Animation is a method in which pictures are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today, most animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets or clay figures.
Commonly the effect of animation is achieved by a rapid succession of sequential images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon and beta movement, but the exact causes are still uncertain. Analog mechanical animation media that rely on the rapid display of sequential images include the phénakisticope, zoetrope, flip book, praxinoscope and film. Television and video are popular electronic animation media that originally were analog and now operate digitally. For display on the computer, techniques like animated GIF and Flash animation were developed.
Animation is more pervasive than many people realize. Apart from short films, feature films, television series, animated GIF's and other media dedicated to the display of moving images, animation is also prevalent in video games, motion graphics, user interfaces and visual effects.[1]
The physical movement of image parts through simple mechanics – in for instance moving images in magic lantern shows – can also be considered animation. The mechanical manipulation of three-dimensional puppets and objects to emulate living beings has a very long history in automata. Electronic automata were popularized by Disney as animatronics.
Animators are artists who specialize in creating animation.
The word "animation" stems from the Latin "animātiōn", stem of "animātiō", meaning "a bestowing of life".[2] The primary meaning of the English word is "liveliness" and has been in use much longer than the meaning of "moving image medium".
Although examples of sequential images can be found occasionally throughout the history of art, there is no evidence of any related technology that enabled the artists to view such series in motion before 1832. Other ways to create moving images, by manipulating figures by hand or with mechanics, can be recognized in puppetry, automata, shadow play and (since around 1659) the magic lantern.
In 1833, the phénakisticope introduced the stroboscopic principle of modern animation, which would also provide the basis for the zoetrope (1866), the flip book (1868), the praxinoscope (1877), Muybridge's zoopraxiscope (1879) and cinematography.
A few years before the breakthrough of cinema in 1895, Charles-Émile Reynaud had much success with his Pantomimes Lumineuses. These animated films each contained 300 to 700 frames that were manipulated back and forth to last 10 to 15 minutes per film. Piano music, song, and some dialogue were performed live, while some sound effects were synchronized with an electromagnet. From 28 October 1892 to March 1900, Reynaud gave over 12,800 shows to a total of over 500,000 visitors at the Musée Grévin in Paris
A few years after film became a popular medium, some manufacturers of optical toys produced many chromolithography film loops for adapted toy magic lanterns. These lanterns usually depicted images traced from live-action film footage. At a time when hardly any animations could be seen in theaters, kids would project these animation loops at home.
Some early filmmakers, including J. Stuart Blackton, Arthur Melbourne-Cooper, Segundo de Chomón and Edwin S. Porter experimented with stop-motion animation, possibly since around 1899, or, more likely, since 1906. Blackton's The Haunted Hotel (1907) was the first huge stop motion success, baffling audiences by showing objects that apparently moved by themselves. The short film inspired other filmmakers to try the technique.
J. Stuart Blackton's Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906) is usually regarded as the first animated film on standard picture film shown in theatres. It was partly animated on a chalkboard and partly with cut-outs.
Émile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908) is the oldest known example of what became known as traditional (hand-drawn) animation.
Great artistic and very influential animations were made by Ladislas Starevich with his puppet animations since 1910 and by Winsor McCay with detailed drawn animation in films such as Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). Gertie was also an early example of character development in drawn animation[3] and featured a scene with a live-action recording of McCay interacting with Gertie in a drawn landscape.
During the 1910s, the production of animated "cartoons" became an industry.[4] The most successful producer at the time was John Randolph Bray, who, along with animator Earl Hurd, patented the cel animation process that dominated the animation industry for the rest of the century.[5][6]
In 1917, Argentine director Quirino Cristiani made the first feature-length film El Apóstol (now lost), which became a critical and commercial success. It was followed by Cristiani's Sin dejar rastros in 1918, but one day after its premiere the film was confiscated by the government.
In 1919, the silent animated short Feline Follies marked the debut of Felix the Cat, becoming the first animated character in the silent film era to gain significant popularity.
After working on it for three years, Lotte Reiniger released the German feature-length silhouette animation Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed in 1926, the oldest extant animated feature.
In 1928, Steamboat Willie, featuring Mickey Mouse, popularized film with synchronized sound and put Walt Disney's studio at the forefront of the animation industry. In 1932, Disney also introduced the innovation of full colour (in Flowers and Trees) as part of a three-year long exclusive deal with Technicolor.
The enormous success of Mickey Mouse is seen as the start of the golden age of American animation that would last until 1960s. The United States dominated the world market of animation with a plethora of cel-animated theatrical shorts. Several studios would introduce characters that would become very popular and would have long lasting careers, including Walt Disney Productions' Goofy (1932) and Donald Duck (1934), Warner Bros. Cartoons' Looney Tunes characters like Daffy Duck (1937), Bugs Bunny (1938/1940), Tweety (1941/1942), Wile E. Coyote and Road Runner (1949), Fleischer Studios/Paramount Cartoon Studios' Betty Boop (1930), Popeye (licensed by King Feature Syndicate) (1933), Superman (licensed by DC Comics) (1941) and Casper (1945), MGM cartoon studio: Tom and Jerry (1940) and Droopy, Walter Lantz Productions/Universal Studio Cartoons's Woody Woodpecker (1940), Terrytoons/20th Century Fox's Mighty Mouse (1942) and United Artists' Pink Panther (1963).
Although at least eight animated feature films had been released in other countries and some had been quite successful, many Americans initially thought Disney's plans for an animated feature were foolish. In 1937, Disney proved them wrong with "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", a tremendous worldwide success. The Fleischer studios followed this example in 1939 with Gulliver's Travels with some success. Partly due to foreign markets being cut off by the Second World War, Disney's next features Pinocchio, Fantasia (both 1940) and Fleischer Studios' second animated feature Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941/1942) failed at the box office. For decades afterwards Disney would be the only American studio to regularly produce animated features, until Ralph Bakshi became the first to also release more than a handful features. He produced 8 theatrically released animated features aimed at adult audiences from 1972 to 1982. Sullivan-Bluth Studios began to regularly produce animated features starting with An American Tail in 1986.
Although relatively few titles became as successful as Disney's features, other countries (further) developed their own animation industries that produced both short and feature animations in a wide variety of styles, relatively often including stop motion and cutout animation techniques. Russia's Soyuzmultfilm animation studio, founded in 1936, produced 20 films (including shorts) per year on average and, despite a decline afterwards, reached 1,582 titles in 2018. Also China, Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic, Italy, France and Belgium have animation industries that more than occasionally released feature films, while Japan became a true powerhouse of animation production, with its own recognizable anime style of effective limited animation.
Animation became very popular on television since the 1950s, when television sets started to become common in most wealthy countries. Cartoons were mainly programmed for children, on convenient time slots, and especially US youth spent many hours watching Saturday-morning cartoons. Many classic cartoons found a new life on the small screen and by the end of the 1950s, production of new animated cartoons started to shift from theatrical releases to TV series. Hanna-Barbera Productions was especially prolific and had huge hit series, such as The Flintstones (1960-1966) (the first prime time animated series),Scooby-Doo (since 1969) and Belgian co-production The Smurfs (1981-1989). The constraints of American television programming and the demand for an enormous quantity resulted in cheaper and quicker limited animation methods and much more formulaic scripts. Quality dwindled until more daring animation surfaced in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s with hit series such as The Simpsons (since 1989) as part of a "renaissance" of American animation.
While American animation also experienced international successes, many other countries produced their own child-oriented programming, often preferring stop-motion and puppetry over cel animation. Japanese anime became very successful internationally since the 1960s, and European producers looking for affordable traditional animation relatively often started co-productions with Japanese studios, with hit series such as Barbapapa (The Netherlands/Japan/France 1973-1977), Wickie und die starken Männer/小さなバイキング ビッケ (Vicky the Viking) (Austria/Germany/Japan 1974) and Il était une fois… (Once Upon a Time...) (France/Japan 1978).
Computer animation was gradually developed since the 1940s. 3D wireframe animation started popping up in the mainstream in the 1970s, with an early (short) appearance in the sci-fi thriller Futureworld (1976).
The Rescuers Down Under was the first feature film to be completely created digitally without a camera.[8] It was created with the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS) developed by The Walt Disney Company in collaboration with Pixar in the late 1980s, in a style that's very similar to traditional cel animation.
The 3D style, more often associated with computer animation, has become extremely popular since Pixar's Toy Story (1995), the first computer animated feature in this style.
Most of the traditional animation film studios switched to producing mostly computer animated films around the 1990s, as it proved cheaper and more profitable. Not only the very popular 3D animation style was generated with computers, but also most of the films and series with a more traditional hand-crafted appearance. Most of the characteristics of traditional handmade animation that were deemed charming could be emulated with software, while new digital tools helped developing new styles and effects.[9][10][11][12][13][14]
In 2008, the animation market was worth US$68.4 billion.[15] Animated feature-length films returned the highest gross margins (around 52%) of all film genres between 2004 and2013.[16] Animation as an art and industry continues to thrive as of the early-2020s.
The clarity of animation makes it a powerful tool for instruction, while its total malleability also allows exaggeration that can be employed to convey strong emotions and to thwart reality. It has therefore been widely for other purposed than mere entertainment.
During World War II, animation was widely exploited for propaganda. Many American studios, including Warner Bros. and Disney, lent their talents and their cartoon characters to convey the public of certain war values. Some countries, including China, Japan and the United Kingdom, produced their first feature-length animation for their war efforts.
Animation has been very popular in television commercials, both due to its graphic appeal, and the humour it can provide. Some animated characters in commercials have survived for decades, such as Snap, Crackle and Pop in advertisements for Kellogg's cereals.[citation needed] The legendary animation director Tex Avery was the producer of the first Raid "Kills Bugs Dead" commercials in 1966, which were very successful for the company.[citation needed]
Apart from their success in movie theaters and television series, many cartoon characters would also prove extremely lucrative when licensed for all kinds of merchandise and for other media.
Animation has traditionally been very closely related to comic books. While many comic book characters found their way to the screen, original animated characters also commonly appear in comic books and magazines. Somewhat similarly, characters and plots for video games (an interactive animation medium) have been derived from movies and vice versa.
Some of the original content produced for the screen can be used and marketed in other media. Stories and images can easily be adapted into children's books and other printed media. Songs and music have appeared on records and as streaming media.
While very many animation companies commercially exploit their creations outside moving image media, The Walt Disney Company is the best known and most extreme example. Since first being licensed for a children's writing tablet in 1929, their Mickey Mouse mascot has been depicted on an enormous amount of products, as have many other Disney characters. This may have influenced some pejorative use of Mickey's name, but licensed Disney products sell well, and the so-called Disneyana has many avid collectors, and even a dedicated Disneyana fanclub (since 1984).
Disneyland opened in 1955 and features many attractions that were based on Disney's cartoon characters. Its enormous success spawned several other Disney theme parks and resorts. Disney's earnings from the theme parks has relatively often been higher than those from their movies.
Criticism of animation has been common in media and cinema since its inception. With its popularity, a large amount of criticism has arisen, especially animated feature-length films.[17] Many concerns of cultural representation, psychological effects on children have been brought up around the animation industry, which has remained rather politically unchanged and stagnant since its inception into mainstream culture.[18]
As with any other form of media, animation has instituted awards for excellence in the field. The original awards for animation were presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for animated shorts from the year 1932, during the 5th Academy Awards function. The first winner of the Academy Award was the short Flowers and Trees,[19] a production by Walt Disney Productions.[20][21] The Academy Award for a feature-length animated motion picture was only instituted for the year 2001, and awarded during the 74th Academy Awards in 2002. It was won by the film Shrek, produced by DreamWorks and Pacific Data Images.[22] Disney/Pixar have produced the most films either to win or be nominated for the award. Beauty and the Beast was the first animated film nominated for Best Picture. Up and Toy Story 3 also received Best Picture nominations after the Academy expanded the number of nominees from five to ten.
Several other countries have instituted an award for best-animated feature film as part of their national film awards: Africa Movie Academy Award for Best Animation (since 2008), BAFTA Award for Best Animated Film (since 2006), César Award for Best Animated Film (since 2011), Golden Rooster Award for Best Animation (since 1981), Goya Award for Best Animated Film (since 1989), Japan Academy Prize for Animation of the Year (since 2007), National Film Award for Best Animated Film (since 2006). Also since 2007, the Asia Pacific Screen Award for Best Animated Feature Film has been awarded at the Asia Pacific Screen Awards. Since 2009, the European Film Awards have awarded the European Film Award for Best Animated Film.
The Annie Award is another award presented for excellence in the field of animation. Unlike the Academy Awards, the Annie Awards are only received for achievements in the field of animation and not for any other field of technical and artistic endeavor. They were re-organized in 1992 to create a new field for Best Animated Feature. The 1990s winners were dominated by Walt Disney, however, newer studios, led by Pixar & DreamWorks, have now begun to consistently vie for this award. The list of awardees is as follows:
The creation of non-trivial animation works (i.e., longer than a few seconds) has developed as a form of filmmaking, with certain unique aspects.[23] Traits common to both live-action and animated feature-length films are labor-intensity and high production costs.[24]
The most important difference is that once a film is in the production phase, the marginal cost of one more shot is higher for animated films than live-action films.[25] It is relatively easy for a director to ask for one more take during principal photography of a live-action film, but every take on an animated film must be manually rendered by animators (although the task of rendering slightly different takes has been made less tedious by modern computer animation).[26] It is pointless for a studio to pay the salaries of dozens of animators to spend weeks creating a visually dazzling five-minute scene if that scene fails to effectively advance the plot of the film.[27] Thus, animation studios starting with Disney began the practice in the 1930s of maintaining story departments where storyboard artists develop every single scene through storyboards, then handing the film over to the animators only after the production team is satisfied that all the scenes make sense as a whole. [28] While live-action films are now also storyboarded, they enjoy more latitude to depart from storyboards (i.e., real-time improvisation).[29]
Another problem unique to animation is the requirement to maintain a film's consistency from start to finish, even as films have grown longer and teams have grown larger. Animators, like all artists, necessarily have individual styles, but must subordinate their individuality in a consistent way to whatever style is employed on a particular film.[30] Since the early 1980s, teams of about 500 to 600 people, of whom 50 to 70 are animators, typically have created feature-length animated films. It is relatively easy for two or three artists to match their styles; synchronizing those of dozens of artists is more difficult.[31]
This problem is usually solved by having a separate group of visual development artists develop an overall look and palette for each film before the animation begins. Character designers on the visual development team draw model sheets to show how each character should look like with different facial expressions, posed in different positions, and viewed from different angles.[32][33] On traditionally animated projects, maquettes were often sculpted to further help the animators see how characters would look from different angles.[34][32]
Unlike live-action films, animated films were traditionally developed beyond the synopsis stage through the storyboard format; the storyboard artists would then receive credit for writing the film.[35] In the early 1960s, animation studios began hiring professional screenwriters to write screenplays (while also continuing to use story departments) and screenplays had become commonplace for animated films by the late 1980s.
An animator is an artist who creates a visual sequence (or audio-visual if added sound) of multiple sequential images that generate the illusion of movement, that is, an animation. Animations are currently in many areas of technology and video, such as cinema, television, video games or the internet. Generally, these works require the collaboration of several animators. The methods to create these images depend on the animator and style that one wants to achieve (with images generated by a computer, manually ...).
Animators can be divided into animators of characters (artists who are specialized in the movements, dialogue and acting of the characters) and animators of special effects (for example vehicles, machinery or natural phenomena such as water, snow, rain).
Traditional animation (also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation) was the process used for most animated films of the 20th century.[36] The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, first drawn on paper.[37] To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels,[38] which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings.[39] The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one against a painted background by a rostrum camera onto motion picture film.[40]
The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system.[41][42] Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects.[43] The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media with digital video.[44][41] The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators' work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years.[34] Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" (a play on the words "traditional" and "digital") to describe cel animation that uses significant computer technology.
Examples of traditionally animated feature films include Pinocchio (United States, 1940),[45] Animal Farm (United Kingdom, 1954), Lucky and Zorba (Italy, 1998), and The Illusionist (British-French, 2010). Traditionally animated films produced with the aid of computer technology include The Lion King (US, 1994), The Prince of Egypt (US, 1998), Akira (Japan, 1988),[46] Spirited Away (Japan, 2001), The Triplets of Belleville (France, 2003), and The Secret of Kells (Irish-French-Belgian, 2009).
Full animation refers to the process of producing high-quality traditionally animated films that regularly use detailed drawings and plausible movement,[47] having a smooth animation.[48] Fully animated films can be made in a variety of styles, from more realistically animated works like those produced by the Walt Disney studio (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King) to the more 'cartoon' styles of the Warner Bros. animation studio. Many of the Disney animated features are examples of full animation, as are non-Disney works, The Secret of NIMH (US, 1982), The Iron Giant (US, 1999), and Nocturna (Spain, 2007). Fully animated films are animated at 24 frames per second, with a combination of animation on ones and twos, meaning that drawings can be held for one frame out of 24 or two frames out of 24.[49]
Limited animation involves the use of less detailed or more stylized drawings and methods of movement usually a choppy or "skippy" movement animation.[50] Limited animation uses fewer drawings per second, thereby limiting the fluidity of the animation. This is a more economic technique. Pioneered by the artists at the American studio United Productions of America,[51] limited animation can be used as a method of stylized artistic expression, as in Gerald McBoing-Boing (US, 1951), Yellow Submarine (UK, 1968), and certain anime produced in Japan.[52] Its primary use, however, has been in producing cost-effective animated content for media for television (the work of Hanna-Barbera,[53] Filmation,[54] and other TV animation studios[55]) and later the Internet (web cartoons).
Rotoscoping is a technique patented by Max Fleischer in 1917 where animators trace live-action movement, frame by frame.[56] The source film can be directly copied from actors' outlines into animated drawings,[57] as in The Lord of the Rings (US, 1978), or used in a stylized and expressive manner, as in Waking Life (US, 2001) and A Scanner Darkly (US, 2006). Some other examples are Fire and Ice (US, 1983), Heavy Metal (1981), and Aku no Hana (2013).
Live-action/animation is a technique combining hand-drawn characters into live action shots or live action actors into animated shots.[58] One of the earlier uses was in Koko the Clown when Koko was drawn over live action footage.[59]. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created a series of Alice comedies (1923-1927), in which a live-action girl enters an animated world. Other examples include Allegro Non Troppo (Italy, 1976), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (US, 1988), Space Jam (US, 1996) and Osmosis Jones (US, 2001).
Stop-motion animation is used to describe animation created by physically manipulating real-world objects and photographing them one frame of film at a time to create the illusion of movement.[60] There are many different types of stop-motion animation, usually named after the medium used to create the animation.[61] Computer software is widely available to create this type of animation; traditional stop motion animation is usually less expensive but more time-consuming to produce than current computer animation.[61]
Computer animation encompasses a variety of techniques, the unifying factor being that the animation is created digitally on a computer.[43][84] 2D animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation while 3D techniques usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact.[85] 3D animation can create images that seem real to the viewer.[86]
2D animation figures are created or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics and 2D vector graphics.[87] This includes automated computerized versions of traditional animation techniques, interpolated morphing,[88] onion skinning[89] and interpolated rotoscoping.
2D animation has many applications, including analog computer animation, Flash animation, and PowerPoint animation. Cinemagraphs are still photographs in the form of an animated GIF file of which part is animated.[90]
Final line advection animation is a technique used in 2D animation,[91] to give artists and animators more influence and control over the final product as everything is done within the same department.[92] Speaking about using this approach in Paperman, John Kahrs said that "Our animators can change things, actually erase away the CG underlayer if they want, and change the profile of the arm."[93]
3D animation is digitally modeled and manipulated by an animator. The animator usually starts by creating a 3D polygon mesh to manipulate.[94] A mesh typically includes many vertices that are connected by edges and faces, which give the visual appearance of form to a 3D object or 3D environment.[94] Sometimes, the mesh is given an internal digital skeletal structure called an armature that can be used to control the mesh by weighting the vertices.[95][96] This process is called rigging and can be used in conjunction with keyframes to create movement.[97]
Other techniques can be applied, mathematical functions (e.g., gravity, particle simulations), simulated fur or hair, and effects, fire and water simulations.[98] These techniques fall under the category of 3D dynamics.[99]
![]() |
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Animation |
![]() |
Look up animation in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
![]() |
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Animations. |
Library resources about Animation |