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.

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.

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. 

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.  

style

Roobarb and custard gave me and idea for my watery effect, the actual change in the picture from each individual drawing makes it wobble a bit just like water!

Research

This was research for 'earth'. It's basically how man arrived on a perfectly good planet and starting killing things and using them for personal gain. Like in the Pocahontas song ' you think you own whatever land you land on. The earth is just some dead thing you can claim.' It is animated in a comedic way but it puts forward a message about the way we treat this planet in which we live in. I'm not so keen on the drawing style but I like the story. 

Research

I love this!!! it's so cute and engaging and the way they have a rock song sung by a squeaky kid is cool. I just love the idea of this person made out of water walking around reacting with everything he comes in contact with. And the idea that when he goes over something he would fall through, he splits into lots of tiny people! I think that is so clever!! Absolutely love the idea and may use this as my inspiration.

Research

I really like this style of animation, how the hands are effecting what is going on in the drawing, I would love to do this someday but I seems quite complicated. I love the fluidity and the clever ideas. This animation made me smile. Also it has a simple way to do rain...just lines coming down from the sky and people reacting to it. I think the reaction is key because it makes it believable.