8) Unit 34, Task 1

Development & Techniques of 2D Animation

Here, I'll be writing an article for an online computer game art eZine, explaining the techniques and development of 2D animation.
Firstly, I'll go through all the techniques of 2D animation including the traditional as well as the digital ones with, the most well-known and used, application software; and then, I'll talk about the development of the 2D animation through the names of some - we could say - extraordinary people, and the history.

Techniques

The traditional 2D animation techniques:

*Flick book - also known as a Flipbook, is a series of images that are being flipped from one page to another gradually and rapidly, creating an illusion of the objects, characters, or anything that is being presented, to be simulating motions or any other changes. Flick books could also be a series of photographs, instead of illustrations, organised in a sequence forming a story. Usually, those are mainly made for kids as proper books, however, they also tend to appear as an added feature or just an interesting fan story either normally or digitally drawn.

*Cel animation - is a technique of 2D art drawn free-hand on a special plastic called 'cels'. An animator transfers a draft drawing onto the transparent sheet - the cel - where the outlines of a drawing are on one side and the colour is filled in on the other side (this allows to eliminates brushstrokes). Subsequently, the 'cel' is being placed over a background and photographed in a sequence creating an illusion of movement, constructing an animation.

*Rotoscoping - is another animation technique where an animator trace over a film footage frame by frame. The process was to film real scenes in live actions, then project it onto a glass panel where an animator could trace the action from, one frame at a time. This technique allowed the designers to improve their animated characters' movements as well as to make them more realistic. Many of the Disney animated movies were created via rotoscoping, such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves or, Alice in Wonderland and more.

*Drawn on film - technique has two main methods to be created. First, is the one that starts with a completely blank film stock on which the artist can draw, paint, stamp, glue or tape objects and so on, creating a frame by frame animation on the film stock. The second method is with the black - already developed - film, where the animator can do whatever they want (to the footage on the film stock), such as, it could be scratched or etched or punched or also painted on, etc. Whatever the artists find useful, to create an animation of their desires, can be used in both of those methods or even combined. This was the technique used to create the very first coloured films.

*Photographic stills - (stop motion) is a very beautiful technique of creating an illusion of movements of still objects and characters. This process is constructed through building up all the objects, characters, scenes with different materials - such as, well known and used, clay or wood (e.g. for puppets) - and then moving them slightly with every next photograph, so that once they're all put together, they'll create a whole animation. Well, known movies that were made through this technique are for example Coraline, Tim Burton's Corpse Bride, The Nightmare Before Christmas or Box Trolls.

The digital 2D animation techniques:

*2D bitmap graphic - is a technique that uses 2D bitmap images - also known as raster images - which are formed with multiple pixels in a grid formation. These pixels, each of them, is coloured and once looked at from a distance, they appear as a solid shape, however, once it's zoomed in the pixels can be visible again. Bitmap images are dependent on the resolution of the image (the higher the PPI (pixel per inch) the more you can zoom in) which can sometimes be a problem because, for example, re-sizing a bitmap image can cause losses in quality. That's why this technique is best used in the pixel arts, animations or games.

*2D vector graphic - is an art or a motion in an animation controlled by vectors; these are the points which create a path in between, each contain handles allowing to adjust and develop the path even further. Additionally, unlike pixel arts that are being calculated through every pixel, causing their files to be quite big, the vector graphics calculate only the points and their handles between the paths, that's why their files can be pretty small. Usually, this technique is used by animators if they have intentions to create a high-quality digital image; as this method uses different mathematical equations, which allows the image to have infinite scalability without any loss of quality.

Application Software:

*Adobe Flash - supports vector graphics, sound, video and raster graphics and more - this is why Adobe Flesh is a great software for 2D animations. This program simply gives varied tools for creating 2D objects, figures etc. which then can be animated and recorded on frames and layers.

*After Effects - in other words, could be described as a Photoshop for videos. Of course, it is completely different, this software contains resources such as particles, noise, presets animation, text animation and more. Commonly, After Effects is used for creating amazing effects for movies and animations; additionally, it can be linked with different software like Cinema 4D or the Adobe products, helping out with the workflow. For example, with After Effects, we can work only on the minimalistic presentations of 10 seconds to 1 minute and if we'd decide to create a longer animation, we could change to a different software such as the Adobe Premiere, which allows us to create movies even up to 2 hours or even more.

*Anime Studio - also known as MOHO, is an amazing vector-based 2D animations software, which contains a whole range of features offering endless possibilities for profesional animators. This software offers many tools and methods, for example, allows to draw as well as paint and fill the artworks with a huge amount of varied brush effects and colour tools. The animation can be created either with a frame-by-frame method or combine it with the bone rigging system, allowing to achieve desired results better and faster.

*Toon Boom Studio - is a software specializing in animation production and storyboarding. Similarly to MOHO, this software has a huge range of features allowing the designers to create amazing, professional artworks. Toon Boom Studio has been used in storyboarding for films, television, web animation, games and more; it's also known for its helpful uses in creating most popular TV shows such as Family Guy, The Simpsons Movie, Futurama, The Lion Guard and others.

*PowerPoint - is mainly used for show slide presentations, combining text, graphics and multi-media content allows creating professional presentations; however, this could also be used for creating mood-boards or even storyboards for games or animations, with some additional written information if wanted. This software indeed very simple, but can be very useful.

Development

The Pioneers:

*Joseph Plateau - a Belgian physicist - was one of the first people who invented and revealed the illusion of moving images. He has done it through his device called phenakistiscope. Phenakistiscope, invented in 1832, was a first animation device which could create a fluid illusion of motion and was truly widespread. It's a wheel with slits and images on it, so once it's being twisted around and the viewer is looking through the slits at the reflection in the mirror, if they're close enough, the slits will break up each frame of movement allowing it to be fluid instead of blurry. This type of animation is just like a GIF animation, it can only show a continuous loop.


*William George Horner, who was a British mathematician, was the next inventor which played a big role in the animation/movie development. He was the person who invented a zoetrope, also known as Wheel of Life, in 1834. Simply put, a zoetrope was a next motion picture projector based off the Joseph Plateau's invention however, this device worked just a bit different as its design varied from the first one - zoetrope doesn't need to be held by a person above a mirror as everything was put already into one. The device has its images put inside in a circular way around the inside surface of the cylinder, and has the slits in between each one, allowing the viewer to see through them and let see the illusion of motion. All that needs to be done is to turn the wheel around. We can see the motion to be non-stop, and that's because human retina retains an image for about tenth-of-a-second, which means that if the next image appears in this time, the sequence will seem to be uninterrupted.


*Emile Reynaud, a French inventor, created a next device called a praxinoscope and a very first projected animated films. The praxinoscope was an improved version of the zeotrope, this too had pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder, however, the narrow viewing slits were replaced with an inner circle of mirrors. This allowed the pictures to appear more or less stationary in position, this way the viewer looking into the mirrors would see a brighter and less distorted motion picture than the zoetrope could offer.

*Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who first broke down a real-life action into a sequence of still images. He was a well known and important pioneer for his photographic motion studies. This all started when Muybridge set up twelve cameras along a racetrack to capture the horse in motion to check if there is a point at which the horse rises all four hooves off the ground. This experiment launched a wave of motion studies all around the world, which was a giant step closer to motion pictures.

*Thomas Edison, an American inventor, developed many devices in different fields, that he got credited for, such as the electrical power generation, mass communication, sound recording and most importantly, the motion picture. These inventions included the world's very first motion picture film camera. The movie camera, film camera or cine-camera is a type of camera which takes a rapid sequence of photographs on film stock, which then can be played back in a movie projector at a specific speed, creating a real movie. Additionally, kinetoscope was the earlier invention of his, which was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through a peephole. This was not a movie projector however, it was considered as the very beginning of approach for the real standards of all the cinematic projections.

*Lumiere brothers, who were born in the 1860s in eastern France, were included as the first filmmakers in the history. They looked at the kinetograph and kinetoscope inventions and realized they could do better than that, inspired, in 1980s they invented a device called cinematography, which is a motion picture capture as well as a film projector and a printer -three in one. This was the first real film projector which allowed simultaneous viewing by a larger number of people than just an individual at a time. This was a great breakthrough at which, the Lumiere brothers gained a load of money.