Looney Tunes

Looney Tunes have been with us since April 1930 when the first cartoon came out 'Sinkin in the bathtub' with Looney Tunes first main character -Bosco the talk ink kid. This character came from the first animation with syncronised speech and sound that was not made by Disney. As you can imagine, that's where the rivalry started.

However, Looney Tunes also used racial stereotypes in their animations.

Due to copyright issues, in 1933, Bosco and his friends were no longer part of Looney Toons. On the bright side, this lead to the creation of new characters such as Porky the pig, and a few years later Daffy duck, bugs bunny. In the 1950's these were put on television but had to be edited to take out scenes of violence, smoking, drinking, and racial stereotypes, so they would be suitable for children. 

In 1988, Looney Tunes finally shared the screen with their Disney rivals in 'Who framed roger rabbit'. They also starred in space jam! Both of which were live action crossed with animation.

Looney Tunes have now gone 3D and in my opinion they have lost the Warner Brothers style. 3D does not suit these well known characters and they shouldn't have tried to be something they're not. However I do understand that they are moving with the times and that is what kids of the new generation want. 

Pixar

Pixar was originally founded in 1979 as a graphics group-a computer division within Lucas film. It was always the aim for them to allow traditional animators to work with computer graphics. George Lucas then sold with to Steve jobs in 1986 for 10 million dollars at which point the company was renamed Pixar after the original image computer.
 Disney started using this company for his animations. A Pixar employee- John Lassater- created Luxo junior. This was never meant to be for a wide audience but captured the hearts of thousands and is now part of the Pixar branding. It was originally just designed to sell the hardware much like any of the other short animations. After this breakthrough, Pixar were employed to create CGI commercials.
Because of the change that company was making, Steve jobs sold the hardware division in 1990, moving the company to California. At this point, Disney asked them to produce 3 films- toy story 1 (1995), bugs life (1998) and toy story 2 (1999). Pixar thought it was 'unreasonable' that Disney kept all the rights to the stories and sequels. In 2006 Disney bought Pixar. However it maintained its separate name and studio. The first film after this was Ratatouille in 2007. After this, Disney Pixar created a film every year. Pixar continues to be a pioneer of 3D animation.

Morph

Although Morph was created in the 1970's by Aardman animation. I still remember him and Chas from my childhood from watching Smart. They were such lovely characters always getting into bother! Rumour has it that they are trying to bring him back! 

Morph was a clay character about 6 inches high often featuring in 1 minute shorts, living in a pencil box. 

They spoke in a strange language but i remember understanding them as a kid. 

Final animation

During the crit I realised that my animation was the only one to have black lines down either side, meaning it wasn't the right size but I looked at this on photoshop on the canvas size and it said it was the right size. This was highly confusing for Mat and I, we decided that the best and only option was to create a new document and put my existing animation into the new document. This meant stretching a few of the images but unless you compare the two, you wouldn't know. So now my animation is the correct size. 

I also got round to adding the title sequences because in the crit Mat said you don't have to use after effects or anything for this just do a picture. I decided to make my first one animated with a splash. 

Another thing that was mentioned in the crit was that it wasn't apparent that the guy needed milk he was just looking in the fridge and then he was outside. Rosy suggested that I stick a post it note in the fridge saying 'Buy milk' so I tried this and I think it works really well! 

The other thing was that the guy looked a bit skinny in the final scene but we don't see him loosing weight anywhere so I tried to make him a bit fatter though I'm not sure there is all that much difference. 

Overall I am actually very pleased with how my animation turned out. I am quite proud of it! I'm glad that everyone giggled when he fell down the drain which was my intention. I have had some really positive feedback off of this project so finally I'm thinking all the long hours of animating were worth it!

Here is my final animation!

Snow white

This video shows the fascinating makings of 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs' recorded a year after it's release in 1937. To be able to see the process instead of imagining it is very useful. I realised just how many people worked on this project and how much longer it took than todays animation techniques. Watching this video, I wanted to do the tracing over the pictures onto celluloid paper and the painting, but I can imagine it getting tedious with the amount of images they had to do, many of them not feeling much different from the last. I'm surprised the chemists that created the 15,000 different colours and shades didn't get more credit for this film because that must have taken a lot of work! The backgrounds were all done in water colour by fine artist that took months of work, I love the background style. I also think they were onto a good thing there using a separate background that didn't have to change or be redone and then overlaying a picture on see through paper. Genius! I really like the effect too I would like to try it some time. I think I prefer the old drawings of snow white even though the colours aren't as bold. There's something more majestic and innocent about her. It's the same with Whinnie the pooh. The old drawings are so much more beautiful.

Gertie the dinosaur

I thought I had put a post about Gertie the dinosaur ages ago becuase I love it but I can find it anywhere! So I'll write about it again. Gertie the dinosaur was made by Winsor McCay in 1914, this was one of the first animations with a proper character that had a personality! And it interacted with a human! This was also a big thing because people didn't know alot about dinosaurs in those days so for someone to say "this is how a dinosaur moves and acts" was completely bewildering. It became a landmark of the first animation with a star and a storyline.This animation took 10,000 drawings to make. This animation also showed more refinement to the drawing.

Animation

Here is my animation so far. I placed the rain in and it looks great with my animation! I have added sound now, this may just be temporary though as I might do it on after effects instead. I chose to use sound effects as apposed to musics because I feel it makes the scene feel more real and bring it to life. The scene isn't emotional so it doesn't need help to show that, it is supposed to be funny and sound effects are often used to portray this as you can see in Looney Tunes. I am quite happy with my work though. I especially like the ending but on photoshop I haven't found a way of layering sound so you can have more than one at a time. This is why I want to try after effects but I think I need Mats help for that. I would also like to have a little 'ah' sound before he falls but I haven't found one yet. Although I had great fun looking. I found most of my sounds on www.freesfx.co.uk, theres lots of great sounds on there. I think the sound definitely brings it to life! Oh, I also need to record someone saying 'no milk!'

Rain

Here is my animated rain that I created using the tutorial I posted here. All I have to do now it layer it over my animation! I'm actually really pleased with how it turned out and it was quite easy to follow! Using this noise method you can animate rain really quickly and control the speed and things without having to redraw everything. And it looks good! 

Phenakistascope

The phenakistascope was one of the first forms of animation starting in 1931 designed by Joseph Plateu (who happens to have the same birthday as me). It used persistance of vision to create an optical illusion. As you can see from the video, it was a wheel and another wheel in front with slits in that you look through at a mirror and you see images appearing to move.
I find this form of animation compelling, i seem to find something new each time i watch them. I'm also fascinated that its so fluid and everything fits together perfectly. It's like they had animation sussed very early on and we just complicated things, creating lots of new ways to make the same thing. Granted this was needed otherwise we wouldn't have computer generated animation like we do today and it would't all be so easily accessible. 

The enchanted drawing

This was animated by J.Stuart Blackton in 1900, a pioneer for american animation and one of the first people to use stop motion as a form of animation. Even though it's so old I still find it fascinating, it's done pretty well for the time! This came after he met Thomas Edison who inspired him to put his animations on film- probably the reasons he's drawn in it. They did this animation by stopping and starting the film every time they made a change. Much like how people were made to look like they had disappeared. These days we call that special effects.These effects make the drawing look like it magically comes alive. Another one of Blacktons animations was 'Humorous phases of funny face' Which I actually don't like as much. But it was a good exploration of the human face and its emotions.

Drop

Today I wanted to animate where the water guy falls down the drain- the penultimate and last scene. I hadn't a clue where to start, all i knew was that I wanted to make it like he paused in the air and then dropped suddenly like the cartoons do like in Loony Toons...So I Youtubed falling Loony Toons and this is what I found. It was actually quite helpful. I realised that the body stretches to start with, then looks as though its moving down and looks like it blurs a bit- unfortunately because my guy was falling into something you cant actually see his whole body and I didn't know how to do it.

So what i tried to do was just make it look like it blurred into the drain. I did a few frames of this and played it back and it was just too slow and jittery and I wanted it to be sudden so I changed it to just one frame of him falling, leaving water droplets behind. I feel this went pretty well considering. It definitely looks like he disappeared and I think it looks like he falls because there is one frame of him half way down the drain. I just need to do the last frame of the close up of the drain with his water all over it. I also need to add the milk carton because I forgot that when I was drawing it today.  

Rain

I found this tutorial on how to animate rain, it seems to be a good idea, and I think I will give it a go, however I'm not sure it will work with my cartoony style animation. We will soon see!

Progress

I have now sorted out all of my inbetweens for my walk cycle and he moves much better now. There is a strange movement at about 3 seconds which I cant decide if it adds to the watery effect or if it makes it look odd, so I'm going to leave it for now and if I have time at the end I'll do a couple of variations for it. 
Today I did 3 scenes. Now I have got the hang of this method of animating, things seem to be going a lot faster. Yesterday pointed out to me that I was doing it a strange way though. I couldn't figure out how to see the image behind the one you were editing to see where the new line needed to be so i was putting them on different layers at the same frame...I'd forgotten about onion skinning. But I actually like my method and it seems to be working for me. However I will remember it for next time!
I animated the two scenes walking in and out of the shop. I nearly started off drawing without reference again until I remembered what happened last time. I found another walk cycle image sheet that showed walks from front and back (I hadn't a clue where to start) 

These sheets are amazing and help so much! It took me less than half the time for these than it did my last one! I'm not sure if you can see my guys hair from the back or not...I'll ask Mat his opinion. I also did the buying milk scene which was done in minutes. I just did straight ahead animation on this. There was only a few moves to do. I am impressed with how I made it look like the milk carton came off the shelf. I love how I did the backgrounds first, but my character is interacting with said backgrounds! It's like I've created my own little world!
I feel much less behind now than I did at the end of last week. I feel about on track. I still need to figure out how to animate rain though. That will take some researching to find out the best method for my animation. 
Overall so far I'd say I'm quite pleased with my work. There is much more movement and animation principles in this animation than there was in my last. I also like this video timeline more than the frame timeline. 

Walk cycle 2

I coloured in my man and added his hair to see how he would look. I like it! I really like how his hair flicks! I need to do some inbetweens so he isn't as jerky and make him get fatter as he walks across, and make him look more watery...but so far it looks okay! 

I tried to add the pool of water at the bottom...it just didn't turn out the way I expected and I couldn't figure out how I was going to give the illusion of walking! I may try again later but for now he's going to have legs. If I had more time it might have been possible to figure it out. 


 I just think it looks a bit rubbish like he's a triangle.

  On the left are some images I used to create my character.I like the way the water flows off number 1 when he moves fast, I like the puddle on 2 and 4, but mine needs to walk and I'm not sure how I could do that.

I love number 6 but I think I would have to use 3D software for that which I would love to try! I think for my animation my character needs to be quite simple like 2 or 4. I notice that the majority of these images use blue, so I'm going to use blue. To show this is water, the rain will also be slightly blue. 

 This is definitely a harder project than last time- there's so much to consider!

walk cycle

So I tried to go straight into a walk cycle...bad idea, completely failed, didn't know where to start. Mat came over and told me I should record myself walking how I want my guy to walk and freeze it every so often and get the shape. I think I will try this too but the first thing I tried (another one of his suggestions) was to find a walk cycle online. I found a brilliant one with all different types of walks, including the one I wanted! I have a feeling this image is going to be of great use in the future, however there was a part where his feet don't make sense to me.

I found this worked quite well and here was my result:

I think I could possibly exaggerate the bounce a little more as in the first scene you see of him walking, you wont be able to see his feet. 

Who framed Roger Rabbit

'Who framed Roger Rabbit' was one of my favourite films as a child- I even had the bed sheets! This film made 25 years ago based on the novel 'who censored roger rabbit' by Gary K. Wolf in 1981, crossed live action with animation, not only that but this was the film where some of Disney's characters appeared on screen together for the first time (though they had to have the same amount of airtime). This was considered 'a milestone in film making history'.

These animations were all hand drawn- over 80,000 images- which is remarkable considering how fabulously they fit with the live action and interact perfectly. 

Something I found out whilst researching this was the the ingredients of the dip (turpentine, benzene and acetone) were all paint thinnerd used to remove animation from cels. I thought this was so clever! It's like killing the characters because it would remove them! I love finding out little things like that! I also love how in this they make a point that they are drawings not humans like in the classic line 'I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way'. Their two worlds are depicted as being two real places, the cartoons come from a foreign land kind of thing not out of a pencil. I think its so creative!!

Although for it's time this film was something phenomenal, today it hasn't got quite the recognition it deserves. 

This film was also daring, risky and smart, and all under the Disney banner! Something a little different from the innocent animals came this attractive, curvaceous lady who used her assets to get what she wanted.

Richard Williams ( the animator) received a special achievement award at the Oscars for this film- and rightly so, without him the film wouldn't work.

This was the most expensive film of the 1980's, but worth every penny for something so daring and new and still a big impressive thing 25 years later.

Fantasia

This has to be the best most memorable part of fantasia. It's the only part I remembered before I watched the whole thing again. It's fascinating to think that Disney and Mickey mouse went from steam boat Willie to this fantastic piece of animation. You can visibly tell that they have used the 12 principles of animation especially exaggerate and anticipate. I love the lighting that was used when the mop split into lots of mops and barged through the door. 
I personally think this part of the film is better than all the others. I like that it has a story. I like the dinosaur part because I like dinosaurs but there wasn't much of a storyline it was almost just like they were trying to fill up the music and it got a bit boring. They are all very imaginative though which I love. 
There is also a part in there about visualising sound which we were talking about today in visual language, I actually really enjoyed this piece it was like the sound as a visual form had it's own personality. 
I also looked at how the water was done in this animation as I have water in mine, they use blue too but only the light blue for the highlights and dark transparent blue for the rest of the water. I think this works well and I may have to try it but I don't think dark transparent blue would be visible off the background and the water guy is supposed to be the centre of attention. 

Silly Symphonies

Walt Disney is famous for his ground breaking animations- starting off with 'Steamboat Willie' in 1928. Mickey Mouse starred in the first ever animation with synchronised sound. According to Ward Kimball- people went crazy for this. They were fascinated by the fact that drawings could come to life and make noises. 

Disney did more of these, every time getting a little better. His first silly symphony was 'The skeleton dance'. In this, the action was coordinated with the sound in a dance. 

Disney improved in leaps and bounds being the first to do a colour animation, the first fully developed character animation, and the worlds first feature length film! Although some people do not like Disney's work, you have to admit that was a lot of ground-breaking things! He paved the way for this to become an art form. 

My favourite silly symphony is 'The three little pigs' I think the characters are very good and the colouring improved a lot and its a good story.

Snow white...who doesn't love snow white? It's a beautiful, classic tale that has been re told in many forms including a film which I came across the other day called 'Sydney White'. I college girl in america who befriends 7 geeks and lives with them- the modern day snow white with slightly altered names. The poison apple was even in there (someone sent a virus to her mac just before a deadline). 

This feature length animation was the start of a whole new world of films. 

Animation process and production

Pre production

The next thing I went about doing was the backgrounds. I spent ages on these, I decided to draw every brick individually on my walls. When I got back to uni and saw other peoples, I realised it was easier to just give the illusion of bricks like with a couple. Oh well it's done now and it gives it a sort of soft cottagey feel. I struggled a bit with the angles and things and making it look realistic but not real. I also found it difficult to keep the style the same especially going from a village to a supermarket, they are two very different styles. I am thinking now I could have done a village shop but I like how my automatic doors open now! That was the next thing I did. I did bits to the background that would move. I just thought of making the fridge light flicker, I may give that a go later. My second background pans across so the guy doesn't move across the screen, it just look as though he's walking across. I thought this would be interesting. I did this by doing a Photoshop painting of the background that was twice as wide as it needed to be, then I used the position settings on the drop down list and set a start and an end and it now moves across. I used the same technique with the automatic doors. 

Here is an example of my backgrounds for now until I make a gif.

I like how I did the lighting here. I used a solar flare in the filter option. I didn't really know how to tackle lighting until I saw Beccy Wongs work. At first it looked really flat and dull and I had blue squiggles on my white windows. I just didn't know what to do! So I saw that Beccy was using yellows and lamps and thought this gave a lovely homely feel so I tried it and thought it just brought life to my work. Here is the before and after.

I think it looks so much better with this kind of lighting. NO BLUE SQUIGGLES.

Animation Process and production

Pre production

To start with in this project I decided to create a schedule to see what time I had available and when I was doing other things. Where I had spaces I marked out a few hours in which I could do some animation work. On a separate piece of paper I wrote down what I was going to do at each point and it all fitted in nicely. This way I wouldn't get too bogged down in everything. 

Next I started thinking about some ideas and did a lot of research, some of which is shown in previous blogs. 

When I had come up with my idea, I did my storyboard and my animatic. My story is about a man made out of water who realises he has no milk left so has to go out. Unfortunately it's raining and because he's made of water, he soaks the rain up causing him to look fatter. He gets his milk and pays for it, when he's finished, typically the weather has brightened up. So he walks home milk in had confidently. But he wasn't watching where he was going so he steps on a drain and falls through it.

When we had our first critique, we made an entire presentation on our research and developments which if I can I will put on here. A comment that was made was that there is not enough time for all of these scenes and a couple need some more time to see what is going on. To counteract this I took out the scene of looking out the window and made some scenes longer than others.  

Another thing I am going to do is start of with the fridge door open, that way it doesn't need as much time on this scene and it isn't rushed. 

A question I asked the class was 'Does he need a face? I had showed a few character designs and the majority voted no so I think I'll go without a face. 

Here are my initial character designs.

I wasn't that keen on either of them and wanted to maybe merge together the parts that I did like. However Mat said that its not essential to have a perfect character at this stage. 

SSX on tour

Environmental Story

I think SSX on tour has great backgrounds. They use Lighting very well in this by giving a blue hue to the picture which shows the whiteness of the snow and also how cold it is because blue is a cold colour. The light also reflects off things making them appear shiny or smooth etc. Also, when you go off a jump quite high the sun appears and cause your looking right at it you get the solar flare/ sun spots which makes you feel like your really there because obviously you have to be straight on to the sun to do that. The shadows work well too, when you go into a valley or under a tunnel, everything gets darker but it doesn't just look gray.
I like how the board leaves a mark in the snow, this gives it texture and depth and believability. Another thing that's good about this environment is the props and composition of them, although its just in the snow, there are trees, fallen trees that you can grind, big metal arches that show that your going the right way / show your nearly there, the buildings you pass. It uses great perspective like when you jump off a cliffe and you actually feel like your falling. I love the dust that comes off the board, makes it more real. I also like how you get day and night scenes, at night its a lot darker and more blue but you can still see and I think its a good balance. I also like how there's rocks under the snow.
Game play starts at about 4minutes.

Spaces and Places

 The first place I drew was the town hall. I chose this because it is an interesting building in a nice location with lots of space around it. I used a variation of media including charcoal, graphite stick,pencil and fine-liner.  I like the graphite and charcoal ones best. Mike said the lines are very sketchy (that's my drawing style he didn't say we had to draw it a specific way) and that I need to use a 

 sharper pencil, which is a valid point that I will take into consideration next time.

I chose to draw my bedroom next because this would give me chance
 to relax while I draw and 

 use a much wider range of media because I have it readily available and can take as much time as I like on it. I am actually really happy with how these drawings turned out.
 I used media such as pro-

marker, pencil, watercolour, graphite stick and fine liner. I enjoyed trying to get perspectives right from different angles.

 I also chose to draw the Merrion centre because although I've been in there before it's usually just to Morrisons and I've never really paid any attention to it, just walked through. There are some interesting angles in the architecture but apart from that it's a pretty boring building with hardly any colour (hence the lack 
 of colour used and not a very 

inspirational place to draw. Not to mention the off putting people walking past you. I have to say I didn't like this project. I don't enjoy drawing in public.