Beach Sunset

The inventors of Animation: How animation became what we know it today

Joseph Plateau:

He was a Belgian physicist, who was the first person ever to demonstrate the illusion of a moving image. He demonstrated that using spinning discs with images on them, spinning really fast they formed the illusion of a loop-action scene forming on the disks. He called these disks “Phenakistoscope”, also known as the "spindle viewer".

The way the disks functioned was by putting two disks, one on top of the other. The top one would have stripe-shape cut-out holes that would reveal a part of the image from the bottom disk. While spinning really fast the base image of the top disk merges with the bottom creating the illusion of a moving image. This is possible due to the persistence of vision of the human eye that makes the images appear to be moving in a flaws motion, when really its just one image quickly coming after the other. This idea had been proved by Greek Mathematicians in the past however Joseph Plateau then firmly established this idea creating a product like his discs that fascinated people.

William Horner:

He was a British mathematician/headmaster. He is well known as a mathematician who wrote mostly functional equations. He also contributed to the area of optics by developing the method of the “Zoetrope”, this is today known as Horner’s method. The Zoetrope was originally called the Devil's Wheel. Horner was inspired by Plateau's idea however he thought that he could create a different morse sophisticated version that would let the viewer see one image at a time flowing in a constant horizontal line. After inventing the Wheel of the Devil, him and his invention was forgotten for over 30 years, until William F. Lincoln patented and renamed in to the Zoetrope or the  wheel of life.

Charles Reynaud:

French inventor, who created the first animated cartoons. In 1877 he created the Praxinoscope and a theatre called “Teatre Optique” in December 1888. On the 28^th of October in Paris. The Praxinoscope was a tool which consisted of a vertical-standing rod for support, and a barrel-like plate, which included images on the inside, each a progression of the last. This barrel also had vertical, stripe-shaped holes between each image. So when the barrel was span fast, while looking through the whole you could see the images through the fast changing holes and that would create the illusion that you are looking at one image that is moving, since each is a progression of the last. 

We can see how Charles Raynaud took Horner's improved product of Plateau's original idea and developed it even further. He took the Zoetrope and added a midsection of mirrors, getting rid of the small slits, this now offered a better looking images which appeared to flow more smoothly than the original zoetrope, this was like Zoetrope 2.0.

Charles dies on the 29^th of March of 1917.

Eadweard Muybridge:

An English photographer who pioneered in the photography area, in the studies of motion. By nature he was a photographer, however migrated to America and became a bookseller. He soon returned to England and during 1861 took up professional photography once more. He learned the wet-plate collodion process and created 2 patents for his inventions.

He returned back to San Fransisco in 1867, where he did his world-wide famous photographs of the Yosemite valley.  He is really well known for his pioneering work on animal locomotion, where he used fast moving disks to display the movement of animas. This was called the zoopraxiscope. An interesting fact was that at the time people still hadn't proved that a horse had all four of its hooves off the ground in the middle of a gallop. Muybridge was able to prove that this was correct. 

Muybridge was was considered the pioneer of the 20th century's photography as he had one of the most famous landscape photos at the time, one of them a landscape of New York:

Thomas Edison:

One of the greatest inventors of all time. He contributed to a lot of the technologies we take for granted in the 21^st century. He was responsible for the existence of the current photograph and the motion-picture camera. He also developed the long lasting light bulb. He held 1093 patents under his name

Another area that Edison contributed in was telecommunication. He developed power utilities like the sound recorder and therefore contributed in the communication area. He recorded many motion pictures and music.

In only the period of 8 years Edison accuired over 400 patens for his inventions one of them being the light bulb. However his succes began to plummet after he attempted to create a device which would manipulate electricity in order to communicate with the dead.

In 1877 Edison invented the photograph, but in 1889 he decided he would create a talking doll, an idea which turned to be way ahead of it's time. He would create little motors which when spun would create a sound. He was expecting that the children would buy different records to put inside the doll, but this failed because the motors were too delecate and wore off only after a few times of playback.

Nevertheless Edison was still an incredible inventor pioneer and is someone that helped push technology to develop further as we know it today.

The Lumiere Brothers:

Auguste and Louis were two excellent technically-minded people. They began experimenting with photographic equipment that their father used to manufacture, leading to the discovery of a process which assisted the development of photography. They reinvented the way cameras would work and be used to provide higher quality video and easier operation. This was what they called consumer satisfactory.

They worked on this product for a while, but the Louis came up with the solution. They started selling their photographic plates producing a massive business as there was huge interest in their products. By 1894 they were producing for a demand of 15 million plates per year.

Louis developed a new 'dry plate' process in 1881 at the age of seventeen, it became known as the 'Etiquette Bleue' process and gave his father’s business a welcome boost, and a factory was built soon after to manufacture the plates in the Monplaisir quarter of the Lyons Suburbs.

Later on they patented the Cinematograph. Using it they were able to shoot what is considered the first ever true movie using motion picture, and therefore hugely contributed to the current state of the cinema. Over the course of their lifetime they created the structure of the basic camera equipment calling it cinematograph, from which arrived the name Cinema.

How our persistence of vision allows us to see movement?

The Twelve Principals of Animation:

1) "Squash and Stretch"- gives the illusion of weight and volume of a character as it moves.
So think when a character has something dropped on their head,  and the illustrator likes to exaggerate the impact by squashing the character's head. Here is an example from Tom and Jerry:

2) "Anticipation"- prepares the audience for  a major action that is about to happen. So these are the movements a character does in order prepare us for something that is going to happen. For example in Tom and Jerry when Tom tries to take the bone from the sleeping dog and the dog slowly starts waking up, his actions of waking up will be a type of anticipation to the audience, as they won't be sure if the dog is going to go back to sleep or wake up and get angry at Tom.

3) "Staging"- the presentation of an idea, so that it is clear. When an illustrator wants you to understand what the mood of a scene is he is going to present you the characters sitting in certain ways in a given space, music may also be used to set you in a mood. Here is an example from Courage the Cowardly Dog:

Hint: Look at the Granny and the way Courage is sitting on her lap!

4) "Straight ahead, and pose to pose"- Straight ahead starts with the first drawing, and works drawing to drawing to the end of the scene. Pose to pose is charted with key drawing done in intervals throughout the scene. This has to be one drawing that continues until the end of the scene, and it can sometimes repeat in a loop, but it is used to present a continues action that is ongoing. Pose to pose is done similarly, where the pictures are drawn one after the other including gaps and then these gaps are filmed in between. This allows the illustrator to control the proportion of the characters in relation to its surroundings.

Hint: as you can see there, the woman is drawn from one key pose to the other, then after the matter, the frames in between these poses are filled in in order to create the illusion of a moving image.

5) "Follow through and overlap"- when the body of the character stops, all other parts of its body continue through, nothing stops at the same time. You can think of this when a character moves and some parts of his body move faster than others to give a certain point. Sometimes different parts of the body might lead other parts of the body with them to create the sense of moment that a part of a character's body is undergoing. This is often used to describe how a character feels.

6) " Slow in, and slow out"- as the action starts, there are more drawings towards the starting place,  and ending place of the character, than there are in the middle. This creates the illusion of a character dashing. This action can be explained by thinking of something that speeds up moving, or there is less frames as the object gets closer to the camera and then as it zooms out it gets slower again.

7) " Arcs"- when an object is moving in an arc, the bottom part of the body of the object follows the top part, creating a visual arc as the character is moving. This type of effect is when something is being thrown or, is going in a arc-like direction. It could be just a falling ball, or a hammer hitting an object.

8) " Secondary Action"- a secondary action that is an addition to the scene, which reinforces the main object and gives it its own dimension. A secondary action is when there is almost like a ghosting following the character's movements, it could be used to show how fast he is moving.

9) " Timing"- more frames between poses create the illusion of a fast moving- unclear object. Whereas fewer drawings appear as a much slower and crisper movement. It also creates the illusion that the object is not abiding the laws of physics. Think about when Tom runs off a cliff.. he stays in the air for a couple of seconds and makes a freaky face before gravity pulling him towards the ground this is a perfect example of staging.

10) " Exaggeration"- the exaggerated movement of a common action than it would be in real life.
A character can express their feelings in many ways, but what better than something that is physically impossible to represent a strong or a scary feeling. Here is another picture of Courage getting freaked out by the Ustes' Mask:

11) " Solid Drawings"- taking into account objects into 3D space, giving them depth and weight. To achieve the effect of 3D in a solid drawing, a character needs to be drawn in perspective and in a certain angle to its surroundings. Characters should not be drawn flat, otherwise they loose solidity and depth.

12) "Appeal"- it is a movement of the character designed to please the viewer's eyes, this is the charisma of the action. An example of this could be when a character is presented as looking outside of what they normally look like in order to create the idea that they are having a special for thir story moment and the illustrator wants you to notice that. This can sometimes be combined with exaggeration.

What is the Persistence of Vision:

- This is a theory where when the human eye sees an image, which tends 

to stay on the retina of the eye for approximately one twenty-fifth of a second. 

Ultimately this theory 

is the fist example as an explanation of the perception of motion that happens 

while we watch video playback. 

The way it works is, once we are shown an image, that image stays on our retina 

for one twenty-fifth of the second. Therefore, if we are shown an image before 

of just at that time, the human eye cannot distinguish the transition between the 

two images, creating what seems like a seamlessly flowing motion of the specific 

object, also known as video playback by today’s standards.

Gorillaz: Animated Band Presentation (Martin, Ashley and Sam)

Gorillaz from Martin Lolov