Monday, January 31, 2011

The Origins and Development of Animation

By Stacey Richardson


Animation has been used for several decades. If you follow according to the description of animation, it has actually been used in many countries for centuries. It was the way that different races used to leave their history behind before the development of the written word. You will learn all the different methods, types and techniques at your online film school.

Animation is the method of taking still, inactive 3D and 2D artistically created images and creating the illusion that these images and move and interact with other images. This is usually done in photographed frames, than when played back at the right speed makes the images appear alive. There are several different types of animations. Some of them can be combined with film, and others work better alone.

During the Paleolithic area, our ancestors drew pictures of animals on cave walls. These images were normally of animals, and they would have several legs, more than the normal four legs. This was their way of indicating that the animal was moving since each leg would be in a different position. You can also see samples of animation on the walls of many Egyptian tombs. A good online animation school will cover all of this history.

During the 1900's Claymation and animation became popular in the creation of short strips. Early inventions of animation included the Zoetrope, the Magic Lantern, The Thaumatrope, the Phenakistscope, and the flip book. Short films came into being around 1892 with a sequence of 12 pictures created by Musee Grevin in Paris. This was followed by short clips in the early 1900's included "Humorous Funny faces", "Fantasmagorie" by Emile Cohl and "the Cameraman's Revenge" by Ladislas Starevitch.

The first, full length animated film was El Apostol, made by Quirino Cristiani from Argentina in 1917. The first animated film to use colored tinted scenes was directed by Lotte Reiniger from Germany and Berthold Bartosch of French/Hungarian descent. It was called the Adventures of Prince Achmed.

Now we have computer generated imagery, better known as computer animation. The first ever film created totally in this way was Pixar's Toy Story. The main difference in creating CGI and traditional animation is that CGI uses 3D modeling and traditional animation uses drawings. An advantage to CGI is that there is continual movement. Both methods are time consuming and can be tedious at times.




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