Computer Animation 1-History SS 13 - uni-weimar.de...•Technique used: –Draw each image on rice...

Computer Animation1-History

SS 13

Prof. Dr. Charles A. Wüthrich,Fakultät Medien, MedieninformatikBauhaus-Universität Weimarcaw AT medien.uni-weimar.de

Charles A. Wüthrich

Early animation devices

• First experiments withpersistence of vision doneearly 1800

• Animation existed before thecamera

• Perhaps simplest device:thaumatrope– Flipping circle with two

drawings



• Flipbook– Very common, and

survived till today• Motion through page flipping



• Zoetrope: wheel of light• Cylinder

– Inside: drawings– Slits cut between frames

on cylinder– Allow viewer to see only

one frame– Illusion of movement



• Phenakistoscope: greek for„spindle viewer“

• Two disks rotating in sync (orone at the mirror)– Back side: drawings– Slits cut between frames

on cylinder– User can see only one

small part of frame at atime

– Illusion of movement



• Praxinoscope: greek for „whoknows?“

• Here rotating mirrors are usedfor allowing only the view onone frame at the back of theexternal cylinder


„Conventional“ animation

• Filming of two-dimensional handdrawings• Georges Méliès (1896) used camera tricks (multiple cam

exposures, stop motion) to make objects appear, disappear andchange shape.

• Emile Cohl produced several vignettes• J. Stuart Blackton animated smoke on a movie (1900) and

created first animated cartoon in 1906.



• Windsor Mc Cay, a newspaper cartoonist, produced first animatedcartoons– Little Nemo (1911)– Gertie the dinosaur (1914).

• Technique used:– Draw each image on rice paper– Film them individually

• In many of his works, he interacted live with his characters



• John Bray started 1910 to work at patenting the animationprocesses.

• Was joined in 1914 by Earl Hurd, who patented the use oftranslucent cels to compositing multilayered images

• Bray patented also– The use of grayscale– He then enhanced overlaying to include a peg system for registration

of the layers– Finally he patented drawing on long sheets to allow panning on the

background



• Out of Bray‘s studio camefollowing authors:– Max Fleischer

(Betty Boop)– Paul Terry (Terrytoons)– George Stallings (Tom and

Jerry)– Walter Lanz (Woody

Woodpecker)



• In 1915 Fleischer patented rotoscoping: draw imageson cells by tracing previously recorded live actions

• Bray did experiment also with colour (1920) in theshort „The debut of Thomas Cat“


„Conventional“ animation: arts?

• Technology developed fast• However, the artistic side

struggled for long• First complete character with

personality:– Felix the Cat (Otto

Messmer) very successfulin mid 1920s

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Walt Disney

• Walt Disney was the mostsuccessful conventionalanimator

• First to use storyboards foranimations

• In 1928, he was the first toadd sound to animations in„Steamboat Willie“

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Walt Disney

• Major technical innovationof Walt Disney:– Multiplane camera– Camera mounted on top– Each plane holds an

animation cell– Planes move along 3 axes

• Allows parallax motion(multiplane backgrounds) C

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Walt Disney: arts

• Disney preferred to givecharacters a long lastingpersonalities

• Focus on character, buildstories around it

• Major characters: MickeyMouse, Pluto, Goofy, DonaldDuck

• Studied intensively real lifemotion

• Developed first „mood pieces“– Skeleton Dance in 1929– Fantasia in 1940

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Animation studios

• The success of Walt Disney pushed others to initiateanimation studios

• Well known animation studios: Fleischer, Iwerks, VanBeuren, Universal Pictures, Paramount, MGM, WarnerBrothers.


Alternative techniques

• Stop motion• techniques have been• also very popular:

– Clay animation– Puppet animation

• Here figures are• moved one frame• at a time, and snapshots are taken• Father of these techniques:

Willis O‘Brian (King Kong)• Ray Harryshausen (Mighty Joe Young)• In Europe: Fusako Yusaki (Fernet Branca)

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Computer animation: the principles

• Animation has its roots in 2Danimation, and rules of coursehave been found out for 2Danimation (the grammar ofanimation)

• These principles are nowadaysquite well known. John Lassater(Pixar) outlined these principlesin a nice article at Siggraph 87

1. Squash and stretch2. Timing3. Anticipation4. Staging5. Followthrough and overlapping

action6. Straight ahead action and pose-to-

pose action7. Slow in and slow out8. Arcs9. Exaggeration10. Secondary action11. Appeal


Principles: squash and stretch

• Example – Used also to avoidstrobing in fast movement

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Percieved as separate objects


Principles: timing

• Timing: the speed of anaction• Not too long (boring)• Not too short (one sees

nothing)• Weight of object is

defined by timing• the heavier, the slower it

accelerates• The lighter, the faster

they accelerate• Big and heavy objects

move slooooowwww

• Emotions can be alsoexpressed throughdifferent timings:• Tilting a head with

one inbetween mayindicate it has beenhit by a bat

• But with seveninbetweens it tries toget a better look atsomething


Principles: Anticipation

• Actions are subdivided in 3parts:– Preparation (anticipation)– the action itself (staging)– its termination.

• Anticipation prepares the actionand notifies the viewersomething is going to happen

• In nature, it is the same: youcan't kick unless you pull the legbackwards

• Anticipation aims at making theviewer look at the right part ofthe image

• If the viewer knows what toexpect, then action itself can befaster

• Exaggerated anticipation can beused to emphasize heavyweights (bending back to lift one)



• Actions are subdivided in 3parts:– Preparation (anticipation)– the action itself– its termination.

• Anticipation prepares the actionand notifies the viewersomething is going to happen

• In nature, it is the same: youcan't kick unless you pull the legbackwards

• Let us make an example



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Principles: Staging

• Staging is the presentation of anidea so it is unmistakably clear.

• This can be an action, apersonality, an expression, oreven a mood

• Staging, anticipation and timingare all integral part to directingthe eye.

• Very important is to allow usersto see only one thing at a time

• Animators in fact tell a storysaying „look at this, then this“

• Staging is mostly done insilhoutte: actions are doneoutside of the body so as tomake them pop out moreclearly (e.g. Scratching isdone on side)


Principles: Follow-through and overlapping action

• Follow through is thetermination of an action

• Actions usually last longer thantheir end. Ex: hand throwingball goes on after

• Actions of parts of an object arenot simultaneous. Some partsstart before (the lead).

• For example, hips move beforelegs for walking

• Similarly, appendices would„follow“ the action, and do thisaccording to their weight

• Slight variations are added toloose parts to make action lookmore interesting (overlapping)

• Actions themselves overlap, justas we curve not by turningpromptly but on smooth curves


• There are mainly twoapproaches to hand drawnanimation– The animator can produce one

pic at a time in sequence(straight ahead)

– The animator can produce keyposes and then draw theinbetweens (pose to pose)

– Inbetweens are done knowingthe timing necessary for action

– For complex shapes they aredifficult to do

• Automatical inbetweeningbecomes therefore difficult todo

• Moreover, parts of figuresmay require differentkeyframe timings

Principles: Follow-through and overlapping action


Principles: Slow in, slow out

• This deals with the spacing of theinbetween drawings between theextreme poses

• Mathematically it meanscontrolling acceleration

• The animator indicates theinbetweens with a timing chartdrawn to the side to specifywhere the inbetween drawings areplaced in the timescale

• Here is an example of atimegraph of a ball bounce:


Principles: Arcs

• The visual path of action isdescribed by an arc

• All movements follow an arc• Sometimes, they are on a straight

line, but mostly they are on an arc• Even if characters move on a

straight line, they usually rotateon themselves

• Arcs are usually done on 3rd ordersplines, to be able to controlvelocity and acceleration


Principles: Exaggeration and secondary action

• Exaggeration in animation doesnot mean distorting, justaccentuating

• Make sad characters sadder, wildcharacters frantic

• Balance exaggeration in the sceneso all looks „equallyexaggerated“

• Do not overdo exaggeration, andkeep it „natural“

• Secondary actions are actionsresulting directly from another one

• Example: a power chord of adevice has its own secondarymovement if you move the deviceitself


Principles: Appeal

• Appeal is anything the viewerlikes to see, or would look at:

– Weak drawing– Too complicated drawing– Akward moves

• Simple rules to avoid flatness ofdesign:

– Do not make characterssymmertic: they would look dull

– Think of detail when youdevelop a character


Principles: Personality

• Personality is given by thesuccessful application of theabove principles

• A story is good when viewerslook at the character and at thestory

• Animators have full control ofevery move, but they are good atanimating when a characterbecomes a character

• Questions animators have alwayspresent to express a characterspersonality are:

– What mood is the character in?– How would he move to perform

this action?• No two characters would do an

action the same way• AND the personality of the

character should be familiar to theaudience


Computer Animation: examples

• First movie to make extensive use of animation?


Computer Animation: examples

• First movie to make extensive use of animation?• Tron, Disney, 1982


Computer Animation: examples• Finding Nemo: Copyright Pixar (2003) Geri‘s Game: Copyright Pixar (1999)

For the Birds: Copyright Pixar (2001)


Traditional animation: production

• Production indicates the wholefilm

• Productions are split insequences: each sequence isusually identified by anassociated staging area.There are 1 to 12 sequences in aproduction

• A sequence is broken in one ormore shots. Each shot is acontinuous camera recording

• A shot is broken down intoindividual frames. A frame is asingle image

ProductionSequence 1 Sequence 2 Sequence 3

Shot 1 Shot 2 Shot 1 Shot 2 Shot 3 Shot 4 Shot 1 Shot 2Frames 1 2 n...


Traditional animation: production steps

• First a preliminary story isdecided

• This includes a script• A storyboard is developed: it lays

out action scenes by sketchingrepresentative frames and writingtext to it

– A storyboard is used fordiscussing action

• For each character, model sheets aredone. They are drawings of thecharacter in different poses forkeeping the characters consistencyacross animation

• The exposure sheet records all info ofeach frame (camera moves, soundcues, composing elements)

• The route sheet records stats andresponsibility for each scene

• A story reel may be produced: arecording of the keyframes, each foras long as the scene it represents. Ithelps reviewing the timing of movie


Traditional animation: production steps

• Once storyboard is decided,work on the detailed storyis done (detail in action)

• Keyframes (or extremes) areidentified and drawn bymaster animators

• Assistant animators drawthe inbetweens between thekeys (inbetweening)

• Test shots are done on shortsequences to check renderingand movement

• Sometimes movement can bechecked on pencil drawings

• Once sequence is fixed– Inking is done (transferring

contours to the cels)– Opaquing is done (filling with

colour)


Traditional animation: sound

• Sound is extremely important in animation• Contrary to regular movies, precise timing is possible• Depending on importance of sound, either

– Animation is done first :here a scratch track (or rough sound track) can be built whilestoryboard is developed

– Sound track is done firste.g. for lipsyncing


And in Computer Animation?

• Many of the tasks and tools before are used here too:storyboarding, model sheets, keyframing....

• However, computer animation allows more flexibility• Moreover, animators can turn on/off effects to concentrate on

partial aspects• They can even simplify rendering to check for particular aspects• Moreover, even at rendering time certain aspects can be turned

on/off to speed up the processe.g. Which objects cast shadows to where


Producing a Computer Animation

• Story Dept: Converts screenplay tostoryboard and to story reel

• Art Dept: Creates design and colorstudies, including detailed modeldescription and lighting scenarios

• Modeling Dept: Creates the charactersand the world they live. Oftenparametrizes figures to control movementof figures

• Layout Dept: Implements staging andblocking. Is responsible for taking the filmfrom 2D to 3D

• Shading dept: Adds textures, displace-ment shaders and lighting models

• Animation dept: Responsible forcharacter „life“. Produce gestures andsubtle animation detail

• Lighting dept: Assigns teams to eachsequence so that lighting is done as thearts department wishes

• Camera dept: renders the frames

Story dept

Art dept

Modeling dept.

Animation dept

Layout dept.Shading dept

Lighting dept.

Camera dept.


Editing

• Once images are produced,they have to be assembledinto the final movie

• Originally, sequences gotmixed one after the otherlinearly in time (the outputwas linear)

• Later, timestamps wereadded so that some nonlinear editing was possible

• Nowadays, almost every PC iscapable of non-linear editing

• Here, tracks can be mixed,inserted, overlayed, sound canbe added to them at will


History: early days (60s-70s)

• It all started from IvanSutherland‘s interactive machine(MIT 63)

• First animated computersequence: Ed Jazzac (Bell Labs)

• Early 70s: Univ. of Utah establishedprogram of CG (Catmull)

• Early Labs (late 70s):– U. Pennsylvania (N. Badler)– NYIT (Catmull)– Ohio State (De Fanti, Csuri)– U. Montreal (D. And N. Thalmann)

• Animation mostly in Labs


History: towards maturity (80s)

• Three major events:– Development of graphics capable

hardware (SGI) and rendering– Development of complex

algorithms for modeling– Appearance of first animation

studios and first complex films• First animated computer film:

Tron (Disney 1982)

• Big animation studios at thattime:– Digital Pictures– Image West– Cranston-Csuri– Pacific Data Film– Lucasfilm (who became Pixar)

• First animation Oscars won:Tin Toy (1988)


History: maturity(?) (90s-today)

• Major productions of– Complex special effects– Whole productions– Digital characters in movies

• Two real big players:– Pixar (Star Trek II, Toy Story,

Monsters......)– ILM (Terminator II, The Abyss,

Casper, Jurassic Park, ....)• Animation big in commercials

– Here smaller studios work

• Software available nowadaysoff the shelf

• Hardware too (despite Pixar‘sRenderfarms)

• Modeling possible at home


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Computer Animation 1-History SS 13 - uni-weimar.de...•Technique used: –Draw each image on rice...

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