The Animation Process..

Walt Disney Studios Animation



Animation historians love to say "It all started with a mouse". In fact it actually began with a visionary named Walt Disney.
From the early years in Kansas City with the likes of Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harmon and Rudy Ising. Walt Disney went on to become the single most important man in the history of animation. His legacy is a veritable who's who of animated characters; Snow White, Donald Duck, Pinocchio, Alice, Bambi, Cinderella, and of course, Mickey Mouse.

The Process of Animation
1. A storyboard is made, all the animators and directors come together to discuss the entire film.
2. The storyboards are presented as the story


3. Once the story is laid out, the dialogue is recorded. This is done before animation, so the animators know what the characters will say.
4. After the dialogue is recorded, the animators can make rough sketches of just the characters. Usually these drawings are quite messy, there is still no color, or background. Some animated films have used over 50,000 individual drawings.


At most animation studios, the best animators only sketched a few animation drawings, leaving gaps in between. Later on, a person called an "inbetweener" would finish the scenes, by drawing in between the areas that the animator had left.
5. Once the entire film has been drawn on paper, the animation drawings go to the inking department. There, the inkers copy the animation drawings on to a clear celluloid acetate, sometimes called a Cel.
6. After the outline of the characters has been made, the unfinished Cel's go to the Painting Department. The painters flip the Cel over, and paint the colors on the back. They paint on the back so the characters appear crisp, and have an outline.
7. Before the Animation Cels get photographed a background must be added. Because a Cel is clear, and it only has the painted character on it, if a background is made, it will show through. Usually backgrounds are painted with Tempera or Water Color paint. Although, in some Disney productions, the background was painted on glass, and combined with other glass painted backgrounds to create the illusion of extreme movement. (This technique is use in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.)
8. Now all the combined elements (the Cel and the background) can be photographed. Although, the final product is not filmed with a normal projector, or camera. A special device, with a lens mounted facing down on to a table top captures each frame of the animated feature. Usually, the background is placed into a special mount, then covered with the Cel, then covered with a large piece of glass, then photographed.
9. After all the drawings have been filmed, the dialogue is added. Sometimes the film is edited at this step.
10. The animated film is released, and the general public may view it.

thank you!

Flipbook Animation

Begin by discussing and modeling this activity with the class as follows: Who knows what animation is? Right, cartoons! Did you know that a cartoon is made from many still pictures? They aren't really moving -- they just look like they are. Animation means turning still pictures into moving pictures.
Does anyone know what a flipbook is? Have you ever made one? A flipbook is a cartoon (or a movie) that you can carry in your pocket. We are going to make a flipbook.
Take out the Flipbook Forms worksheet you have photocopied. It is best to have the individual cells cut out before you begin.
Ask one of the students to put the images in order, or you can do so as a class. For younger students, this is an excellent counting activity. It is also the beginning of storyboarding. You might also want to give each student a copy of the worksheets (although this is a lot of photocopying).
Once the images have been placed in order, ask the students to look closely at them. Are they all the same? No. Each one is different.
Stack the images, then tap the stack on a hard surface a few times, to make sure the edges are lined up evenly. Staple the left side together. FLIP OUT!

Here, some Flipbook Animation video for you guys..enjoy it!

Note: Flipbooks do not work very well when standard writing paper is used, unless you have many pages. For future projects, use a heavy paper so you do not need as many individual images. It might be useful to have a ready-to-use box of flipbook sheets on hand for students to use at will.
Now let the students make their own flipbooks. Do the first ones together. Give each 10 sheets of flipbook paper (you can increase the number of sheets later). Students should lay the sheets out on their desk, and number them from 1 to 10 on the top edge (the edge that you are going to staple). This is an excellent exercise in listening, following directions, and counting.
Now the students can begin drawing the cells. A few examples that are easy for beginners are a bouncing ball, or a fluttering butterfly. Sheet 1: Ask the students to draw and color a ball near the bottom of the sheet, on the left side. Sheet 2: The students draw the same ball, but now it is a little higher on the paper. Continue with all 10 sheets.
After they finish the drawings, students will stack the sheets in order. You should staple them together; the large stapler is difficult to handle. Cut a piece of plastic tape the same width as the flipbook, and place it over the edge with the staples. This covers up the potentially sharp edges of the staples. It also makes a nice finish -- similar to a book binding.


Thank You for watching!

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The Enchanted Drawing: Blackton’s Early Animation

It’s a well-established fact that we have a longstanding obsession with Pixar animation and the occasional racy side project by the crew. But we also think it’s important to understand the historical roots of today’s creative obsessions.

Case in point: The Enchanted Drawing, a silent animated film from 1900 by British filmmaker J. Stuart Blackton, who pioneered animation in America. (He was also among the first to use stop-motion as an animation technique, another piece of modern-day ubiquity.) In it, Blackton sketches a face, cigars, and a bottle of wine, then “removes” these last drawings as real objects so that the face appears to react.

 

Before his filmmaking career, Blackton made his living as a vaudeville performer known as “The Komikal Kartoonist.” It was in this entertainment act that he first began drawing “lightning sketches” — high-speed drawings on an easel pad, modified rapidly before the audience’s eyes as he delivered an equally rapid verbal stream.

Eventually, Blackton became a reporter for the New York Evening World newspaper and in 1896 was sent to interview Thomas Edison about his brand new Vitascope invention. In an age where wooing reporters was critical to success, Edison took Blackton to Black Maria, his studio-cabin, and created an impromptu film of Blackton doing a lightning sketch of Edison himself. Blackton became so infatuated with the technology that he soon founded the American Vitagraph Company and began producing films, debuting with The Enchanted Drawing in 1900.

Six years later, Blackton created Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, the earliest animation exploring the intricacies of human expressions and the human face. (Something else we’ve been notoriously fascinated with.) The film is now in the public domain and thus available for all the remixing your heart desires.

DIFINATION OF ANIMATION

animation, the art of making inanimate objects appear to move. Animation is an artistic impulse that long predates the movies. History’s first recorded animator is Pygmalion of Greek and Roman mythology, a sculptor who created a figure of a woman so perfect that he fell in love with her and begged Venus to bring her to life. Some of the same sense of magic, mystery, and transgression still adheres to contemporary film animation, which has made it a primary vehicle for exploring the overwhelming, often bewildering emotions of childhood—feelings once dealt with by folktales.