Animation progression

Animation ideas

I chose to use the 3rd sound clip for my animation, the first thoughts i had where to have a character sneaking up on someone, but then i decided that that would be too predictable. After listening to the sound clip i noticed that the male voice was quite posh sounding, at this point i had come up with an idea for a fox character as they are sneaky sly creatures. So eventually i came up with a fox character that was dressed in posh upper class clothing.

I had trouble trying to figure out what i could have as my female character that the fox would be going after, i thought about what foxes were notorious for doing and came up with a chicken. Foxes are known to farmers to go after their chickens, and so my idea was set and i could start coming up with my storyboards.

1. The first panel sets the scene which is simply a chicken coop, i wanted to keep the design simple and kind of comic book like.  

2. The fox struts up to the coop looking all smug and sly. 

3. Casually leans on the coop "I'm coming to get you Barbara."

4. Fox grins smugly as chicken is alerted. Fox hides behind the coop and waits. 

5. Barbara the chicken runs out in a panic flapping around madly. 

6. Fox jumps out and runs after the chicken. 

Animator comparison

Hayao Miyazaki and Tim Burton have two completely different animation styles and techniques.

Miyazaki is a world famous Japanese animator with a style that is very distinctive, and his drawing style is very much his own, as is clearly seen in the Ghibli films that he has worked on. He is primarily a 2D animator but small parts of his films are done in CGI when 2D would be ridiculously hard to pull off. It is mainly in the newer films where CGI has been brought in, like in Howl’s moving castle where all the different parts of the castle were drawn separately then put into a computer program and put together, by doing this they were able to animate each part separately from the other. The result was a very convincing mechanical castle that hissed, creaked and clunked along the beautifully painted backgrounds of the film that Ghibli are well known for. The backgrounds themselves are breathtaking, usually large open landscapes all hand painted and generally water colour style.

In comparison Tim Burton has to build scale models of the environments for his animations so that his character models to move around in. Burton creates 3D stop motion films using models instead of drawn characters, these models usually have some sort of metal skeleton to make them easier to move and keep their shape. Where Miyazaki’s films have a bright and airy feel to them Burton’s tend to be a lot darker and quite creepy. Examples of his films are A nightmare before Christmas and The corpse’s bride.

Uses of animation

Animation is used in many different ways. The most common use for animation is, of course, animated films such as Disney and cartoons. It is also used in many TV adverts some examples of this would be tony the tiger from the frosties adverts and the loyds TSB adverts. Tony the tiger is an example of 2D animation being used in adverts while the loyds advert is CGI. Animation is also used in video games to create believable 3D character that the player can interact with. CGI technology is also used in modern films to replace the use of stunt doubles and large sets. Although some films still use the old methods mixed in with computer generated imagery. Animation is also used a lot on the Internet to create interactive web pages, adverts and games. 

History

1950s

Sleeping beauty 1959

Sleeping beauty is one of Disney’s classic 2D animations, and is often thought of as one of the early additions to the Disney collection. However its was made when the animation studios were well established and experienced in this field of animation, having good twenty years to develop and master their skills. Their first full-length film was snow white in 1930.

This film shows fantastic, beautiful hand painted backgrounds, flowing detailed characters that you can’t help but fall in love with, and much more.  My favourite part of the film is when the prince and his horse are arguing, as the horse cannot talk a brilliant use of body language and facial expressions are used to get the point across. This form of story telling always amazes me and I respect the amount of work and planning that would have had gone into the final scene.

1970s

Disney Fantasia 1977

 Fantasia was a compilation of short animations set to varying tracks of classical music. The most famous of which was the Magicians apprentice staring the famous Disney star Mickey mouse. Everyone remembers it for the music when the brooms come alive and march along to the music.  Fantasia is made up of eight sequences set in symphonic concert with Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia orchestra; the film was shown in ‘fantasound’ an early stereo system made by Disney. When it first came out it was only showing in fourteen different cinemas because they were the only ones with the right equipment to screen it. It went on to win awards for its brilliance.