Paper
animation and cut out animation are both techniques similar to stop/start
animation. They involve stopping and starting the animation and moving bits of
coloured paper/card/drawings slightly to make it look as if it were moving. Stop motion animation usually consists of
using 3D objects and slight movement however the same idea goes for paper
animation except the bits of paper are moved around on a set background and
obviously 2D. Some well known examples of cut out animation are South Park and
Monty Python. Although now it is digital animation the characters were
originally paper cut outs which were used to make cut out animations the slow
painful way.
The earliest 2D animation techniques started
with strange contraptions which created illusions of movement. Using a
combination of light and images the moving pictures would create an animation.
A Thaumatrope was invented in Greece
in the early 19th century. It was an illusion created when two
images were on each side of a piece of paper, when spun the images combined and
looked as if they were together. It visually blends the images together
creating a very basic 2D animation and from this sprung ideas in various places
creating a basis for various 2D animation techniques. The centre of the pieces
of paper was where the animation was most clear as it’s where the eye is drawn.
The First device invented to create an
illusion based animation was called a Phenakistoscope (spindle viewer). It was
invented by a Belgian physicist in 1832 called Joseph Plateau. It was made up
of two disks, one with images gradually changing and the other with a hole.
They would spin in opposite directions and create the illusion of movement. The
inspiration for the idea came from an English scientist called Michael Faraday
who created an electromagnet from which the Belgian physicist created the
Phenakistoscope. As its quick-to-come successors were much more effective the
Phenakistoscope was sold as a toy. There are obvious similarities between the
Thaumatrope and the Phenakistoscope, with the circular and rotation elements
however the idea was developed by using more images to make a more complex
animation. The more images and the faster the rotation, the smoother the
animation would be.
The
zoetrope was invented by William Horner it 1834. It was originally called the
‘daedalum’ which translates to ‘wheel of the devil’. It became more popular in
the mid 19th century; an American developer renamed the device a
zoetrope meaning ‘wheel of life’.
The
zoetrope is a device placed on top of a spindle so that it spins really fast.
The viewer looks through the small gaps as it moves and the graduating pictures
create an illusion of a moving image.
A well-known artist called Edward Muybridge was famous for a picture animation he
created of a horse using a zoetrope. He famously proved with the zoetrope that
the horse could fly, pinpointing the moment where none of the horses feet were
on the ground.
The zoetrope uses the light as the
illusion, the faster the zoetrope spins the smoother the image looks almost as
if it was real. Our eyes cannot detect a flicking light as once it is a tenth
of a second; our brains believe it to be continuous. Therefore the faster the
Zoetrope would spin the smoother the animation would be and the less our brains
would be able to recognise the flickering as multiple images rather than a
moving image.
The
Kinetiscope started American cinema, it was conceptualised by the inventor
Thomas Edison in 1888 however mostly developed by his counterpart William
Kennedy Laurie Dickson between 1889 and 1892. It worked in a similar way to the
zoetrope and praxinoscope in the way that it used strobe lights to convey a
continuous image, except a film real is used to show the images. The Kinetograph
was a camera designed to take motion pictures to ‘photograph movies’. The
animation was viewed through a small hole in the top of the box and the device
was revolutionary for film making.
Rotoscoping
is another 2D animation technique; it was invented by Max Fleishcher in the
early 20th century. The technique was simply tracing over film footage frame by
frame as to turn it into an animation. It is called rotoscoping because of the
projection equipment used to make the animation. The live action film
frame-by-frame is projected onto frosted glass where it can be traced. This
obviously was a technique required after live action films were being made. The
idea was to make an animation longer and more similar to a movie, which was
more achievable with the film footage.
As
cinema was progressing so was animation, pioneers like Walt Disney, Hannah
Babera and Warner brothers, each are still very successful in terms of 2D
digital animation to this day. Walt Disney and his brother Roy O Disney founded
Walt Disney pictures; between 1923 and 1928 they released two animation
pictures called silly symphonies and Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse mostly was they
are famous. Walt Disney most likely used a process similar to rotoscoping,
using sprites and drawing movements gradually and produced many more well known
picture animations. Hannah Barbera is another American animation corporation
formed in 1957. The animation directors are William Hanna and Joseph Barbera
who are in partnership with Columbia pictures with live action director George
Sidney. They produced many well known animations such as the Flinstones and the
yogi bear show. Warner Brothers are another American 2D animation company they
were founded in 1903 – 1925. Their first major motion picture was a remake of a
Broadway play called ‘The Gold Diggers’. All of these companies were founded
around the same time, when 2D animation was starting to become popular and
easier to achieve. Also they all happen to be very successful organisations.
The
word pixel comes from the term picture element; it is the smallest unit on a
display device. Image resolution refers
to the amount of pixels in a digital image, the more pixels in an image means
the resolution will be higher and generally the higher the resolution of the
image the larger and better quality the image is. The intensity of the image
indicates the brightness in a way. Image
gradient is used to measure the intensity of the image; it refers to the
gradual blend of colour and light. If a pixels intensity is high the colour
will be bright, if the intensity is low the colour and brightness will be dark.
There
are two types of digital graphics and those are vector and raster images. A
raster image is made up of lots of pixels and is generally more commonly used;
they often are JPEGs and take up little memory. A vector image is made up of
lines or path curves, a vector image can be used for something quite large like
a billboard advertisement and can equally be used for a small logo on a letter
head without losing quality or getting distorted.
A
file extension tells your computer which type of file it is so that it can open
up the correct programme to support it without crashing or experiencing any
problems. The file extension is the 3 or 4 letter abbreviation at the end of
your chosen file name for example :(.JPEG, .PSD etc.). Generally for digital images computers will
not display the file extension as pictures or word documents (or anything) will
also have an icon for the user to recognise was the file is.
The
two types of file compression are called lossy and lossless. Compressing a file
means to make it smaller to save memory, eliminating redundancies that are not needed.
Lossless compression is where any repeated information is sorted into patterns
and temporarily stored in the RAM. Lossy compression different and is often
used for bitmap images, an algorithm seeks out redundant information (like
small variations of colour) and deletes them permanently. The difference is
small and not noticeable however if an image goes through lossy compression too
many times the image becomes blurry and pixelated.
Digital
images can be captured with a scanner, digital camera or drawn with a graphics
tablet. image capture devices read the light and colour balance to create a
digital image and transfer it onto your screen. Scanners use a ray of light,
digital cameras uses a different process but equally uses to light to capture
the image. Graphics tablets on the other hand are transferring direct drawings
into Photoshop (or any other application) and turning it into a digital image
made up of pixels.
Image
optimisation is making sure that an image for whatever purpose is at the
necessary quality and size. Target image
output is understand the purpose of the digital image, whether it is for an
advertisement on the side of a bus or a logo on some packaging. Image bit depth
refers to the colour of singular bits in a bitmap image, generally the higher
the bit dept the better quality the image and the better the colours will
blend. Image Dimensions is also talking
about the size of the image but in a different way, In terms of Photoshop it
means you can scale the image to A4 etc.
No comments:
Post a Comment