Cel Animation

Cel Animation also known as tradition animation is done by drawing each individual frame by hand, this technique was the dominant form of animation for cinema until the advent of computer animation.

Creating a Cel Animation was a long process, that involved a lot of pre-production work also, story boards were made before the creation of the soundtrack, after this they would create was was called an animatic, where they would place slides from the story board in sync with the soundtrack to help create a general idea of how the animation needed to go, before animation began though they needed to go through character design and layouts, this would be where the background artists would draw in the background, choosing the camera angle and etc, finally the animation is created.

Cel animation works by taking individual frames and playing them back really quickly, this creates the illusion of movement to the audience.

1970s - Present

1970s to present

Oliver Postgate

Oliver Postgate was a writer for some of Britain's most popular children's most popular television programes, including Pingwings, Pogles' wood, Noggin the Nog, Clangers and Bagpus. 

They were all made by a company called Smallfilms and were shown on the BBC.

Smallfilms was a company set up between 1959 and the 1980s and was a partnership between Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. Bagpus was the show that was made during the 70s, and it has been voted the favourite children's show of all time by a BBC poll. 

Here is a clip from Bagpus from my favourite episode as a child:

Hanna Barbara

Hanna Barbara Productions Inc was an American Animation studio that dominated American television animation for nearly three decades in the mid to late 20th century.

The company was formed in 1957 by directors William Hanna and Joseph Barbera the creators of Tom and Jerry and live action director George Sydney in partnership with Columbia Pictures.

Some of their productions include

Inch High, Private Eye (1973)

Hong Kong Phooey (1974)

Amigo and Friends (1981)

The Smurfs (1981)

Snorks (1984)

Dexters Laboratory (1996)

Cow and Chicken (1997)

Jonny Bravo (1997)

The Powerpuff Girls (1998)

Here is the intro theme from one of their shows Jonny Bravo:

Disney
Through the 1970s Disney was still creating family friendly films such as Escape to Which Mountain and Freaky Friday, those these films were not doing as good at the Box Office as previous, however the animation studio was making success with films such as Robin Hood (1973), The Rescuers (1977) and The Fox and the Hound (1981).

In the 1980s Disney produced films such as Who Framed Rodger Rabbit (1988) and later on made The Little Mermaid (1989). Disney also entered the field of television with shows such as The Adventures of the gummi bears, Duck tales are Gargoyles.
Here is a bit from Who Framed Rodger Rabbit, which is one of my favourite films of all time:

Time lapse

Time lapse Animation

Time lapse is a type of animation were a camera is usually set to take pictures at a lowered interval to create a lapse effect, it is also usually done over long periods of time to create the best effect.

I will show you examples of time lapse animation and talk about them a little, one famouse example of time lapse animation is when a person takes a picture of them selves every day for a prolonged period of time, usually spanning several years.

This one is a a man called Noah, who takes a picture of his face every day for 6 years. 

Another example is of a film called Koyaanisquatsi which consists mainly of time lapse shots and slow motion video, of people in a city set to a track of music.

Here is the trailer of the film:

Responding to Peer Feedback

Thank you everyone who watched and posted feedback to my animation, in this post I will be responding to it.

Thomas Wilson

The reason I have the music as it was, is because it was intended to be a music video, for the specific song, because of this reason, I could not change the music during the fight scene, but I do agree about the explosion, I wish I had animated more of an explosion, my original intention was to have it cut off abruptly, but it didn’t work very well as it was not the end of the song, but part way through so it doesn’t feel right when it ends, though you were never meant to see after the explosion, my plan was always for it to end abruptly. Thank you for your feedback.

Matty Oxley

Thank you, as you can see when you look closely, I also had a bit of issue keeping the paper in line, it just likes to go all over the place as you film, as for the “FIGHT” scene where the text comes up, I felt it delayed a little for a second, so I wish I made it cut off a little sooner, so my timing was a little off.

James Smerdon

Thank you James, and I agree, the lighting was terrible, next time I will bug Kevin for a better environment to animate in, so that it is more consistent, maybe a studio with a light would be good, although I’m not sure that would be possible in the college, and I will take note on the gun, though with the words fight only being shouted for a second, I had a time constraint to keep within.

 Above is an example of some of the choppy lighting, it goes from very dark to to much brightness very quickly.

Andrew Culley

Thank you very much, I used thicker card like paper rather than just paper, this gave a little weight to the paper, making it stay still a little better than normal paper, it also created a nice dense colour. Thank you though I personally feel the timing could have been better, just cut-off a little sooner for the “FIGHT” part and some other things I felt were off.

Soph MBoro

Thank you Sophie, I’m glad you liked the sound and I agree again, the explosion could have went on a little longer, but my original plan was to have it cut off abruptly, as the song ends abruptly, but I had ended up not using the whole song, as I did not have time to animate for the whole song sadly.

Charlie Breed

Thanks Charlie, it's really encouraging to see this kind of feedback, if you like the song it's made by Starship Amazing, and it's called "FIGHT"

Michael Lane

Hey Mike, thanks for the feedback, I agree with the lighting, it was terrible, but there wasn't a lot I could do as I was animating in a classroom full of people doing things, I'm not sure how the lighting was that bad though, it changes a lot and I could not work out why, it's not like the other students were flicking the light on and off, also the video becomes very blurred at one point, I think I may have messup with the camera focus at one point here is an example below.

Finished Animation

Here is my finished animation, it took about 3 weeks to make as I could only animate during the appropriate lesson, I am okay with the outcome but it wasn't as well made as I'd liked, with the lighting being really off, followed by the abrupt finish.

Hope that you like it, as I really enjoyed making it.

Cutout animation works by creating characters and sets using bits of paper cut into shapes, and moving them a little at a time before taking a photo, it's a similar process to frame by frame drawn animation, but instead of drawing it, you have the bits already cut out, and move them yourself, so it can be a little more complicated, you play back the individual frames at a fast speed so that it creates the illusion of movement.


Creating the animation
I started out by coming up with idea for an animation, after a while of thinking, I had decided to do an animation I had came up with quite a while ago, but instead to do it as a cutout animation, I did this because cutout was the best way to make this kind of animation I felt, stop motion with clay though doable would not have been as practical, though it would have been cool to try I decided to go with the more practical option, and I was not allowed to animate on the computer, so cutout was the best choice, I often come up with videos to go with the music I listen to, it often just happens as I blank out and start to day dream while listening to music, so in a way I already had the idea before we even started.

After this I created a story board, I had tried to mark at the top of the slides the timing I would need to properly animate the video, setting the start and stop times of each slide, sadly this did not work out as I needed to cut my animation down to 30 seconds, rather than the full minute due to constraints, after this I went to a craft shop and purchased some quality paper, thicker than usual paper so it would not be as likely to crease and fall apart in my hands as I am somewhat heavy handed, before creating them though I came up with a few ideas for different space ships and monsters, in the end I went with the more basic but visually pleasing space ship, I felt it worked well as it was easy to move around, and was a practical shape.

For the monster I got a bit more ambitious, I took inspiration from the Futurama monster from the episode "The beast will a billion backs" as it is a planet sized cloud monter with huge pink coloured tentacles, when creating the monster however, I found I did not get enough paper, so I had to down size my monster, originally I had planned for the monster to be far to big to fit onto the screen, and even serve as the background at one point as evident in my story board, but instead I down sized it and made it just a little smaller than the screen, though it never fully comes into view.

While animating I had to tape a camera to the top of the mac screen to get enough hight from the table, I used iStopMotion 3 to create the animation, it took about 3 lessons to fully animate my video, as well as editing in the lazer shots from the spaceship using Adobe After Effects, to put in the music soundtrack I used garageband and to put in the titles and credits I used iMovie, then exporting it into an MP4 file format.

Today I made some more planets and fire, I have decided I will animate at home, as it will be a more controlled environment and I will have lots more time to do it, meaning I can do it at a better quality, not to mention the better quality camera and lighting I will be able to have.

After I have animated, I plan to go into after effects and add in lasers and stars into the background, as well as maybe a few other things I may think of at the time.

I am almost at production stages now, I have finished making the set and the cutouts, I only have a few more fires to make.

I believe I will be animating at home, as I will have more time and more control over the lighting, as well as a higher quality camera.

Here are the things I have made: