research paper

VIS 201 Research Paper
Leung Pui Hei (Elsie) 1060136
Topic: “Has animation become a more popular film genre in recent years? Support argument with relevant facts and figures.”

Today is a digital era. Various media would use computer as their necessary technique to improve their products. Even in film and cinema, they also rely on high technology for the key to success. Animation can say to be achieved a completed triumph. With the advancement from time to time, it becomes a more popular film genre nowadays. It has great moral power either in television or in website.

What film genre is? It is the film categorization to define which type of film is. There are three main elements to define the film: setting, mood, and format. Science fiction, adventure, romance, thriller, live actions are all the example of different genre of the film. Animation is also one of the film genres since 1950. The very first animation showed in the cinema are “How Jones Lost His Roll”, and “The Whole Dam Family and the Dam Dog” (1905) by Edwin Porter. It was the “single frame animation” style and it was immature. It was not so popular at that time. However, it opened an initial format to later animations.

During the mid 1940, animation came to a peak. It is the time for “The Golden Age of American Animation”. The famous characters are Bunny, Mickey Mouse, and Betty Boop….. They are still very popular in today. Animation creates a character and character makes animation come off. So, what animation is? It is the most creative category of making film today. It involves the massive large scale production. It is expensive and time consuming. The tradition making involved lots of people and procedures.

All films, is essentially an optical illusion, a trick of the eye, known as "persistence of vision"[1]. The human eye retains an image for a fraction of a second after seeing it. It joins sequence drawings together and runs in the projector. The rapid motion seems like moving. For instance, when perform an animal running repetitive motion, it left and right leg would repeat sequence ceaselessly. This movement consists of 8 drawings and looped together. When the animal runs, it has 12 frames per second so as to distract audience. By the way, this traditional technique has the limited actions.

Animation creates the illusion the frame by frame movement through lots of technical applications. Animator Richard Taylor claimed that “The quality of the sequence is more important that the quality of the images. It is possible to make a bad film with beautiful drawings or models- the art animated film is in the action”.[2] It shows that animation puts great emphasis on sequence making, whether it is smooth or not. Timing and fluency are the vital element to form a good movie.

In the past, almost all the animations used traditional -animation methods, which are hand-drawing animation, cel animation etc. They have the storyboard as the main idea of the film. Post video recording for the sound track. The board drawing would have a glass board on the top, and a light box under it. Four or five papers are then put on the board which is as thin as possible to gauge the next drawing. The split drawing would be combined together to form a movement and therefore make a story. They still put great emphasis on the smoothness of the sequence.

The very first animated film is called “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces” (1906) which produced by J. Stuart Blackton. The storyboard was very simple. It was a silent cartoon with the simplest elements. The characters were drawn on the chalkboard with lightliy different facial expression. At the beginning, we can also see the animator `s hand was drawing the figures, but cut and paste (without his hand) ran a film clip later on. It moved about 20 frames per second. However, the action was not smooth enough. Sometimes the characters `s action would be uneven and disconnected.

“I think the idea of a traditional story being told using traditional animation is likely a thing of the past.” Jeffrey Katzenberg of Dream Work, on Sinbad.[3]

Like what Jeffrey mentioned, 2D animation became old, more and more animations-making ways come out when come to the present. Animators used different techniques and styles, like clay animation, puppet animation, sand and glass, and also computer generated imagery (CGI) or so on. Among these techniques, most of the animators prefer using computer animation. CGI seems to make the most important influence on the animation.

CGI delivers a special visual effect by interactive techniques and computer graphics. It is kind of computer animation and has 2D, 3D form. It can reinforce the use of 2D hand illustrated cels, and also transfer the objects to the real 3D world. The advantages of using CGI is that it may need no actors, expensive setting (either scene or costumes), but only the technology and the animator. It can be more timesaving and effective.

Computer is the necessary tool for animation making nowadays. It seems to be “another pencil” in modern society. The aesthetic affected by the enhancement of GCI. Although animation is a “craft oriented process”, new digital technologies have totally altered the characteristic of this process; shorten the time of making an animated film of any important length.

Moreover, the techniques used in nowadays are different from the past. They make a big difference and chance to improve the quality of animation. In traditional 2-dimension cartoons, usually have 15 frames a second to project an image. They used hand- drawing to create the movement. The nature was jerky and funny. However, when compared with nowadays advanced skill, 3-dimension animations take it place. More frames are involved and needed, which aimed to project a smoother and high quality effects. As viewers have higher expectation than before, they want the more realistic images than the past.

However, even computer animation stays in a very important position; traditional 2D animation would not be substituted. Like Disney, it had produced 44 classic 2D hand drawing animations before using computer animations.[4] As we can see, it is still a dominant medium for the basic construction. Thus, both of them would be combined and complementary. Take Pixar animators as an illustration; they must first have the very clear understanding of the human movement and anatomy, but not totally depend on computer structure.

It is a great succession that the drawing golden age combined with the new computer technique. Animators push the medium forward to a new direction. Animation is more and more popular than ever. Further animated companies started producing prominent animations.

DreamWorks, Blue Sky, The Walt Disney World and Pixar are the companies of making animations. However, Disney and Pixar seem to gain the great success. Disney starts producing animations from 1928 to the present. It `s images have the most forceful effect worldwide. It has molded many fairytales which represent native group `s mythic pasts. The prominent animations like “Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs” (1937), “Fantasia” (1940), “Sleeping Beauty” (1959), “The Lion King” (1994) and so on. Some of the animations even worked as the “revolutionary technical means capitalized on American innocence and utopianism to reinforce the social & political status quo.” (Bell et al, 1995:21)[5]

Take “Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs” (1937) as an example. In 1989, National Film Registry regarded it as “culturally, historically, aesthetically significant”. In 1997, it was the American Film institute `s list of 100 greatest American films of all times. All of this show that animations like Snow white could gain such a gross profit and was a box office success. It also takes a very important role in the film genre.

Pixar, is an American computer animation studio which was bought by The Walt Disney World in Jan 24, 2006. The famous feature animated films they produced are Toy Story (1995), Finding Nemo (2003) which was a realistic presentation of the water. Both of them are produced with CGI skill.

Toy Story (1995) was the very first feature length[6] computer animated movie which won the Academy Award with the successful box office $354,300,000 worldwide. It has a great succeed on creating “professional” aesthetic for CGI. The toys illustrated the geometric forms like “plasticity” and “gloss” which created in CGI. The movement reveals sense of space and depth through the domestic space. It was the greatest achievement and milestone of CGI. Another example is Dinosaur (2000) also produced by Disney. CGI transforms the plausible dinosaur into a realistic environment, turns it into the hyper- realism.

Technology seems a very significant factor in the aesthetics outcomes. For instance, CGI provides a better rendering flexibility and more alterable infrastructure for movement. However, when compared with puppet animation, which made with wood, solid wire, or solid armatures, would have less adaptability. As we can see, CGI has more freedom than other skills and techniques.

Computer animation sometimes takes traditional animation `s place, even in the famous movie Jurassic Park, it has also uses CGI what amounted 6.5 minutes in it. This scale of CGI has employed new digital technology but hidden the animation idea in its spirit. This exploitation is to emphasis the sense of realism in the scene. Moreover, Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead Man `s Chest (2006) makes good use of the advanced motion capture technique of computer animation. The character Davy Jones was not really in the scene. It relied on his pre-record body language, gesture, facial expression, which the help of 3D, so as to form a persuasive octopus-like monster.
Other than Disney series, many other films have also applied for computer-animated. Beowulf (2007) which is now still showing in cinema, almost totally makes use of the computer and high technology. Like Pirates Of the Caribbean: Dead Man `s Chest (2006), it also depends on the motion capture. The animator can have more freedom and power to control the film circumstances. He didn’t need to worry about the light, actors didn’t need to aware where the camera is, what they need to do was to wear the body maker to perform. With the post-matching, it can have an amazing effect.

What the above mentioned are not only animation, but also other film genre. They are all that popular and well-known. One of the significant reasons must be CGI. This skill can either use in any film genre but not only animation. They shared the same successful factor that hidden behind the scene. Animation has much more space to improve and develop a more novel style.
The famous designer in Tex Avery` s Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) defines animation as “the process of drawing and photographing a character…….in successive positions to create lifelike movement”.[7] That the point why audience loving the animation furthermore. CGI can create the more authentic and realistic circumstance, but it is with fictitious characters.

With the help of the by-product and mass media, animations become further prevalent than ever. For instance, after one animation showed in cinema or television, thousand and thousand by-product would be produced. Like stickers, dolls, pencils, DVD, VCD, even printed on food. They can be found in ToyRus, stationary shop, McDonald, anywhere on the street. These characters can make the animation more success and well known. It becomes part of our life and culture.

All in all, Animation is so common to display in cinema contemporary. Like the coming soon one are Polar Express (IMAX 3D) and Bee Movie. Even some of them are only the fairytales, it means something to us. It represents the dream, imagination, something will not happen in the real world, and even some educational meaning behind. Animation is no longer a children monopoly. Adults also like it as it has combined the elements from other genre but it can still keep its own special features. Animation just like a magic turning impossible to be possible!



Website:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_length
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walt_Disney_Feature_Animation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snow_White_and_the_Seven_Dwarfs_%281937_film%29
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_theatrical_animated_features


Bibliography:
1. Paul Wells, Animation –Genre and Authorship, (Wallflower Press 2002)
2. Mark Whitehead, The potential Essential :Animation, (Pocket Essential 2004)
3. Shamus Culhane, Animation- from script to screen, (Columbus Books Limited 1989)
4. Anima Mundi, Animation Now!, (Taschen)
5. Peter Lord & Brain Sibley, Cracking animation- The aardman book of 3D animation, (Thames & Hudson)
6. Cameron and Kenderdine, Theorizing Digital Cultural Heritage, (The MIT Press)


[1] Peter Lord & Brain Sibley, Cracking animation- The aardman book of 3D animation, (Thames & Hudson), P15
[2] Paul Wells, Animation –Genre and Authorship, (Wallflower Press 2002), p.6

[3] Mark Whitehead, The potential Essential :Animation, (Pocket Essential 2004), p.131

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Disney_theatrical_animated_features

[5] Paul Wells, Animation –Genre and Authorship, (Wallflower Press 2002), p.63

[6] Feature length is a film term that refers to the length of a feature film. The definition of minimum length varies from 40 minutes to about 80 minutes.
[7] Paul Wells, Animation –Genre and Authorship, (Wallflower Press 2002), p.3