Wednesday, 5 October 2016

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 
File:Phenakistiscope.jpg
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

Thursday, 22 September 2016

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.



Thursday, 15 September 2016

Talking about Stop Motion Animation

Stop Motion Animation
What is Stop Motion Animation?
Stop Motion Animation is where an object is being manipulated physically to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, this then creates the whole illusion of movement when the series of images are compiled onto a sequence.
Examples of stop motion can be from the popular TV series ‘Wallace and Gromit’ (1990-2010) which uses clay objects to create figures, characters and the mise-en-scène, with the assortment of other materials to name a few, for its scenes. This method of creating animation is called clay-mation; clay animation.


An example of Stop Motion/Clay-Mation – The Wrong Trousers – Train Chase – Wallace and Gromit:

Flipbook Animation
Flipbook animation is also stop motion and requires the same amount of effort as on each page of the notepad, doodlepad or flipbook has to be redrawn in correlation to the previous image. For example the video URL below named ‘Matrix style flipbook animation’ basically represents flipbook animations as a whole.
Matrix style flipbook animation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UocF4ycBnYE

Other examples of Animation
Many cartoons require the same method of flipbook animation however it is more digital than on paper. The same attention to detail which is similar towards flipbook, however easier and has lesser room for mess-ups as you can undo and easily erase mistakes without any traces.
For example the popular TV series 'The Simpsons' (1989-) uses the same method, with storyboards, animators, etc.. This is explained in greater detail in the article below.












The Simpsons - Marge becomes a Cop
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_r_S2Lio3I
http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/25/9457247/the-simpsons-al-jean-interview