Pixilation

The first example of an animated film which still exists was an advert for matches; made around 1893. It used the pixilation technique of shooting real objects single-frame in 3D space as against drawings.
Until the advent of animation-cel (around 1915 I think), Pixilation was the main form of animation and primarily for Special Effects as in the 'Keystone Cops' films.

Wikipedia describes it as:
Pixilation (from pixilated) is a stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject in an animated film, by repeatedly posing while one or more frame is taken and changing pose slightly before the next frame or frames. The actor becomes a kind of living stop motion puppet. This technique is often used as a way to blend live actors with animated ones in a film.

It is the simplest form of animation, and can easily be done using a digital camera with a single-frame button. But can also be done with an analogue movie camera just by clicking it on and off.
With children, the most common idea is to let them make a funny face for each shot.

This type of animation requires no editing and offers instant playback, but can easily be extending to give 'magical' effects such as people and objects appearing and disappearing, or moving around at a frantic pace.

This technique can be automated as 'Stop Frame' shooting, where the camera takes a shot at fixed intervals. Commonly seen in CCTV cameras, and scientific films where you see a flower growing in a few seconds though it actually took hours or days.

It is an ideal starting point for animation in schools, as once set up it requires no further attention.
A good site for learning basic techniques, including Pixilation is http://www.anim8ed.org.uk/resources_tech_pixil.asp

This site also gives instructions on setting up school projects using a variety of techniques.

More information on: Pixilation

Stan

Movement notation

The name of Eadweard Muybridge is known to just about every animator; his books analysing motion in humans and animals have been the bible of the animation industry even today though they were published over a hundred years ago.

Dancers also use various forms of movement notation, and Choreologists work with Choreographers to record dance routines using such systems as the Labanotation and the Benesh method among others.

In 1958 Noah Eshkol and Abraham Wachman published a notation for describing movement based on a geometric concept, and was one of the systems used by NASA to see how astronauts would move in zero gravity.

When I started in animation I wondered if the two concepts of pictures and notation could be put together. On joining the Computer Arts Society ( www.computer-arts-society.org) in the early 1960s I met John Lansdowne, an architect who had an interest in ballet, and had created program that combined the ideas of pictures and notation.

His system had a set of numbered figures in various positions. By typing in the number sequence with the number of frames for each image you could create a dance sequence.
In those days you had to print out the images, but the concept was proved even though I am unaware of it ever being used seriously by dancers.

Things have moved on, and Motion Graphics allow movements to be recorded in real time. An example is at http://www.biomotionlab.ca/ which lets you to play around with some simple walk cycles.

If you want something better you might look at Poser 6 (http://www.poserworld.com/Home.aspx) which has libraries of figures ready to animate.

Muybridge would have been proud of his heritage.

Check out: Movement Notation

Stan

Doodling

All animators are doodlers. Typically they start at school and draw pictures in their notebooks when they should be listening to their teachers. People bored at meetings doodle, and graffiti is a form of doodling. It is one of our natural instincts that has never really been utilised for education.

There is a clear cut distinction between doodling and drawing, with doodling it is organic; a shape grows without real purpose. Quite often it is a letter or shape that exists, and it vaguely reminds you of something so you add a bit here and there, and then it takes on a form of its own.

I once wrote a book called 'How Do You Doodle' based on using letters, numbers, and simple shapes as starting points for children to create pictures. The numbers 0 - 9 can all be easily used as noses (www.makemovies.co.uk) As writing developed from pictures, it does not take much imagination to reverse the trend.

An interesting site is at http://www.zefrank.com/gallery/dtoy_gal/index.html which has some animated shapes you can doodle with. Although these are limited, they make a good introduction to animation for children.

Another fun site is at http://www.morphases.com/editor/ This doesn't require any drawing skill, but allows you to change the facial features around in many ways.
Although it calls itself Morphases, it isn't actually morphing in the way animation changes a picture from one shape to another. An introduction to the principles of animation can be found on http://cartoonster.com/ It is one of many sites that show basic techniques.

There are very many 'Morphing' programs used for Special Effects (SFX), but the idea was first popularised in Felix the Cat going back to the earliest days of animation. And of course the Aardman Animation creation 'Morph', the little clayman who could change himself into anything, and initiated the highly successful 'Creature Comforts' and all that followed.

Other Doodling sites: Doodle


Stan

Lip sync

About thirty years ago when I was involved with computer animation at the Imperial College, one of the projects we looked at was creating automated lipsync.
In principle it was fairly easy; a set of lip shapes were matched to a set of phonemes in a look-up table, and you typed in the syllables and gave them a number of frames.

In those days there was no instant playback so if you got the timing wrong it took some time to check. But it wasn't practical for other reasons such as needing different shapes for different faces, also size, gender, age, and accent affect the shape of the lips.

I am not an animator but a scriptwriter, and my interest was the idea that one day I would be able to type in a script and both see and hear it played back. I thought it might always be a pipe dream, but I have recently seen some examples that come close to doing just that. One of the programs is http://www.reallusion.com/go/crazytalk/default.htm which allows you to record your voice and have it spoken by an animated character.

I recently looked up "lipsync for animation" and got a hit rate of over 300,000, so developments have moved on.
I haven't tested them but here's a couple examples here that you may like to look at to see the current state of the art.

www.thirdwishsoftware.com/magpie.html
www.lostmarble.com/papagayo/index.shtml

Also some other sites: Lip Sync


Stan

Drawing

Usually the first problem I find with teaching children to draw is getting them to hold a pencil correctly.
As a child before the war we had to spend hours doing copper-plate script to write neatly. It was boring, but you could read most children's writing. Not so today with biro's and word processors.

I always say "Hold your pen like a dart", but though that is typical for animation, Fine-artists use different methods. One method I came across is at http://thegluckmethod.com/html/freelesson/index.html which is worth looking at.

You don't need to be able to draw to animate though. Take a look at:
www-ui.is.s.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~takeo/java/smoothteddy/index.html (just type in 'smooth teddy' to get listings) to see the trend in simple animation. This appears not to be a commercial program yet, but it will be fun for kids when it is.

Another similar 'instant' animation program beingdeveloped is http://www.k-sketch.org/
This could really take off in schools when it's available.

This trend will bring back the Light-pen as an input device. They were common in the 1960s but went out of fashion when the mouse and drawing tablet became available.

Another recent development yet to hit the shops is a screen that is so thin and flexible it can be rolled up. This would be suitable for a cheap light-box/monitor when it's available.

Then there is Googles own drawing program at http://sketchup.google.com/product_suf.html
It does 3D geometric shapes but easy to use.

It will be interesting to see if a killer-application comes these instant animation programs as there is no doubt that there is a great need for a graphical language that overcomes the barriers of the spoken and written ones.

Look at: Drawing Techniques

Stan

Draw a Pig

I came across this site http://drawapig.desktopcreatures.com/ while looking for psychological drawing tests.

Teaching children to draw gives a good insight into how they think and see the world. I was surprised to find that children in London still draw houses with smoke coming out of the chimneys even though most have never seen this happen. But then, most houses still have chimney pots even though they are not used. Children draw what they think as against what they see.

Pigs are difficult animals to animate. They don't have hand-like trotters; vary little in features, and typically described as fat-ugly-greedy-dirty. In fact a good cliche for all we dislike, and this may be because in some ways they can appear quite human; more so than a cat or dog.

Thier place in animation is to represent the villian as in 'Animal Farm'. Of course, we all love Miss Piggy in the Muppets, but that because she associates with other loveable characters.
Foxes and Wolves are also villians while dogs are heroes. Cats seem to take on any role, as do monkeys, while horses are always good.
The psychological links between people and animals has always been exploited, and never more so than in animation. Drawing animals gives some useful insight into how we see the world.

Some more drawing test sites: Psychological Drawing Tests

Stan

stan@MakeMovies.co.uk

Getting started in Animation

The purpose of this Blog is to look at some of the many Animation sites around and see what's new; what's interesting, and where they fit into the great scheme of things animation-wise.

My interest is mainly to get animation into schools and the community as I used to run children's workshops, and in particular, classes for Special Needs children, so had to find ways that children with no experience of animation; no particular skills, and not much time to practice, could produce work they found fun and creative.

Many of the children had physical and mental handicaps, so techniques had to be devised suitable to their capabilities. Much of this work can be found on my site www.MakeMovies.co.uk so this Blog is an appendage to that.
That site does list links to other animation sites, but this is the place to look at what's going on, and the trends.

For idle moments look at: Animation

Stan