them as well.
Methods for preparing computer animation
- Key framing method. Allows you to install an object in the required position and correlate them with respect to time intervals. The computer system completes the missing frames in the structure (between the reference frames). The missing stages of movement are recreated.
- Procedural animation. Used when it is not possible to reproduce certain actions using key frames. Characterizes computer types of animation from the point of view of the sequential construction of individual personnel structures.
- Formation of single frames. Most often done using various graphic editors. Separate image frames are created, which will later be arranged in a certain sequence.
- Raster principle of animation construction. The most understandable of all those listed earlier. Presented as saved in a single file. Typically the GIF format is used. There are a number of programs that allow you to produce such files, such as Gimp.
All of the above types of computer animation allow us to understand how multifaceted the process of creating movement is.
PowerPoint software
Touching upon this topic and looking at examples computer programs that allow you to create, one cannot fail to mention a program such as PowerPoint. It belongs to Microsoft. This package is designed for creating presentations. The demand for presentations is steadily growing, since high-quality and visual presentation of projects and work is one of the key moments in the development of a professional. A presentation created in PowerPoint is a collection of slide materials that are displayed simultaneously on the screen. All necessary data, after being created in the program, is stored in one file. The Harvard Graphics program, for example, also has a similar focus.
Quite wide internal settings of the program help to use different kinds animations. PowerPoint uses different ready-made templates allows you to most effectively approach the creation of presentations.
Main features of the program
The software structure allows, first of all, to create presentations by creating slides with their simultaneous video demonstration on the screen. Slides can be created using different templates. The slide show is created using a variety of effects. Various types of animations are used. You can adjust the order in which the slides are shown on the screen.
Color Templates in PowerPoint
A key feature of the program is that standard animation effects can be applied to all files simultaneously. The program also has a set of ready-made color templates. They have a variety of color schemes, allowing you to apply them to any thematic slides. Color templates allow you to increase the efficiency of working on a presentation, save time, and also give it a certain stylistic direction.
Special effects
For the most visual and memorable presentation, the program has a certain set of effects that allow you to adjust the type of transition when showing slides. Thanks to this, the pause between slide changes, filled with special effects, becomes imperceptible.
Features of the program
All presentations created in PowerPoint program, have the ability to save in HTML format. This saves all used audio and video data. The program also has tools for creating tables and diagrams by drawing, as well as special markup that allows you to insert ready-made drawings and then save them. One more distinctive feature is a function for automatically generating albums. It is possible to use musical accompaniment.
Thus, having considered the information in the article about what methods exist for creating animations, we can conclude that with the development of modern software, the approach to this issue became the most rational. A large number of programs designed to modernize work on animation processes provides enormous scope for creativity and work. And understanding what types of animations exist will help you choose the most suitable program for your specific purposes.
What do you know about such a mysterious art as animation, its origins and methods? Everyone has seen cartoons, but not everyone knows how simple drawn characters come to life and acquire their own character and voice. Let's plunge into the world of childhood and fairy tales, learn a little more about animation, its various genres, characteristic of different countries.
The origins of animation can be found in fine arts, theater, sculpture, pantomime. It represents a unique synthesis of these many arts, thanks to which cartoon characters and plots become real and exciting. Cartoon artistic image multifaceted and quite complex, but at the same time simple and understandable.
As a form of film art, animation began to develop at the very beginning of the twentieth century in Europe and America. In the forties, similar cartoons appeared in the Soviet Union. At that time, the main method of animation was frame-by-frame filming of the characters' movement phases. This method is less popular now, but still does not lose its relevance. It is suitable for both graphic, three-dimensional and hand-drawn, as well as puppet animation. Modern methods computer graphics allow you to create animation much faster and at lower cost financial resources, significantly expanding the capabilities of cartoonists.
Some countries have their own unique genres of animation. For example, in Japan in the early 60s they created a genre called anime (creator - the legendary Osama Tezuka). Young people now love the anime genre. France is the birthplace of hand-drawn animation, and Russia is the birthplace of three-dimensional animation. If earlier the characters were drawn flat on paper, now they acquired a realistic volume. Plasticine animation is also more typical for Russia than for other countries.
Much attention in Russian animation is paid to moral, ethical aspects, inner world characters. The cartoons are filled with meaning and are made in such a way that you involuntarily become one of the participants in this amazing action on the screen. Such animation, bordering on reality, allows the child to learn to do moral choice between good and evil, expand your horizons. And if you enter “Russian” in the search, you will get multiple examples of highly artistic animation, where the characters, their problems, and moral decisions are practically no different from real ones. American cartoons focus on humor and clowning.
Animation is a celebration of fiction and originality in the creations of artists, composers, and directors. And may this holiday be with us longer, giving joy to adults and children.
Throughout his existence, man has tried to reflect movement in his art. The first attempts to convey movement in a drawing date back to approximately 2000 BC (Egypt).
Another example of movement was found in the caves of Northern Spain: this is a drawing of a boar with eight legs.
Today, the transfer of motion can be realized using animation.
Animation called the artificial representation of movement in film, television or computer graphics by displaying a sequence of pictures or frames at a frequency that ensures a holistic visual perception of the images.
Animation, unlike video which uses continuous motion, uses many independent drawings.
Synonym for "animation" - "animation"- very widespread in our country. Animation and animation are just that different definitions the same type of art.
The term that is more familiar to us comes from the Latin word “multi” - many and corresponds to the traditional technology of drawing reproduction, because in order for the hero to “come to life”, you need to repeat his movement many times: from 10 to 30 drawn frames per second.
Internationally accepted professional definition "animation"(translated from Latin “anima” - soul, “animation” - revival, animation) most accurately reflects all the modern technical and artistic capabilities of animated cinema, because animation masters not only bring their characters to life, but put a piece of their soul into their creation .
From the history of animation
Animation is like any other art form, has its own history. The principle of inertia of visual perception, which underlies animation, was first demonstrated in 1828 by the Frenchman Paul Roget.
The object of the demonstration was a disk with an image of a bird on one side and a cage on the other.
As the disk rotated, viewers were given the illusion of a bird in a cage.
The first real practical way to create animation came from the creation of a camera and projector by Thomas A. Edison.
Already in 1906, Steward Blakton created the short film “Funny Expressions of Funny Faces” (Humorous Phases of Funny Faces). The author drew on the board, photographed, erased, and then drew again, photographed and erased... A real revolution in the world of animation was made by WALT DISNEY (1901-1966), an American director, artist and producer. This is far from full story animation, a small digression from the lecture material. More details from the amazing and
interesting story
animations you can get acquainted with yourself.
Animation technologies Currently, there are various technologies for creating animation:
Classic (traditional) animation represents an alternating change of drawings, each of which is drawn separately. This is a very labor-intensive process, as animators have to create each frame separately.
Stop-frame (puppet) animation.
Objects placed in space are fixed by the frame, after which their position changes and is fixed again. Sprite animation
implemented using a programming language. Morphing
3 – transformation of one object into another by generating a specified number of intermediate frames.Color animation– with it, only the color, and not the position of the object, changes.
D-animationcreated using special programs (for example, 3D MAX).) – Pictures are obtained by visualizing a scene, and each scene is a set of objects, light sources, textures.
Motion capture (
Motion general principles. Most of them are formulated for Disney animation and originally applied to cartoons made in traditional animation techniques, but almost all of them are applicable to other technologies.
Here are the main ones:
"Compression and stretching"(squash & stretch).
This principle revolutionized the world of animation. The essence of the principle is that a living body always contracts and stretches during movement. Before a jump, the character is compressed like a spring, but during a jump, on the contrary, it is stretched. The main rule in this case is a constant volume - if a character is stretched (stretch - deformation along the Y axis), then he must be compressed to maintain the volume of his body (squash - deformation along the X axis). "Preparatory action"(Anticipation)
. INreal life To perform any action, a person often has to make preparatory movements. For example, before jumping a person needs to sit down; in order to throw something, the hand must be brought back. Such actions are called refusal movements, because before doing something, the character seems to refuse the action.
This movement prepares the viewer for the character’s subsequent action and gives inertia to the movements. Stage performance. Before the discovery of this principle, movements were drawn, and therefore the result was difficult to predict, because the artist himself did not yet know what he would draw. This principle involves preliminary composition of movements - the artist draws the main points and places the character on the stage, and only then the assistants draw all the frames of the movement. This approach dramatically increased productivity because... All movements were planned in advance, and the result was exactly as intended. But in order to create any specific movement, careful elaboration of each “piece” was necessary. When developing expressive poses, the artist puts all his skill into it, so these moments should be visible to the viewer longer.
To do this, assistants complete the movements so that most of the frames end up next to the key poses. In this case, the character seems to slip movement from one layout to another, slowly emerging from a pose and slowing down at another."Through Traffic and Overwhelm".
(follow through / Overlapping actions)
The essence of the principle is that movement should never stop. There are elements such as ears, tails, clothes that must constantly be in motion. “Through movement” ensures continuity of movement and smooth transition of phases, for example, from running to walking and vice versa. The movement of individual elements of the body, while the body is no longer moving, is called overlap. Overwhelm is expressed in scenes of changing phases of movement. If a character suddenly brakes after running, the soft parts of the body cannot stop along with the hard ones and a slight overlap occurs (hair, ears, tails, etc.). When walking, the movement starts from the hips and then extends to the ankles. Thus, all the character’s movements are connected in a separate chain, and it becomes possible to strictly describe the rules by which he moves. A movement in which one element follows another is called through motion."Movements in arcs"
(arcs) . Living organisms always move along arcuate trajectories. Before this, the method of rectilinear movement was used, and therefore the movements looked mechanical - like those of robots. The nature of the trajectory depends, as a rule, on the speed of movement. If the character moves sharply, the trajectory straightens, but if it moves slowly, the trajectory bends even more..
Often, secondary movements are used to give the character greater expressiveness. They serve to focus attention on something. For example, a grieving character may frequently blow his nose into a handkerchief, while a surprised character may twitch his shoulders. Secondary actions have become widespread in world animation.Thanks to their use, the characters become more alive and emotional. Timing
(Timing). This principle allows you to give the character weight and mood. How does the viewer judge the weight of the characters? The character's weight consists of factors such as movement speed and inertia. In order for the character to move according to his weight, the artist calculates the movement and overlap time for each character. When calculating time, the weight, inertia, volume and emotional state of the hero are taken into account. The mood is also conveyed by the speed of the character's movements. Thus, a depressed character moves very sluggishly, while an inspired one moves quite energetically.
Exaggeration(Exaggerate and Caricature)
. Walt Disney always demanded more realism from his workers, in fact striving more for "cartoon realism." If a character was to be sad, he demanded that he be made gloomy, but a happy one had to be made dazzlingly shining. With the help of exaggeration, the emotional impact on the audience is increased, however, the character becomes caricatured. Professional drawing.
