The types of animation has been evolving faster and faster through the years, expecially since it's success has caught the worlds attention.
Computers and animation
In the past, all animated features were hand drawn frame by frame. And since there are usually 26 frames per second for animation, a short 5 minutes film will need more than 7,000 frames to be drawn. It is a most surely a very tedious process.
Then, hand drawn pictures was what most people would think of as the regular animation. Now, the most recent productions were done totally on computers. They have a 3D look and which does not involve the use of clay or puppets, and they also have much better quality.
Computer animation is faster, easier, and it appeals to the audience. Computer animation has many advantages, because computers can generate the betweening and less important frames all by itself. The animators do not have to redraw the pictures many, many times, instead, they can just create the major scenes, which isn't too hard, and let the computer do the rest.
However, time is not just bringing us new ways of making animation, but also improving old ones. The creation of 2D(two dimensional) animation is getting easier too. Now, they just have to draw the figure on the cell and don't worry about painting it, the just take the picture and then, with one mouse click, the animators fill in all of the colors. This saves lots of time as well as allow for better adjustments. Also, they can edit the frames on the computer to make them so much better so much easier, as well as make the movements flow smoothly. They can do things like fix errors, see what it looks like and adjust it, which also means that they can have more control over the outcome.
Style of Animation
Besides that, different animators, through the years, had developed different styles of animation. We can look at the animations from Disney, from Warner Brothers, from DreamWorks and from Aardman Animations for example, each of them have their own unique characteristics that appeals to the audience tremendously and had won wonderful critics from film viewers.
Animation is a very abstract world. We can make it do whatever we can. Through the years, we found that the theme for animation has changed. Animation nowadays are not only targeted to the children, but also to the adults.
Animations had become increasingly complicated. Instread the straightforward way they present their stories to the audience, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, the stories now has twists and turns as well as a more complicated plot, such as in Final Fantasy.
In this light, animation has followed the path that films in general had taken, more complex plot, more features, more matured, and more eye dazzling. Now, animations also targets at a larger range of audience, where before it was only targeted to children.
As you probably noticed, animation today isn't the same as it was 50 years
ago. It has really has come a long way and it will go further yet.
Animation started in 1906, when James Stuart Blackton ran a series of drawings continuously to create a short animated film. From then on, the idea of Animation grew and many people tried it out. Some failed, but most succeeded and the art of Animation was improved upon through the years.
Creation of Cels
Drawing out the animation frame by frame is a very tedious job. It wasn't until the 1910s that the use of celluloid was implemented. This reduced the tedious work of redrawing the background again and again, as well as allowing the animator to concentrate on the main actions in the scene.
The Types of Animtion
Since then, many other types of animation was also created. One such animation is the Clay animation, where small changes to the clay puppets were done frame by frame until a relatively smooth motion is produced when the pictures are run continuously.
Another type of animation breakthrough before the birth of Disney is the puppetry animation. Puppets were used in the scenes, where the movements of limbs are shifted frame after frame to reproduce the fluid motion of real life.
Both these animations are also known as stop-motion animation. It means that still like frames are created one by one, just like one is using the camera, then when the frames run together as a film, a smooth going animation is produced. Some argued that this is not much different from making a film.
Stlyes of Animtion
Then, along come great changes to the animation industries. Companies such as the Disney Productions, the Warner Brothers, and the Aarmand Animations created waves in the history of animation. They changed the way people viewed animation in general. They made us love and adore, even appreciate the art of animation.
Of course, there is also the birth of computer animation in the 1980s. It advantages cannot be denied. It did not only give a whole new dimension to the world of animation, but also the world of filmmaking. Animation is implemented in film making to reduce the risks of stunts as well as generate believable fantasy scenes that were previously seriously handicapped.All these techniques improved as the way to create CGI(Computer Generated Images) has also improved.
There are many significant breakthroughs for animation in the past century since animation was introduced to the world.
Future of Animation
With the progress of animation as it is, as well as the increasing popularity of it, we expect the technology involved in animation to improve much faster than it did. It does not mean just the creation of such technology to support animation, but also the improvements to the speed in which animation is produced. This means faster and more efficient ways of graphic editing, especially for computer graphic.
Although some people deduce that animation wil one day take over the film industry, and as a result, actors will not be neccessary; We do not agree that it will be so. There are many aspects where the actors' performance can never be replaced by atificial intelligence. In so many ways, no matter how hard technology strives to replace humans, we remain to be unique in our own way where humans defer from non-emotional, non-living things.
Other than that, we might also expect changes in the way animation is done in the world. We looked not only at the transitions that Japanese Animation has gone through, but also the subtle changes in the style of animation produced in Western countries.
We must also take into consideration the animation that is integrated into motion pictures, that are no wholy animation on it's own. Examples are 'Space Jam' and 'Jurrasic Park'. These movies had implemented much animtion in it.
Yet, we hope that with the increasing popularity towards animation, there will also be an increase in public awareness of what is behind animation. Not just for each person's knowledge, but to give it the respect and appreciation it deserves.
Animation has been born for almost a century! How much do you know about Animation? What do you know about the history of animation? Do you know how far animation has come by? What do you know about the animtion that is about and around us all the time?
Here we will be bringing you along a ride through what Animation in this world had been, what it has become and what it is likely to be.
So sit back and enjoy by clicking one of the links below!
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