Category: 1_The Basics of Animated Movement

Early animation

• Winsor MCKay 1914 Gertie the Dinosaur was one of the earliest animations made on film. Each drawing was redrawn on each page and captured on film and then projected at a rapid rate. McKay presented his animation as a stand-up show with live narrative. Written text is also included on some of the frames.
• JR Bray Dachshund: introduced the background shot and discovered use of celluloid sheets for layering where only certain elements changed each time.
• Raoul Barre: Dreams of Hercules and Crazy Cat uses write on text.
• Willis O’Brien stop motion animation of a prehistoric world.
• Paul Terry move the background to show movement.
• Fleischer rotoscoping to create realistic movement Clown and ink
• Pat Sullivan Felix the Cat

Traditional Cel animation: to reduce the amount of drawing required each image was constructed using multiple overlaid layers of drawings on transparent sheets of celluloid (cels). In this way, the background scenery for say, Mickey Mouse could be drawn once for use in a scene, while Mickey would be re-drawn multiple times. Typically, an animated feature would require over 100,000 hand-painted cels. These would be photographed one by one onto a painted background using a rostrum camera – a specialised camera used to animate still objects.

Common visual conventions include:

• Use of lines radiating from eye to show noticing something.
• Lines out of mouth for noise
• Dream bubbles.
• Use text screens and build-up text to drive the narrative. These screens move up and down to continue the feeling of movement from the animation.
• Music of different moods and tempo
• Whole screen moves up and down like camera shake. On old films the grit and scratches also flicker to give movement.

A flip book or flick book is a book with a series of pictures that very gradually change from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners.

Flipbooks work on the same principles as frame-by-frame animation. They can be made in very many different styles. Software packages and websites are available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip books.

In addition to their role in the birth of cinema, flipbooks have also been commonly used in marketing of items like cars and cigarettes. They are also in art and published photographic collections. Vintage flip books are popular among collectors, and especially rare ones from the late 19th to the early 20th century have been known to fetch thousands of dollars in sales and auctions.

Andymation

‘Andymation’ is the YouTube channel for Andy Bailey – a stop-motion animator and worked on Laika’s movies ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls, Kubo and the Two Strings, and Missing Link. He has produced a series of very useful tutorials for creating paper flipbooks using a lightbox. The same principles can be adapted for tablet Flipbook Aps.