Saturday, February 21, 2009
Temasek Junior College 2009 WOW! Attachment – 2D Animation Course (SP)
Analysis/Report of Video Clips & Traditional vs Flash Animation
Written by Denise Wong
Since early days, Man has always been intrigued by motion, and has always tried to capture a sense of motion in their art. This interest in motion art is said to be beginnings of traditional 2d animation. Such art first came from the Egyptians, on their wall decorations circa around 2000 B.C, where, by using successive panels, they depicted the actions of two wrestlers in a variety of holds. Another example comes from the famous Renaissance artist Leonardo Da Vinci, in his study for ‘The Last Supper’, one of his most famous art pieces aside from Mona Lisa, where he sketched many muscled males, with their arms and shoulders in different positions, as preparatory sketches.
The predecessors of traditional animation however, first appeared in the form of the thaumatrope, invented by Frenchman Paul Rogert in 1824. The thaumatrope was a disc where on both sides, two different images were painted, e.g., a bird and a cage. There would be a string attached to both sides, and when the disc was twirled, it would create an illusion that the bird was in the cage. Three other similar inventions followed the thaumatrope – the phenakistoscope created by Joseph Plateau, the zoetrope by Pierre Desvignes and the praxinoscope by French scientist Charles-Emile Reynaud, in 1831, 1834 and 1877 respectively. The phenakistoscope was a circular card with slits around the edge, where the viewer sees a progression of images that results in a moving object by holding the card up to a mirror and peering through the slit as the card whirls. The zoetrope worked on the same fundamentals, but Desvignes placed the card in a drum like wheel which whirled around a spindle instead. The praxinoscope was simply a more complicated version of the zoetrope; however the viewer looked at a mirror which reflected the spinning pictures rather then looking through slits at the top of the drum, hence obtaining a clearer image.
Traditional animation began from the flipbook, patented by John Barns Linnet in 1868 and improved upon by Herman Casler in the form of the Mutoscope in 1894. Thomas A. Edison and a few other’s (including Herman Casler) work on the motion camera and projector revolutionized cartoon drawings, and provided the first practical means of making animation. The first animated picture film ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’ came from J. Stuart Blackton, where a cartoonist drew faces on a chalkboard and they apparently came to life. Many consider Disney to be the ‘creator’ of animated feature films – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was released in 1937. Before Snow White however, there were previously released films, the first being El Apostol, made in 1917 by Quirino Cristiani from Argentina.
In retrospect, Disney was the first to use Technicolor and also the first successful animation studio within the English-speaking world – Flowers and Trees (1932), which won and academy award, and Disney studios still remains to be one of the most successful animation studios to date. With the introduction of computers and CGI (computer-generated imagery) animation, again picture films underwent reform. Today, many feature films have animation incorporated into them for special effects. Again Disney led the reform; their collaboration with Pixar to produce Toy Story became the first full length feature film animated entirely on computers with its release in 1995. Yet another example of a film that relies heavily on CGI animation is George Lucas’s creation – Star Wars.
In comparison of the two different forms of animation – traditional 2d animation and flash animation, there are several similarities. The two main clips being used in the analysis are Bugs Bunny: Ali Baba Bunny, and The Adventures of Billy and Mandy: Sister Grim.
Fig 1.1: Ali Baba Bunny Fig 1.2: Sister Grim
Similarities between the two are present, most importantly being the fundamental principles that both are animated upon. There are two popular set of such basic principles that most animators follow. One was created by Walt Disney, titled the 28 Principles of Animation, which can be found easily online. The other was written by John Lasseter, who listed 12 principles:
- Squash and stretch
- Timing
- Anticipation
- Staging
- Follow through action
- Overlapping action
- Straight ahead action and pose-to-pose action
- Slow in and out
- Arcs
- Exaggeration
- Secondary action
- Appeal
Other similarities include the fact that animators follow the 3 act structure:
- Act 1: Introduce the characters and setting.
- Act 2: Character encounters a conflict/obstacle.
- Act 3: Resolution
In both clips, characters are always introduced and the scene is put in perspective at the start of the clip. They always go through some form of ‘violence’ or threatening situation as well. They go through a conflict, in other words. In Ali Baba Bunny, Daffy gets sliced at by Hassan, the cave protector after he attempts to steal the treasure. Also in Sister Grim, Mandy smacks Billy after he answers her question as to whether he was sure that he saw Grim land there once they got off the bus. However, in the end of the cartoon, the conflict that the characters face is always resolved, allowing the viewer to see the outcome or consequences of the character’s actions. In Ali Baba Bunny, Bugs Bunny finds a pearl in the end after finally arriving at the beach, whereas Daffy ends up being shrunk by the genie in the magic lamp and losing all his treasure because he had disrespected it.
The differences between the two are that one, traditional 2d animation has more detail, being that it is easier to draw and sketch using pencil and paper rather then on vector animation software. Hence, the shapes used to create characters in Sister Grim are also more simplistic, in order to make it easier to animate the character in the software, unlike in Ali Baba Bunny, where there is a scene with where daffy jumps into a large pile of jewels and coins that are definitely easier to animate on paper.
In addition, there are more acerbic personalities in recent cartoons, highlighting the social/behavioural change in children, who are interested by sarcastic wit and sometimes even blood and gore, as seen from the popularity of Happy Three Friends, which are a series of short clips that usually end in the character spilling bodily parts and blood all over the scene. Yet another example is South Park, where the character Kenny is killed in almost every episode. Such animations merely seem like the animator stringing together a series of gags or jokes to create a series. Conversely, in traditional 2d animation clips which Warner Brothers’ Looney Tunes is most famous for, the animators are more reserved. While the cartoon characters get hit or squashed once in awhile, there is never any blood or gore in the scene. Take for example in Ali Baba Bunny, where Hassan swings his sword at Daffy, only his hat splits, but there is no usage of blood or gore.
Furthermore, the colours and contrast used in traditional animation (e.g. Looney Tunes, Tom & Jerry) are also less fluorescent then their modern day counter parts like Dexter, Powerpuff Girls. Traditional animation produces graphics that are usually slightly blurrier or are of a lower quality (in terms of image sharpness) than flash animations. Daffy wags his tongue in the clip Ali Baba Bunny, and when he does, one can actually see the different frames used to create the scene, the two key frames being Daffy’s tongue on the extreme left/right of his mouth. In Sister Grim, I have observed no such flaw, the image quality is sharp and clear, and the lines used are thicker as well, as compared to Ali Baba Bunny; the characters in Sister Grim are given a firm outline, and . This seems to be the main differentiating characteristic in modern and traditional animation; in both Dexter and Powerpuff Girls the lines used to draw the characters are also bolder and the colour contrast is also more, as compared to Looney Tunes cartoons or even Tom and Jerry.
Although there are simple applications for making animated GIFs and highly sophisticated applications for making 2D or even 3D animations, according to online surveys and figures from the company, Macromedia Flash is currently the most popular animation tool used. Relatively inexpensive and relatively easy to learn (or, at least, to learn the basics), Flash allows animators to combine text, image, sound, and video in a single clip. As a vector-animation tool, Flash defines shapes via mathematical expressions and thus provides smaller file sizes, and because of the relatively quick download time of Flash movies, Flash has become synonymous with animation on the Web.
Macromedia estimates that there are over 500,000 Flash developers and that the Flash player has been installed on more than 97% of Internet-enabled desktops. For some theorists, Flash has come to define new media and is the most common software that most animators use. Lev Manovich, for example, uses the term “Flash generation” to refer more broadly to the “cultural sensibility of a new generation” of software artists, designers, and developers who may be using Flash or who may be using other tools, such as Director, QuickTime, or DHTML. Manovich and Anna Munster have offered definitions of a “Flash aesthetic,” again using Flash to refer to a range of applications being used to create new media and software art.
Flash was originally developed in the mid- 1990’s by Jonathan Gay (currently Vice President for Technology at Macromedia). As Gay describes it in “The History of Flash,” he and a few colleagues created a graphics program called SmartSketch that was designed to work with pen computers (portable computers that you could write on with an electronic pen). While pen computing never quite took off, the advent of the Internet and the Web created a market for a 2-D animation program, and so Gay and his colleagues modified SmartSketch to include animation capabilities. The resulting program, which they called FutureSplash Animator, was sold to Macromedia in the fall of 1996.
Traditional 2D animation done on the flipbook or the Mutoscope requires the animator to draw each and every frame, and the tedium of going through other processes like redrawing the final copy of drawings onto clear films and painting in the colour etc. becomes a problem as to the usage of money to create the film. Consequently, traditional 2D/flipbook animation is no longer a viable option of animation studios to use. Moreover, CGI animations allow the addition of special effects and it also simplifies the process of producing the film, as everything can be done in the computer itself, hence saving the company a lot of resources such as money and manpower. Granted that the animator has to pick up more roles as compared to olden times, nevertheless, our society is an ever changing one, and standards and expectations will undoubtedly have to rise and progress. Besides, with companies constantly trying to better and outdo each other, it is to be expected that animation will no longer remain the same but continue to advance as well, changing with the times in order to keep up to current demands and trends.
In conclusion, it is no wonder that companies prefer to use Flash animations nowadays as compared to traditional drawn animation, since it saves them plenty of resources like money, props, cameras, film reels, and manpower. Most important amongst these resources is time, as time is considered on of the most invaluable thing in our society.
As the famous maxim goes, ‘Time is money.’
/copyright: work of -theKNEES. /2009.
--Mary HAD a little lamb--
9:07 AM
