Beginning of Computer Art


During the 1960s, a few large American computer companies provided equipment to a number of experimental filmmakers. In 1966 IBM set up a research program and hired John Whitney, who made films like Permutations (1968). A few years earlier, Stan VanDerBeek had started to make Poem Fields (1964–70) using the Beflix language devised by Kenneth Knowlton, an engineer at Bell Telephone Laboratories. His experiments were among the first real films made using computer animation. They are abstract films conceived in the pure "underground" spirit.

But they cannot be said to mark the beginning of computer art. American Ben P. Laposky had actually made the first electronic abstracts in 1952; then, in 1960, Germans Kurd Alsleben and William A. Fetter made the first synthetic images on a computer.

At the NFB, starting in the 1960s, computers were used for experimental films. Bernard Longpré (Test 0558, 1965) and Pierre Hébert (Around Perception, 1968) were pioneers. In neither case, however, did the computer actually generate pictures. For Around Perception, Hébert used the computer to create random juxtapositions of shapes cut out of paper.

It was not until 1971 and Metadata, by Peter Foldès, that computer graphics arrived. Foldès, a Hungarian filmmaker who had worked in France, Great Britain and the United States, went on to make Hunger (1974), a film denouncing overconsumption, in which the filmmaker continued the technical research he had begun with Metadata.

In 1981 Pierre Moretti made Graphic Variations on Telidon as a test to illustrate the graphic possibilities of Telidon, a videotext system supported by the Canadian government. In the 1980s, on the initiative of producer Robert Forget, the NFB produced animated segments for Transition (Colin Low, 1987, in stereo) and Emergency (Colin Low and Tony Ianzelo, 1988). For Emergency, Doris Kochanek's animation was transferred to Imax film, a first.

At the same time, Forget produced If Only ... (Marc Aubry, 1988), in which computer animation techniques were applied at some stages of the traditional animation process. Once the animator had done the key drawings on paper, they were digitized and the in-betweens were computer generated. Similarly, inking and painting were also done by computer. Aubry's film showed how the computer could increase the number of layers of images without running up against the density limitations and handling problems inherent in cel animation. In the years following the film, in fact, the entire animation industry gradually shifted to computer processes for these stages. Among the large number of films illustrating this technological shift are Overdose (Claude Cloutier, 1994), The Boy Who Saw the Iceberg (Paul Driessen, 2000), Flux (Chris Hinton, 2002), Noël Noël (Nicolas Lemay, 2003) and Stormy Night (Michèle Lemieux, 2003).

In 1989 Marc Aubry and Michel Hébert made Anniversary, for which they used 3-D computer graphics. Along with Mirrors of Time (Jean-Jacques Leduc, 1990), this was the NFB's foray into the field. Other films followed, such as La Salla (Richard Condie, 1996), Cuckoo, Mr. Edgar! (Pierre M. Trudeau, 1999) and Showa Shinzan (Alison Reiko Loader, 2002). Chris Landreth's Ryan, a documentary on animator Ryan Larkin, completed in 2004, is the acme of composite imagery.

In the 1990s, the computer became one more tool in the hands of filmmakers using traditional techniques. By the end of the decade, most animators were using computers one way or another to make their films. The role of computers became more general and diverse. For example, for La plante humaine (1996), Pierre Hébert digitized his direct-on-film etched images and did the painting by computer. John Weldon, for The Hungry Squid (2002), developed "recyclomation," an ingenious way of working with puppets, photographs and simple software applications. For L’Éternel et le brocanteur (2002), Michel Murray combined live action, photographs and digitized images to create an amazing science-fiction world. Some animators, like Nicolas Brault (Antagonia, 2002), also draw directly on a graphic tablet.

The constant desire of NFB artists to experiment and innovate technically can be seen in the use, for instance, of Imax's SANDDE (Stereoscopic Animation Drawing Device) system, which makes it fairly simple to draw animated films in relief. Munro Ferguson (Falling in Love Again, 2003; June, 2003) and Paul Morstad (Moon Man, 2004) have successfully used this system, developed by Roman Kroitor.

Pinscreen


In the early 1930s, engraver Alexandre Alexeïeff, a Russian émigré living in France, decided to go into filmmaking. Wishing to make films with an aesthetic faithful to the line and shading of his engravings, he invented a new type of device: the pinscreen.

The pinscreen consists of a white screen pierced by hundreds of thousands of pins that can slide back and forth, each in its own hole. When lit from the side, each pin casts a shadow, and when all the pins are pushed out, there is total darkness. But when pins are pushed in, their shadows are shorter, and the black become grey. When pins are pushed all the way in, they do not cast shadows and the white screen can be seen.

In 1933 Alexeïeff, with the help of his partner Claire Parker, completed Night on Bald Mountain. In 1943, exiled in North America, Alexeïeff and Parker made En passant for the NFB, where they had been invited by Norman McLaren, a great admirer of theirs.

NFB animators continued to be interested in the pinscreen, and in 1968, musician Maurice Blackburn, one of McLaren's regular collaborators, made a brief foray into directing with a short experimental film titled Ciné-crime. For this film, with its extremely complex concrete soundtrack, he used a smaller version of the device.

In 1972 Alexeïeff and Parker were invited back to the NFB. By this time, the NFB had acquired a full-sized pinscreen, and the two artists gave workshops to train a group of filmmakers. McLaren seized the opportunity to shoot a documentary, Pinscreen.

Their visit had a major impact on the future of the process. It had long been thought that the pinscreen would die with its inventors, but then Jacques Drouin decided to use it for his films. In 1974 he made Trois exercices sur l'écran d'épingles d'Alexeïeff. Then, two years later, he came out from under Alexeïeff’s heavy shadow to express his own tone and style with Mindscape.

After the success of Mindscape, Drouin introduced a technical innovation when he coloured his images by filtering his light sources in Nightangel (1986), co-directed with Czech Bretislav Pojar. This film marries two techniques, as Pojar's puppets play out a story against changing pinscreen backgrounds. Drouin continued his aesthetic research in his next three films: Ex-child (1994), A Hunting Lesson (2001) and Imprints (2004).

Pixillation


Norman McLaren coined the term pixillation for the stop-motion animation technique that consists in shooting, one frame at a time, characters or objects whose movements are controlled entirely by the filmmaker. He used this technique in Neighbours (1952), a powerful antiwar fable, then in A Chairy Tale (1957) and Opening Speech (1961), two films in which the story turns on the refusal of an everyday object (a chair and a microphone) to behave as expected.

The origins of pixillation go back to the "trick films" using special effects that marked the early years of filmmaking. Examples are some of the tricks of Georges Méliès, the famous El Hotel electrico by Segundo de Chomon (1905) of Spain and Le mobilier fidèle by Roméo Bosetti of France (1912).

More than any other animation technique, pixillation is closely bound to reality. The interaction of actors and objects in a three-dimensional setting introduces a series of references to reality. This has an influence on the choice of subjects dealt with in films that use this technique. It is no accident, for example, that McLaren made his most political works with this process.

Robert Awad made judicious use of the technique, in combination with others, in his parodies of documentaries, The Bronswik Affair (co-directed by André Leduc, 1978) and Amuse-gueule (1983). Yet it was Leduc who made most frequent use of pixillation at the NFB. In three films—Tout écartillé (1974), Monsieur Pointu (co-directed by Bernard Longpré, 1975) and Chérie, ôte tes raquettes (1976)—he explores the technique's potential for fantasy.

The theme of Tout écartillé and Chérie, ôte tes raquettes is the frenzy of the modern world, a theme that Roland Stutz explored further in his Taxi, illustrating a song by Claude Léveillée, a film that exploits the speeded-up effect obtained with pixillation.

Object Animation


The term object animation refers to puppet animation, pixillation and various derived techniques; take, for example, clay animation, or claymation, for which filmmakers like American Will Vinton, Briton Nick Park and Russian Garri Bardine have become famous.

These techniques all require animators to work with aspects of filmmaking very similar to those that live-action directors have to deal with. In object animation, lighting, camera movement, lens, depth of field and spatial relationships are not virtual, as in cartoons, but real, as in films with live actors.

Puppet animation, sometimes called doll animation, originated with the age-old tradition of marionette theatre. This tradition has been part of European popular culture for centuries, which explains why it was in this part of the world that puppet animation began. Russian Ladislas Starewitch, with films such as Revenge of the Kinematograph Cameraman, also known as The Cameraman's Revenge (1912), was the first master of this technique. He was soon followed by many Russian, and especially Czech, animators, the most famous being Jiri Trnka (The Hand, 1965). It was another European, Hungarian George Pal, who took the technique to the United States in the early 1940s. In Japan, Kihachiro Kawamoto, who had trained in Prague with Trnka, was inspired by Japanese puppet theatre (bunraku) to make films such as The Dojoji Temple/House of Flame (1976).

At the NFB, after Jean-Paul Ladouceur's first experiments (Sur le pont d'Avignon, 1951), it was not until the arrival of Co Hoedeman, in the late 1960s, that this technique finally found its place. The remarkable Tchou-tchou (1972), in which the characters and sets are painted blocks of wood, and The Sand Castle (1977), for which he created charming creatures in a desert-like world, guaranteed that it was here to stay.

The presence at the NFB of Czech Bretislav Pojar—one of Trnka's long-time collaborators—had no significant effect on the production of puppet films. Pojar's first Canadian films were actually done with paper cut-outs and it was not until Nightangel (1986), co-directed with Jacques Drouin, that he used the process for which he is best known. Pojar's characters acted in sets made by Drouin using an Alexeïeff-Parker pinscreen to produce an expressly realistic effect.

Although Martin Barry never followed up on his amusing musical comedy Juke-Bar (1989), featuring amazing cockroaches whose faces have real character, another young filmmaker, Pierre M. Trudeau, invented a unique style involving construction paper puppets. His films for children are imbued with his own aesthetic inspired by children's artwork: Kid Stuff (1990) and Baroque'n Roll (1994). Brian Duchscherer (The Balgonie Birdman, 1993), Pjotr Sapegin (Aria, 2001), Patrick Bouchard (The Brainwashers, 2002) and Sjaak Meilink (Stiltwalkers, 2002) also use this technique, which is continuing to gain in popularity.

Paper cut-outs


When Norman McLaren formed the NFB's first animation team, he soon designated the paper cut-out technique as the best one to use in the financial circumstances.

This technique, which is as old as animated film itself (Émile Cohl used it), is also one of the cheapest. Furthermore, it can be applied in a variety of ways. Movement can be achieved by replacing various cut-outs (as in Balablok, by Bretislav Pojar, 1973) or by animating characters with moveable parts (in an extension of the animated silhouette technique created by German Lotte Reiniger in films like The Adventures of Prince Achmed, 1926). Moveable parts can also be placed directly on a background drawing or on many separately lit planes.

For ideogrammatic simplicity, McLaren's Le merle (1958), in which he used simple geometric shapes to illustrate a traditional French song, remains one of the NFB's great successes of paper cut-out animation at the NFB. René Jodoin (Notes on a Triangle, 1966) and Evelyn Lambart (Fine Feathers, 1968) were among other pioneers of this technique. Lambart and McLaren worked together on Rythmetic (1956), a paper cut-out classic. With Balablok and "E" (1981), two mordant political fables, Bretislav Pojar offers wonderful examples of the opportunities provided by the use of moveable figures.

Very early, NFB filmmakers had animated hinged paper cut-outs. This was how Grant Munro illustrated the song My Darling Clementine back in 1945. While spending some time at the NFB, German Lotte Reiniger, a virtuoso of silhouette animation, made Aucassin and Nicolette in 1975. In 1999 Eugene Fedorenko and Rose Newlove produced a real tour de force with Village of Idiots, which makes spectacular use of multilayered moveable animated paper cut-outs. Suzanne Gervais is also known for her use of this technique. Her Still Point (1983), The Studio (1988) and Expectations (1993) were all made this way.

The animation of cut-out photographs is a variation of traditional paper cut-out animation. With La Ville (1970), then This Is a Recorded Message (1973) and Chairmen (1979), Jean-Thomas Bédard made it his speciality. Francine Desbiens also used it in Ah! vous dirai-je maman (1985).

Animated drawings


Animated drawings were originally done on paper. Pioneers such as Émile Cohl of France (Fantasmagorie, 1908) and Winsor McCay (Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914) of the United States worked with this medium, but there were problems inherent in paper's opacity. First, the artist couldn't keep the static parts of the drawing and change only the ones that moved. Second, there were problems with image stability and unavoidable jitter. Third, the perspective effects were limited.

The experiments done in New York in the early 1900s by Quebecer Raoul Barré paved the way for cel animation. Barré was the first to use a transparent medium, glass. After him, Americans Earl Hurd (1914) and John Randolph Bray (1915) patented the cel animation technique.

But just what exactly is it? After a background (or scene) has been drawn on paper, cardboard or canvas, a transparent sheet of celluloid, or cel, is placed on top of it. Anything drawn on the cel becomes part of the scene. Many cels can be layered, thus saving a great deal of effort—anything that doesn't move doesn't have to be redrawn—and making spectacular perspective effects possible.

All the productions of the big American studios (Disney, Warner, MGM, Hanna-Barbera) were essentially based on this technique, which was later modified (use of three-dimensional sets by the Fleischer brothers, use of multiplane camera, etc.). The method remained essentially the same, however, which means that shapes were outlined in ink and then painted, usually with water colours. Because each frame shot was the result of many stages, this technique lent itself perfectly to the division of labour, a principle that was adopted from the beginning by Bray and the studio heads who followed him.

In 1990 Walt Disney Pictures stopped using cel animation. The Rescuers Down Under was the first film made using a system that could "paint" and assemble drawings after they were digitized. Gradually the other studios followed suit.

Because Norman McLaren had from the outset preferred to view animation as an art, he and his first colleagues at the NFB deemed cel animation an inappropriate technique. It was not until 1952 that Colin Low, in the wake of the aesthetic revolution started by the young American company UPA, made The Romance of Transportation in Canada, the NFB's first effort using this technique. The NFB then went on to produce many films drawn on cel, including those by Gerald Potterton (My Financial Career, 1962), Kaj Pindal and Les Drew (What on Earth!, 1966), Zlatko Grgic (Hot Stuff, 1971), Michael Mills (Evolution, 1971), Janet Perlman (The Tender Tale of Cinderella Penguin, 1981), Richard Condie (The Big Snit, 1985), Cordell Barker (The Cat Came Back, 1988), Alison Snowden and David Fine (Bob's Birthday, 1993) and Paul Driessen (Cat's Cradle, 1974). These cartoons, quite different in terms of graphic style, all share a sense of humour.

Although many animators were working on cels, others continued to draw on paper. Pierre Veilleux, for instance, made Mushrooms (1984) by painting with acrylic on paper, while for Une âme à voile (1982), he used the same type of paint, but on cardboard this time. In 1965 Ryan Larkin made Syrinx from a series of charcoal drawings. Beginnings (1980), a posthumous film by Clorinda Warny, completed by Lina Gagnon and Suzanne Gervais, was drawn on paper, as were One Way Street (1980) by Bernard Longpré, The Hat (1999) by Michèle Cournoyer, Rumors (2003) by the Kiwistiti group and Welcome to Kentucky (2004) by Craig Welch. Work on paper, which accommodates any type of crayon, pen, pencil, pastel, brush, ink and paint, has therefore remained popular with NFB animators.

Animation stand

With an animation stand, the camera is moved up and down above a table on which the artwork to be filmed is placed. The camera can be suspended directly above the surface or mounted on a system of columns. This setup, once known as a caption stand, was originally designed to shoot film credits and intertitles. It is impossible to date this invention accurately, but it is known that the first animated cartoons, like Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by James Stuart Blackton (1906), were filmed by simply standing the drawing board up facing the camera, which was on a tripod.

Before digitization of drawings became common, around 1990, most animated films were shot using an animation stand, because techniques like animated drawings (on paper or cel) and paper cut-outs required it.

Today, the animation stand serves only for some rarely used techniques: sand and paint animation, and animation of various objects (beads, string, metal fragments, etc.).

3D CGI Animation

CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) is also used for 2D and stop-motion animation. But it's 3D CGI animation that has become a popular form of animation. Beginning with Pixar's Toy Story, 3D CGI animation has raised the bar for the images we see on screen.
3D CGI animation is used not only for entire films or TV series, but also for spot special effects. When filmmakers used models or stop-motion in the past, they now can use 3D CGI animation, such as in the first three Star Wars films and Spider-man movies.

Good 3D CGI animation requires specific software programs. These programs used to be available only to studios with lots of money, but with the advance of technology, now someone can create 3D CGI animation at home.

In addition to software programs, you need to employ detailed modeling techniques, shaders and textures to create a realistic look, and build backgrounds and props. Just as much time and work is required in making 3D CGI animation as in 2D cel animation, because the more you build detail into your characters, backgrounds and props, the more believable your animation will be.

Cel Animation

When someone says the word "cartoon," what we see in our head is usually cel animation. Cartoons today rarely use the pure cel animation of the past, instead employing computers and digital technology to help streamline the process.

A cel is a sheet of transparent cellulose acetate used as a medium for painting animation frames. It is transparent so that it can be laid over other cels and/or a painted background, then photographed. (Source: The Complete Animation Course by Chris Patmore.)

Cel animation is incredibly time consuming and requires incredible organization and attention to detail. It starts with creating a storyboard to visually communicate the story to the production team. Then an animatic is created, to see how the film's timing works. Once the story and timing is approved, the artists go to work creating backgrounds and characters that fit "the look" they're going for. At this time, the actors record their lines and animators use the vocal track to synchronize lip movements of the characters. The director then uses the sound track and animatic to work out the timing of the movement, sounds and scenes. The director puts this information on a dope sheet.

Next, the art is passed from one artist to another, beginning with rough sketches of the characters in action, ending with that action transferred to cels that have been painted.

Finally, the camera person photographs the cels with their coordination background cels. Each frame is photographed according to the dope sheet that was created at the beginning of the animation process.

Then the film is sent to a lab to become a print or a video, depending on the medium that is required. However, if digital technology is employed, much of the cleaning up, painting and photographing of frames is done with computers.

Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is used to capture realistic human movement by drawing over film footage of live actors. Perhaps this sounds like cheating, but adding an artist's vision to the movements of a human actor can create a unique storytelling medium that is just as stylistic as any other form of animation.
One of the most sophisticated examples of rotoscoping is the film Waking Life, starring Ethan Hawke and Julia Delpy. Waking Life took the 2001 Sundance Film Festival by storm, impressing audiences and critics with not only its animation style, but director Richard Linklater's ability to tell a moving, rich story using a frenetic animation style like rotoscoping.

A much more simple example of rotoscoping is Tom Goes to the Mayor on Adult Swim. Actors are photographed performing the scenes. Then the photos are digitally processed using a graphics filter. When the rendered photos are strung together, the story is told using limited animation, no lip movements and little movement in arms and legs.

Cutout and Collage Animation

Simple animation used on TV is usually a combination of cutout and collage techniques. Cutout animation uses, literally, models or puppets that have been cut from drawing paper or craft paper, possibly drawn or painted on. The pieces are then arranged loosely, or connected by fasteners and then arranged. Each pose or move is captured, then the model repositioned, and shot again.
Collage animation uses basically the same process, except the pieces that are animated are cut from photos, magazines, books or clipart. Using collage can bring a variety of textures to the same frame.

South Park is perhaps the most well-known animated TV show that uses cutout and collage animation. The characters are cutout, and occasionally collage animation is used, such as when creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker use photos of Mel Gibson or Saddam Hussein to animate characters.

Stop-Motion Animation

Stop-motion animation (or stop-action) is the painstaking process of photographing a model, moving it a miniscule amount, then photographing it again. Finally, you string the photographs together and the tiny movements appear to be action. This form of animation is the simplest to use and is great for beginners.

For instance, Seth Green, an actor who has a love of action figures but no prior animation experience, co-created Robot Chicken with Matthew Senreich. They employ toys, sets that are more like dioramas, dollhouse props and clay (for facial expressions) in their stop-motion videos to create some pretty hysterical skits.

Though I say this technique simple, because the concept is easy to understand and execute, that does not mean stop-motion is not time-consuming or cannot be sophisticated.

In the hands of an artist, stop-motion animation can be very realistic, stylistic and moving. Films like Corpse Bride by Tim Burton show that stop-motion isn't a genre, but a medium that allows artists to create whatever they imagine. Each character in this film has several versions of bodies and heads in order to capture the most human movements and expressions. The sets are also created with the same attention to detail, creating a dark, beautiful world.

Blocking (animation)

Blocking is an animation technique in which key poses are created to establish timing and placement of characters and props in a given scene or shot. Blocking is most commonly used in 3D computer animation.

Blocking is often the first step in the pose-to-pose style of animating, as opposed to the straight-ahead style of animation (though blocking sometimes plays a role in straight-ahead as well.) Blocking poses are not necessarily exclusively keyframes. Blocked-in poses may also include important in-betweens, extremes, and breakdowns necessary to establishing the flow and timing of a particular shot.

In 3D, the animation curves of a blocked shot are often created using stepped or square tangencies, which provides no interpolation between animation poses. This allows the animator to see the poses of the animation without any strange and/or unintentional automatic interpolation. While this is sometimes problematic due to gimbal lock, seeing the poses in this way allows the animator to adjust the timing of an animation quickly, without the distraction of the software's automatic interpolation.

Architectural Animation

Architectural Animation is a short architectural movie created on a computer. A computer-generated building is created along with landscaping and sometimes moving people and vehicles. Unlike an architectural rendering, which is a single image from a single point of view, an architectural animation is a series of hundreds or even thousands of still images. When these images are assembled and played back they produce a movie effect much like a real movie camera except all images are artificially created by computer. It is possible to add a computer-created environment around the building to enhance reality and to better convey its relationship to the surrounding area; this can all be done before the project is built giving designers and stakeholders a realistic view of the completed project. Architectural renderings are often used along with architectural animation.


Who uses it

Commercial demand for computer-generated rendering is on the rise, but three-dimensional scale models are still popular. Typically members of the AIA (American Institute of Architects) and NAHB (National Association of Home Builders) prefer to use 3D animations and single renderings for their customers before starting on a construction project. These professionals often find their clients are unable to grasp the complexity and spacial qualities of large projects without the help of computer generated visual aids. The animations and renderings are usually supplied by small animation studios.


Future

Architectural animation is not considered to be the ambition of most small computer rendering firms because of the man hours and computer rendering time that is required to create so many single still images. Not all studios have the software to assemble and incorporate them into a moving sequence. Some smaller companies specialize in high quality single frame computer renderings. Architectural animations require a larger team of artists and animators than single renderings and a much longer time frame is required to complete an animation project. However, many architectural firms are now using architectural animation because it attracts investors and customers who may not know much about building designs. Architectural animation is considered to have a bright future ahead of it as more and more architects and real estate developers are including computer animations in their marketing programs.

  • Architectural visualization:
              3D rendering
              3D walk-through
              3D demo of city planning
              3D demo of landscape planning
              Restoration of ancient architecture

  • Animation:
              Rendering
              Simulation of product and engineering design

  • Virtual Reality:
              Digital sand-table system for city/community planning
              GIS (Geographic information system)
              Multifunctional educational system
              Simulation and restoration of cultural heritage and ancient architecture
              Virtual shopping mall

Animation database

An animation database is a database which stores fragments of animations or human movements and which can be accessed, analyzed and queried to develop and assemble new animations. Given that the manual generation of a large amount of animation can be time consuming and expensive, an animation database can assist users in building animations by using existing components, and to share animation fragments.

Early examples of animation databases include the system MOVE which used an object oriented database. Modern animation databases can be populated via the extraction of skeletal animations from motion capture data.

Other examples include crowd simulation in which a number of people are simulated as a crowd. Given that in some applications the people need to be walking at different speeds, say on a sidewalk, the animation database can be used to retrieve and merge different animated figures. The method is mainly known as "motion graphs"

Animation databases can also be used for "interactive storytelling" in which fragments of animations are retrieved from the animation database and are recycled to combine into new stories. For instance, the animation database called Animebase is used within the system Words Anime to help generate animations using recycled components. In this approach, the user may input words which form parts of a story and queries against the database help select suitable animation fragments. This type of system may indeed use two databases: an animation database, as well as a story knowledge database. The story knowledge database may use subjects, predicates and objects to refer to story fragments. The system then assists the user in matching between story fragments and animation fragments.

Animation databases can also be used for the generation of visual scenes using humanoid models. An example application has been the development of an animated humanoid-based sign language system to help the disabled.

Another application of an animation database is in the synthesis of idle motion for human characters. Human beings move all the time and in unique ways, and the presentation of a consistent and realistic set of idle motions for each character between different animation segments has been a challenge, e.g. each person has a unique way of standing and this needs to be represented in a realistic way throughout an animation. One of the problems is that idle motion affects all joints and simply showing statistical movements at each joint results in less than realistic portrayals. One approach to solving this problem is to use an animation database with a large set of pre-recorded human movements, and obtain the suitable patterns of motion from the database through statistical analysis.

Animatronics

Animatronics is the use of mechatronics to create machines which seem animate rather than robotic. Animatronic creations include animals (including dinosaurs), plants and even mythical creatures. A robot designed to be a convincing imitation of a human is specifically known as an android.

Animatronics is mainly used in movie making, but also in theme parks and other forms of entertainment. Its main advantage over CGI and stop motion is that the simulated creature has a physical presence moving in front of the camera in real time. The technology behind animatronics has become more advanced and sophisticated over the years, making the puppets even more realistic and lifelike.

Animatronics is used in situations where a creature does not exist, the action is too risky or costly to use real actors or animals, or the action could never be obtained with a living person or animal. Animatronic systems can be implemented using both computer control and human control, including teleoperation.


How you create Computer animatronics?

It is similar to what is used in robotics but without the adaptability. Robotics grade servos provide the motion and can be controlled by an embedded CPU chip. The chip can be a simplie chip such as the ATOM processor or can be up to a PC-level chipset.


What are advantages and disadvantages of using animatronics?

Advantage: machines usually have lower cost per hour than people 

Disadvantage: uncanny valley. People may find machines scary.

Multi-sketch

Multi-sketch is an animation method of story-telling where a sequence of hand-drawn sketches are created simultaneously while narrating it with voice. To achieve this a Tablet PC or digitizing tablet can be used to create improvised progressive line sketches which are captured to video.

Such types of cartoons are created in a freestyle unscripted manner, which makes them original, since the whole cartoon does not need editing after it is completed. Originally invented by Renat Zarbailov when he combined two software applications—sketching software with screen capturing one. One of the pioneers of Multi-Sketch cartoon creation is Kenly Dillard, who, at the age of twenty four held the title of the world's third champion in speed sketching competition. The final multi-sketch can be sent to various formats, HDTV, DVD, streaming media, or WMV/FLV/Quicktime/MPEG4.

Multi-sketch has been used in television campaigns by companies such as Tower Insurance. Animations in this format take the form of an extended infographic.

Cartoon Laws of Physics

Cartoon Law I

Any body suspended in space will remain in space until made aware of its situation.

Daffy Duck steps off a cliff, expecting further pastureland. He loiters in midair, soliloquizing flippantly, until he chances to look down. At this point, the familiar principle of 32 feet per second per second takes over.


Cartoon Law II

Any body in motion will tend to remain in motion until solid matter intervenes suddenly.

Whether shot from a cannon or in hot pursuit on foot, cartoon characters are so absolute in their momentum that only a telephone pole or an outsize boulder retards their forward motion absolutely. Sir Isaac Newton called this sudden termination of motion the stooge's surcease.


Cartoon Law III

Any body passing through solid matter will leave a perforation conforming to its perimeter.

Also called the silhouette of passage, this phenomenon is the speciality of victims of directed-pressure explosions and of reckless cowards who are so eager to escape that they exit directly through the wall of a house, leaving a cookie-cutout-perfect hole. The threat of skunks or matrimony often catalyzes this reaction.


Cartoon Law IV

The time required for an object to fall twenty stories is greater than or equal to the time it takes for whoever knocked it off the ledge to spiral down twenty flights to attempt to capture it unbroken.
Such an object is inevitably priceless, the attempt to capture it inevitably unsuccessful.


Cartoon Law V

All principles of gravity are negated by fear.

Psychic forces are sufficient in most bodies for a shock to propel them directly away from the earth's surface. A spooky noise or an adversary's signature sound will induce motion upward, usually to the cradle of a chandelier, a treetop, or the crest of a flagpole. The feet of a character who is running or the wheels of a speeding auto need never touch the ground, especially when in flight.



Cartoon Law VI

As speed increases, objects can be in several places at once.

This is particularly true of tooth-and-claw fights, in which a character's head may be glimpsed emerging from the cloud of altercation at several places simultaneously. This effect is common as well among bodies that are spinning or being throttled.

A wacky character has the option of self-replication only at manic high speeds and may ricochet off walls to achieve the velocity required.


Cartoon Law VII

Certain bodies can pass through solid walls painted to resemble tunnel entrances; others cannot.

This trompe l'oeil inconsistency has baffled generations, but at least it is known that whoever paints an entrance on a wall's surface to trick an opponent will be unable to pursue him into this theoretical space.

The painter is flattened against the wall when he attempts to follow into the painting. This is ultimately a problem of art, not of science.


Cartoon Law VIII

Any violent rearrangement of feline matter is impermanent.

Cartoon cats possess even more deaths than the traditional nine lives might comfortably afford. They can be decimated, spliced, splayed, accordion-pleated, spindled, or disassembled, but they cannot be destroyed. After a few moments of blinking self pity, they reinflate, elongate, snap back, or solidify.

Corollary:

A cat will assume the shape of its container.


Cartoon Law IX

Everything falls faster than an anvil.


Cartoon Law X

For every vengeance there is an equal and opposite revengeance.

This is the one law of animated cartoon motion that also applies to the physical world at large. For that reason, we need the relief of watching it happen to a duck instead.


Cartoon Law Amendment A

A sharp object will always propel a character upward.

When poked (usually in the buttocks) with a sharp object (usually a pin), a character will defy gravity by shooting straight up, with great velocity.


Cartoon Law Amendment B

The laws of object permanence are nullified for "cool" characters.
Characters who are intended to be "cool" can make previously nonexistent objects appear from behind their backs at will. For instance, the Road Runner can materialize signs to express himself without speaking.



Cartoon Law Amendment C

Explosive weapons cannot cause fatal injuries.

They merely turn characters temporarily black and smokey.


Cartoon Law Amendment D

Gravity is transmitted by slow-moving waves of large wavelengths.

Their operation can be wittnessed by observing the behavior of a canine suspended over a large vertical drop. Its feet will begin to fall first, causing its legs to stretch. As the wave reaches its torso, that part will begin to fall, causing the neck to strech. As the head begins to fall, tension is released and the canine will resume its regular proportions until such time as it strikes the ground.


Cartoon Law Amendment E

Dynamite is spontaneously generated in "C-spaces" (spaces in which cartoon laws hold).

The process is analogous to steady-state theories of the universe which postulated that the tensions involved in maintaining a space would cause the creation of hydrogen from nothing. Dynamite quanta are quite large (stick sized) and unstable (lit). Such quanta are attracted to psychic forces generated by feelings of distress in "cool" characters (see Amendment B, which may be a special case of this law), who are able to use said quanta to their advantage. One may imagine C-spaces where all matter and energy result from primal masses of dynamite exploding. A big bang indeed.


12 basic principles of animation


Squash and stretch

The most important principle is "squash and stretch", the purpose of which is to give a sense of weight and flexibility to drawn objects. It can be applied to simple objects, like a bouncing ball, or more complex constructions, like the musculature of a human face. Taken to an extreme point, a figure stretched or squashed to an exaggerated degree can have a comical effect. In realistic animation, however, the most important aspect of this principle is the fact that an object's volume does not change when squashed or stretched. If the length of a ball is stretched vertically, its width (in three dimensions, also its depth) needs to contract correspondingly horizontally.


Anticipation

Anticipation is used to prepare the audience for an action, and to make the action appear more realistic. A dancer jumping off the floor has to bend his knees first; a golfer making a swing has to swing the club back first. The technique can also be used for less physical actions, such as a character looking off-screen to anticipate someone's arrival, or attention focusing on an object that a character is about to pick up.

For special effect, anticipation can also be omitted in cases where it is expected. The resulting sense of anticlimax will produce a feeling of surprise in the viewer, and can often add comedy to a scene. This is often referred to as a 'surprise gag'.


Staging

This principle is akin to staging as it is known in theatre and film. Its purpose is to direct the audience's attention, and make it clear what is of greatest importance in a scene; what is happening, and what is about to happen. Johnston and Thomas defined it as "the presentation of any idea so that it is completely and unmistakably clear", whether that idea is an action, a personality, an expression or a mood. This can be done by various means, such as the placement of a character in the frame, the use of light and shadow, and the angle and position of the camera. The essence of this principle is keeping focus on what is relevant, and avoiding unnecessary detail.


Straight ahead action and pose to pose

These are two different approaches to the actual drawing process. "Straight ahead action" means drawing out a scene frame by frame from beginning to end, while "pose to pose" involves starting with drawing a few key frames, and then filling in the intervals later. "Straight ahead action" creates a more fluid, dynamic illusion of movement, and is better for producing realistic action sequences. On the other hand, it is hard to maintain proportions, and to create exact, convincing poses along the way. "Pose to pose" works better for dramatic or emotional scenes, where composition and relation to the surroundings are of greater importance. A combination of the two techniques is often used.

Computer animation removes the problems of proportion related to "straight ahead action" drawing; however, "pose to pose" is still used for computer animation, because of the advantages it brings in composition. The use of computers facilitates this method, as computers can fill in the missing sequences in between poses automatically. It is, however, still important to oversee this process, and apply the other principles discussed.


Follow through and overlapping action

These closely related techniques help render movement more realistic, and give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics. "Follow through" means that separate parts of a body will continue moving after the character has stopped. "Overlapping action" is the tendency for parts of the body to move at different rates (an arm will move on different timing of the head and so on). A third technique is "drag", where a character starts to move and parts of him take a few frames to catch up. These parts can be inanimate objects like clothing or the antenna on a car, or parts of the body, such as arms or hair. On the human body, the torso is the core, with arms, legs, head and hair appendices that normally follow the torso's movement. Body parts with much tissue, such as large stomachs and breasts, or the loose skin on a dog, are more prone to independent movement than bonier body parts. Again, exaggerated use of the technique can produce a comical effect, while more realistic animation must time the actions exactly, to produce a convincing result.

Thomas and Johnston also developed the principle of the "moving hold". A character not in movement can be rendered absolutely still; this is often done, particularly to draw attention to the main action. According to Thomas and Johnston, however, this gave a dull and lifeless result, and should be avoided. Even characters sitting still can display some sort of movement, such as the torso moving in and out with breathing.


Slow in and slow out

The movement of the human body, and most other objects, needs time to accelerate and slow down. For this reason, animation looks more realistic if it has more drawings near the beginning and end of an action, emphasizing the extreme poses, and fewer in the middle. This principle goes for characters moving between two extreme poses, such as sitting down and standing up, but also for inanimate, moving objects, like the bouncing ball in the above illustration.


Arcs

Most natural action tends to follow an arched trajectory, and animation should adhere to this principle by following implied "arcs" for greater realism. This can apply to a limb moving by rotating a joint, or a thrown object moving along a parabolic trajectory. The exception is mechanical movement, which typically moves in straight lines.

As an object's speed and momentum increases, arcs tend to flatten out in moving ahead and broaden in turns. In baseball, a fastball would tend to move in a straighter line than other pitches; while a figure skater moving at top speed would be unable to turn as sharply as a slower skater, and would need to cover more ground to complete the turn.

An object in motion that moves out of its natural arc for no apparent reason will appear erratic rather than fluid. Therefore when animating (for example) a pointing finger, the animator should be certain that in all drawings in between the two extreme poses, the fingertip follows a logical arc from one extreme to the next. Traditional animators tend to draw the arc in lightly on the paper for reference, to be erased later.


Secondary action

Adding secondary actions to the main action gives a scene more life, and can help to support the main action. A person walking can simultaneously swing his arms or keep them in his pockets, he can speak or whistle, or he can express emotions through facial expressions. The important thing about secondary actions is that they emphasize, rather than take attention away from the main action. If the latter is the case, those actions are better left out. In the case of facial expressions, during a dramatic movement these will often go unnoticed. In these cases it is better to include them at the beginning and the end of the movement, rather than during.


Timing

Timing refers to the number of drawings or frames for a given action, which translates to the speed of the action on film. On a purely physical level, correct timing makes objects appear to abide to the laws of physics; for instance, an object's weight decides how it reacts to an impetus, like a push. Timing is critical for establishing a character's mood, emotion, and reaction.It can also be a device to communicate aspects of a character's personality.


Exaggeration

Exaggeration is an effect especially useful for animation, as perfect imitation of reality can look static and dull in cartoons. The level of exaggeration depends on whether one seeks realism or a particular style, like a caricature or the style of an artist. The classical definition of exaggeration, employed by Disney, was to remain true to reality, just presenting it in a wilder, more extreme form. Other forms of exaggeration can involve the supernatural or surreal, alterations in the physical features of a character, or elements in the storyline itself.[32] It is important to employ a certain level of restraint when using exaggeration; if a scene contains several elements, there should be a balance in how those elements are exaggerated in relation to each other, to avoid confusing or overawing the viewer.


Solid drawing

The principle of solid drawing means taking into account forms in three-dimensional space, giving them volume and weight. The animator needs to be a skilled draughtsman and has to understand the basics of three-dimensional shapes, anatomy, weight, balance, light and shadow, etc. For the classical animator, this involved taking art classes and doing sketches from life. One thing in particular that Johnston and Thomas warned against was creating "twins": characters whose left and right sides mirrored each other, and looked lifeless. Modern-day computer animators draw less because of the facilities computers give them, yet their work benefits greatly from a basic understanding of animation principles, and their additions to basic computer animation.


Appeal

Appeal in a cartoon character corresponds to what would be called charisma in an actor. A character who is appealing is not necessarily sympathetic — villains or monsters can also be appealing — the important thing is that the viewer feels the character is real and interesting. There are several tricks for making a character connect better with the audience; for likable characters a symmetrical or particularly baby-like face tends to be effective. A complicated or hard to read face will lack appeal, it may more accurately be described as 'captivation' in the composition of the pose, or the character design.