Time-lapse Animation

Time-lapses is the passing through time through sped up footage, or a large compilation of pictures compiled together to give the illusion of passing time.
Time-lapse can be shot with a timer, which is an external input you can add to your DSLR. (Or camera device, as mobile phones and some other DSLR's have time-lapse equipped into themselves) and you can set the timer to take a picture every 10 seconds for example.
You can also vary the effect of the passing of time, utilising the shutter speed on DSLR's. For example when the shutter speed is low and your doing a time-lapse of a motorway for example, you'd see the car lights follow; but if you were to do the same time-lapse but with the shutter speed higher, you wouldn't get that effect but you'd get clear images of the cars passing by through each snap.

An example of a timelapse would be here:


Timelapse over a horizon on a rooftop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63ZxJCjc1SA

Celluloid Based Animation

What is it?
Straight common examples of Celluloid Based Animation would be from Steamboat Willie (1928: A Mickey Mouse Sound Cartoon) which were one of the first few sound cartoons that synced up to the animation in it's time, for example the whistles and sound effects. Speech at the time was hard to sync up, that's why early cartoon's were almost like silent films but with sound effects to help tell the story.
Another common example of this animation technique would be from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937).
Generally, the characters are drawn on cels and laid over a static background drawing. This reduces the number of times an image has to be redrawn and enables studios to split up the production process to different specialised teams. Using this assembly line way to animate has made it possible to produce films much more cost-effectively. The invention of the technique is generally attributed to Earl Hurd, who patented the process in 1914. The outline of the images are drawn on the front of the cel while colors are painted on the back to eliminate brushstrokes. Traditionally, the outlines were hand-inked but since the 1960s they are almost exclusively xerographed on. Another important breakthrough in cel animation was the development of the Animation Photo Transfer Process, first seen in The Black Cauldron, released in 1985


Mickey Mouse: Steamboat Willie (1928)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NQyzcDnMdE

Cutout Animation

What is Cutout Animation
Cutout Animation is a technique used for producing stop motion animation with flat characters such with materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs.
Examples of these cutout animations could be from the pilot episode of South Park (1997-) "Cartman Gets An Anal Probe" (Season 1, Episode 1) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LS-h6ok6LcA
This shows the work, effort and amount of cutouts that would be required to animate this episode, for example looking at the character 'Cartman' his head shape is a cut out and what would be on his head would be the details of his chins and his eyes blinking (as there would be cutout eyes in from of them), then his body shape, arms, hands and feet. Then apply all that is required for one character for a whole scene


My Cutout animation:
https://youtu.be/NPzp-tY9Bwc

Notes:
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Park:_Bigger,_Longer_%26_Uncut

Model Making

Model Practice

One form of Stop Motion Animation is the use of clay (clay-mation), I have made a few models which gives me an insight in the whole model making process. It's good for testing out and practicing for future projects, but it's not grand scale of the likes of Wallace and Gromit.

Here are a few models I have made in practice:

How animation is made through models

With something like Clay Animation, there's a lot of time and effort going into each frame and all sorts. The sets are 

My practise at Model based animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40wpYm0gig0
With help from fellow classmates using their models as well.

How It's Made - Stop Frame Animation

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irOecGxh36g

An example of professional, larger scale model animation:

The Wrong Trousers - Train Chase - Wallace and Gromit - 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrmZIgVoQw4

Kubo and the Two Strings: Official Trailer (Universal Pictures) [HD]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vex0gPFnBvM

Illusionists, Comic strip and Silhouette Animators

George Méliès

(Maries) George (Jean) Méliès was born in Paris in December 8, 1861 and passed away in January 21, 1938, but throughout these years he managed to make over five hundred films in total; with financing, directing, photographing and starring in nearly every single one of them.

George Melies is most famous for his films: A Trip to the Moon (1902), The Vanishing Lady (1896), The Impossible Voyage (1904) and The Haunted Castle (1896).

Méliès wives Eugénie Genin (married during 1885-1913) and Jehanne d'Alcy (married during 1925-1938) were often featured in his films. For example with his short film The Man with the Rubber Head (1901)

The Man with a Rubber Head featured his wife at the time as one of the mad scientists throughout the film.

The film was also pretty popular for its time as it was talked about quite a lot, not because all of it was ingenious at the time, but because of how he managed to pull it off. Here is a link to how Méliès managed to pull it off:
https://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-man-with-the-rubber-head-1902/

Winsor McCay

Zenas Winsor McCay (c. 1867–71 or September 26, 1869 – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator, his most notable work are: Little Nemo (Launch date: October 15, 1905 - End date: December 26, 1926) and Gertie the Dinosaur (Released: September 14, 1914)
In 1909 McCay performed in a successful vaudeville act that featured him “speed drawing” his own cartoon characters, as well as caricatures of noted personalities. Inspired by the work of Emile Cohl and J. Stuart Blackton, McCay began to experiment with animated cartoons and produced an animated version of Little Nemo that proved a great hit in his stage act.
This cartoon film was followed by another well-received animated effort, How a Mosquito Operates (1912), and two years later McCay produced his most famous animated film, Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). Most cartoon characters of the early 20th century had their origins in newspaper comic strips; Gertie was the first featured character created specifically for the new medium. The film was composed of more than 10,000 drawings; for each, McCay drew backgrounds and inanimate objects anew, as no other method had yet been developed of keeping such objects stationary from frame to frame.

1911 Winsor McCay - "Little Nemo" (full animation in colour):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uW71mSedJuU


Gertie on Tour (Winsor Mccay, 1921)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zdrZH0h67M

Lotte Reiniger

Charlotte "Lotte" Reiniger (2 June 1899 – 19 June 1981) was a German film director and the foremost pioneer of silhouette animation. Reiniger made more than 40 films over her career, all using her invention. Her best known films are The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) – the oldest surviving feature-length animated film, preceding Walt Disney's feature-length Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) by over ten years – and Papageno (1935), featuring music by Mozart. Reiniger is also noted for devising a predecessor to the first multi-plane camera.
Lotte Reiniger herself is the prime genius behind all of her films. She had an astonishing facility with cutting--holding the scissors still in her right hand, and manipulating the paper at lightning speed with her left hand so that the cut always went in the right direction. She drew the storyboards and devised the plots and characters, which were closely linked. If a figure needed to make some complex or supple movement, it would have to be built from 25 or 50 separate pieces, then joined together with fine lead wire--as in the famous Falcon that Walter Ruttmann used to make Kriemhilde's dream sequence for Fritz Lang's 1924 feature Niebelungen. If a character needed to appear in close-up, a separate, larger model of the head and shoulders would have to be built--as well, possibly, as larger background details to stand behind it.


Lotte Reiniger - The Adventures of Prince Achmed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25SP4ftxklg

Persistence of Vision

What is Persistence of Vision?
The Persistence of vision refers to the optical illusion where multiple images can blend into a single moving image, tricking the human mind to believe that it is in fact moving, this is the main explanation for motion perception in cinema and animated films.
However the persistence of vision can trick the human mind through various examples, for example swinging a light on a string would create a streak if the room were to be dark, but if the room were to be lighted as well you'd just see the light moving yet no streak would follow.
Another example would be spinning a double sided drawing, for example a name (my name for this example) on one side you put "Ja" and the other side would have "red" thus when you spin it, it'll give the illusion that the word is being spelt.
Examples of what is being said above - What is Persistence of Vision? (Mr. Wizard) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YismwdgMIRc

What were the earlier devices used to create moving images in the Persistence of Vision?
Zoetrope
A Zoetrope is one of the several pre-film animation devices that produce the illusion of motion by displaying a sequence of drawings or photographs showing progressive phases of that motion.
What the zoetrope consists of is a cylinder with numerous vertical cuts around it, this allows for a numerous amount of people to look at it at once, the cylinder is placed on a dial and spun. The reason it is spun is because of the images inside the cylinder, there'll be about 20 different images that correlate to each other, thus when spun it creates the illusion of motion. A visual example of this would be from the image below and this YouTube video:
Things - Zoetrope - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD0ovANHdqQ

Thaumatrope
The Thaumatrope consists of a disc with a different picture on each side, for example a bird on one side and a cage on the other, with the two images on both sides; the disk will be spun rapidly blend the two images together or create a short moving image. Following on from the example when the disk is spun the image of the bird and the cage would blend together creating the illusion that the bird is in the cage. A visual example of this would be from the image below and this YouTube video: Thaumatrope: Bird & Cage - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yD0ovANHdqQ

Phénakistoscope
A phénakistoscope was the first widespread animation device that creates another illusion of motion. This method is on a large disk, the disk would have small cuts all around it, separating it so that the images drawn correlate with each other onto each section of the disk. Then the disk would be placed on a device where the viewer can manually spin via a dial, then the speed of the image being spun would create the illusion of animation.
Film Before Film - Phenakistoscope, Zootrope, Praxinoscope - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4B3FHHt_k8 

Kinetoscope
Invented in 1891 by Thomas A. Edison and William Dickson. The Kinetoscope has a strip of film inside it which was passed rapidly between a lens and a light bulb to display the image as the viewer peered through the peephole.
The Kinetoscope - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfI0NVC0hLU 

Mutoscope
The Mutoscope is a larger and more advanced version of the Phénakistoscope and an alternative to the Kinetoscope, being an early motion picture device invented by Winsor McCay, it did not project onto a screen and provided viewing to only one person at a tine throw a viewfinder.
Mutoscope Mechanism - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-U4hmLe2tc

Pixelation & Stop Motion Test - Using iStopMotion3

Pixelation
A technique used in film whereby the movements of real people are filmed or edited in such a way that they appear to move like artificial animations.


Animation/Pixilation Short Film [1080p]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lo2-wdEVZi4

Stop Motion Test
Using iStopMotion3 I created a stop motion animation with my class mate Aaron and created a short clip. iStopMotion3 uses the front camera of the Apple Mac and can be used to take pictures and then be placed onto a timeline, thus taking plenty of pictures in correlation to each other and pressing play allows all the images to look like a short movie.