Cell based animation

Cell based animation

 

Walt Disney is one of the most well known men to ever have lived. Walt Disney created many films and animations that he is still known for today. His first production was a series named 'Alice Comedies' In this there was a young girl actor and an animated cat which went on adventures together. Walt Disney then tried to create a completely animated TV series named 'Oswald The Lucky Rabbit' in 1927. In about a year the contract for this was terminated and therefore Walt had to think of a new idea. This triggered the arrival of Mickey Mouse who later became the face of Disney. It wasn't until 1937 when Disney released his first animated feature film. 'Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs'. This was one of the first animated feature films to use sound as it was a musical. It achieved major success and earned around $8,000,000 internationally from it's first release. This spurred on Disney to continue making animated feature films and therefore has achieved what it has today being one of the biggest companies in the world.

Scooby Doo was made in 1969. The Scooby Doo franchise consists of multiple different programs and a few of it's own films. The shows generally consist of a group of kids and their dog travelling in a van and solving mysteries involving monsters and ghosts. The cartoon has survived so long as every so often they will re-release a new program that is slightly different from the one before and will appeal more to the current generation.

 

  

One of the most well known cartoons made is Wacky Races. The show only created episodes for two years from 1968-1970 however it did create 2 spin off shows. The show was based on different races in the US which included 11 different race cars manned by either 1 or 2 characters. The characters all had cars which matched their personality. The most popular characters were Dick Dastardly and Muttley. These were the trouble makers of the show and managed to get their own program, "Dick Dastardly and Muttley in their flying machines". Another popular character was Penelope Pitstop. This character also got a spin off show, "The perils of Penelope Pitstop".

An animation which turned digital was The Simpsons. The first episode aired in 1989. It was created by Matt Groening for the Fox Network. It is generally aimed at an adult audience. The first episode which was made digitally was aired in 1995. Since then their have been many more seasons and even a movie which was shown in 2007. This is a clip from The Simpsons Movie. In the film, we see the town of Springfield become trapped in a huge Dome due to the Mishaps of Homer. The family must then attempt to save their town and friends.

A recent cartoon which is no longer being created is 'Foster's home for imaginary friends'. This cartoon was first aired in 2004 and played it's last episode in 2009. It was a show about a big house which was home to creatures that children had imagined in their head. One of the characters was an 8 year old boy named 'Mac' and he had his imaginary friend 'Bloo'. Together they made friends with the rest of the imaginary friends and get up to all sorts together. The show was based on building friendships and showing children the importance of friends.

 

Model based animation

Model Based Animation

Model based is a form of stop motion animation that is made by using different 3D objects and moving them to a sequence. The models are commonly made from materials like clay and plasticine. These are the most popular materials to use for this form of animation because they can be easily moulded into different shapes. This makes them useful as you can make them look realistic which is good for telling a story. Model based animations are made the same way as most other stop motion animations, a picture is taken every time the model is moved to give the illusion of movement. Most Model based animations are aimed at a younger audience. This is because the models are often made from childish objects such as toys and children are also fond of the plasticine as it resembles play-doh. Most older audiences would not be interested in watching an animation made with toys however like most other forms of stop motion, some model based animations can have adult themes.

This video is a clip from the animation, 'Wallace and Gromit'. This is a model based animation created by a British company called 'Aardman'. Over time it has generated 4 short films and one feature length film. The series is created with plasticine and when it first started out it was made entirely by just modelling clay, moving it and taking a picture after each movement. This is an extremely long process as it takes around 24 frames (pictures) to make a second of film and only an average of 30 frames can get completed in a day meaning just over 1 second of film is made a day. Their feature length film took around 15 months in total to complete. Some of the effects in the feature length film were created on a computer because it would be impossible to create them just through stop motion.

This is another model based animation. This is a video created by a youtuber called 'Forestfire101'. He specialises in creating stop motion lego films. This clip in particular is based on a lego Harry Potter collection. His videos are not like most other lego stop motion as they are targeted at an older audience. This is because they have a lot of adult themes involved in it's comedy. These videos will be created the same way as the other stop motion videos however they will use a computers technology to make the figures mouths move and look more realistic. These videos are very popular on youtube and get almost a million views on each video.

This is a video of my own model based animation. It shows 3 figures made from different coloured clay. The figures each have google eyes attached to them to help develop their characters as this shows that they are creatures. I used a Hue webcam to take a picture of the clay every time I moved it. The pictures would come up on the program istopMotion 3 where I could edit them.