Katrina's Animation Blog

Cut out animation is a form of animation that uses cut out pieces of: news paper, magazines, post cards, photos and books. These pieces are used make characters, settings, props etc to create a form of stop motion animation; they can be moved slightly before taking each photo to create the film. Cut out animation is effective because it can tell a story and is one of the easiest forms of stop motion animation. this is because you can get the resources from anywhere and they can be moved very easily without having to redo it every time. and because of the unrealistic nature of it nothing has to be perfect, therefore you can use cheats to make it easier for yourself. Terry Gilliam would make his characters be on wheels so it wasn't difficult making them walk but this isn't obvious, it just looks like the characters are random. It's also good because you can change the scale of anything by layering cut outs on top and using more than one photo. It can be difficult because th...

Frame rate is the number of images shown per second, it is measures in frames per second also known as fps. Most films are in 24 frames per second, animation usually uses 12 frames per second; if animation is shown on TV each image will be shown for two frames and TV is usually broadcast at 25 frames per second.  The higher the frame rate affects the way we perceive motion. Because we mainly see 24fps when we see higher it looks strange. Some people say it looks too real.  After experimenting with flipbook animation I have learned that the more photos we took/the more pages of the flipbook we did for each movement the soother it looked. If we moved the stick figures position too much it looked jerky and less realistic. 

This timeline shows major developments in animation history that shaped the types of animation we know of today. Animation started off with just using light and images to create the illusion of movement. The magic lantern idea was when it first took the form of projection. There was a big change when the thaumatrope was introduced along with the theory of persistence of vision. Even though it is now discarded, it had a big influence as this showed a fluent illusion.  In 1880 the developed zoopraxiscopoe was considered the first film bridge. The first use on stop motion was humpty dumpty circus. Stop motion cut out and live photography was used in humorous phases of funny faces, at this time there was more experimental work being made. The process of animation was made easier and quicker in 1910 when Emily Cohl used cut out to save time for En Route. This is because it could be adjusted instead of completely re done. An important milestone for ...

In class we watched Norman McLaren's animation "Neighbours" which uses pixilation animation. It's about two men having a very petty, unnecessary fight over a flower. they video has some very ridiculous outcomes and the characters are silly. The main message of the video is to make peace and not conlict; it is reflective of society and war. The pixilation technique was suitable because it allowed them to do unrealistic things such and flying or kicking a baby which would be difficult to do by videoing. It also gives the animation a humorous sense as the characters are over the top and impracticable. https://youtu.be/e_aSowDUUaY   Pixilation animation is  form of stop motion animation which includes people. It works by using live actors and repeatedly taking photos of them in a position that changes slightly in each photo so that when all the photos are played back quickly it creates the illusion of movement. For my own pixilation project we made use of the effect ...

  The Quay Brothers have been producing their animations since 1979 after moving from Philadelphia to study at the Royal Collage of Art in London, England. Even though technology has improved massively over time the two brothers still enjoy creating their animations traditionally with references to the silent film genres however they use modern technology to composite the films.  Their inspiration comes from the music as the brothers always start with what the music will be. they believe that the music tells them what to do and sets the situation almost like a choreographer. They make their animations using stop motion and characters made from puppets/broken dolls . They usually work on a  4foot by 8foot space so they can use close up lenses but still have wide shots, they can have full control. They don't use a big budget for their films as they don't think they would need it especially as they never want to do anything mainstream or for kids. The animatio...