Rubber Hose Animation

Swing you Sinners by Max Fleischer 1930


Rubber Hose animation was dominant in early (american) animation. Although the rubber hose style takes away the articulation of the joints, the limbs still retain an essence of naturalistic movement. The simplified forms still follow the arcs that natural movement follow.

Belleville Rendezvous by Sylvain Chomet 2003

This is a modern interpretation of Rubber hose animation by Sylvain Chomet. I think it was a clever technique to reference an old style of animation in order to represent the sequence being in the past as it contrasts to the main style used within the film.

slow in and slow out

slow in and slow out is important for realism in animation. All moving objects start slowly and finish slowly so its important to take this into context when animating making sure there are more frames at the start and end than in the middle, it also helps in recognising the object because if the object is moving fast from begining to end you have less time to figure out what it is.


Tootles   :-)

Appeal

Appeal is a hard principle to define, because appeal is based on the characters personal appeal so arguably its entirely subjective on the viewer, as its personal opinion what is visually pleasing and not. Although this explains the wide variety of different styles of animation and character types we are provided with, if we all liked  the same things, say timid animal characters shot in stop motion, there would be little demand for abstract animation, hand drawn, action scenes etc, making all animation rather one directional.

However with the diverse opinion in what is 'appealing' the industry is encouraged to develop new ideas and specialise in styles to create a familiarity with their audience.

For example, traditional Disney went for an aesthetically pleasing look with their Princesses and creatures such as Bambi and Thumper.

Aimed primarily at children this 1940s classic is a product of its time, from the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves several years beforehand, the animation forefront had only began to pick up.

What amazed the audiences at the time was the reality of creating this fluid animated feature and these passive cute characters where more sociallbly suitable to the more censored society of the 1940s.

Taking a look at  modern day Disney Pixar characters such as Carl an Russell

With the development in animation, audiences are less intrigued by simply the process of animation, this encouraged Disney to rethink their appeal. For their characters to rely on their aesthetic appeal was simply not enough anymore, hence why films such as The Aristocats and Oliver and Co where not as successful as expected. Disney needed to create personal appeal through familiarity, Pixar achieved this through cultural allusions, things in our culture that we can relate to. My example is Carl and Russell from Up!
Russell is a boy scout and pixar really plays on this theme from his outfit to his actions ( helping the elderly, demanding to build a fire) we empathise with this character and appeal greatly to his realisticness as we picture this character in our own lives. Carl (the protagonist) is grumpy and imperfect with prominent attitude throughout, this is in stark contrast to the early Princess characters of the 30s-50s who remained passive and polite throughout their films.

Moving away from Disney (because frankly I think we spend too much time there!)

Warner Brothers apply a entirely different approach to appeal, avoiding realistic characters, they manipulate animations ability to distort reality to their advantage.They envoke the 'cartoon' feel playing on exaggeration and repitition to create humour.

"What's up Doc?"

With short animations like Looney Tunes, the audience build a relationship with these characters over time, repittion of says like "What's up Doc?" makes the animation, more rememorable and easy to mimic. With the taunting of the Hunter adds a flare of cheek to their characters giving Warner Brothers a more rebellious edge on their Disney competitors.

I hope this makes relevant sense!

Nibbs X

a little more ...

Another useful reference to the pros and cons of straight ahead and pose to pose:

Animating: Pose to Pose + Straight Ahead

Both have their advantages and problems. The best approach, then, can be to mix them:

Hibrid method

1. start with Pose to Pose;
2. in one of next passes, maybe only for certain key parts that don't look good with software interpolation, return and fill in between the already keyframed poses, animating straight ahead, substituting the interpolated data by new keyframes.

Good points:

• unites the best of both worlds;
• avoids the main problems with each method when used alone;
• can give a wealthy mix between tight control and creative freedom.
• Pose to Pose is a good overall method, but Straight Ahead is better for faster actions (so an animator may end up doing frame by frame on such parts);
• Straight Ahead is not a good idea for mechanical motion and anything that can be interpolated well with animation curves, for which Pose to Pose works very well.

Bad points:

Actually, nothing not present already in the two methods:

• requires planning for the Pose to Pose part;
• it's probably slower than using Pose to Pose alone;
• gives a little more chance for pitfalls in the Straight Ahead parts, though probably in much smaller and easier to fix steps than when using Straight Ahead alone.

taken from : straight ahead and pose to pose

Stretch and Squash

This drawing technique gives the illusion of mass and volume to a drawing.
By stretching a character the animator can create the illusion of weight being moved to different parts of the body.

Notice how the body shape squashes down as the weight is on the floor.

The form is then stretched (and so is the weight more evenly across the body) as the figure leaps in to the air,

exaggerating the action through movement of weight.

Squash is used again to emphasise the peak of his jump symbolising the slowing of direction and showing the movement of weight back to the centre of his body.

As the boy's movement changes direction, a further use of stretch is applied to the drawing to emphasise his fall into the water.

This diagram is an example of how stretch and squash are almost used in balance with each other, to mimic the fluidity of natural movement.

When an object moves, it's movement indicates the rigidity of the object.

object is a hard solid material= less use of stretch and squash applied when animating

object is a malluable/squidgey material= more use of stretch and squash when animating

'The most important rule to squash and stretch is that no matter how squashed or stretched an object gets, it's volume remains constant.'

Nibbs X.

Secondary Action

This is a motion or movement that is very subtle, to add realism to an object or character. When a character turns for example their hair will swing, if some one gets up their head might move. The motion won’t be exaggerated, the motion should be visible, but to the audience should be taken as second nature. Realism was not to be noticed for its individual motion.

Another example are clothes on characters, when they walk an item like a long coat will sway gently. 

Secondary motion is a key to executing realistic motion, when it is done wrong it is clear to the audience that something is wrong. So it must be done with the understanding of what the animator is animating and how it might possible move in real life.

EXTRACTS - from 'The Illusion of Life'


Secondary Nature, Page 63, 64


Often, the one idea being put in a scene can be fortified by subsidiary action within the body. A sad figure wipes a tear and turns away. Some one shakes his head as he gets to his feet.


This example of secondary action comes in many forms. From the eye on Boo's costume to the hair on Sulley when he turns or moves.  There are many examples in just a short clip. This is taken from Disney and Pixar's feature animated film 'Monsters, INC' 

Older examples of secondary Action go back to early Disney in such animations as Fantasia. This clip Mickey The Sorcerer's Apprentice has many examples especially in he wizards robes as he mixes the potions,

  


- Curly 

Exaggeration.

The distortion of motion, actions or objects, But when animating not to over exaggerate, taking the animation out of proportion. It might stand out too much and if everything is blown out of proportion it will come across as unrealistic.

This quick example was taken from ‘Ren and Stimpy’ and shows and exaggerated reaction of shock and fear in a character, a very cartoon reaction with humour to make sense of this over exaggeration of such a character.

Animation can bend and push the motions and shape of the object or character 


EXTRACTS - from 'The Illusion of Life'


Exaggeration, Page 65, 66


If a character was to be sad, make him sadder. bright, make him brighter; worried, more worried; wild, make him wilder. Some of the artists thought that "exaggeration" meant a distorted drawing, or an action is violent and disturbing ... When Walt asked for realism, he wanted to caricature of realism. One artist analysed it correctly when he said "I don't think he meant 'realism' I think he meant something that was more convincing, that made a bigger contact with people, and he just said 'realism' because 'real' things do ... Every so often [in the animation] the character would do something unconvincing, or to show how clever the  animator was, and it wasn't really, it was phoney"  


This early Tom and Jerry Cartoon is a good example of exaggeration especially when Tom becomes over emotional during the end, and when Tom burns his tail on the fire.

This other example is a shortened episode of Cow and Chicken, but there are still many examples of exaggeration in the clip.

- Curly

Staging.

Staging is very important for when making animations, presenting an idea to an audience making it perfectly clear what is happening on the screen. Motion and the position of the screen are essential, if there is no thought of staging the picture can look uncomfortable, as well as being unable to understand.

  

A scene with a lot of movement will often guide the audiences’ eye to an object that isn’t moving. This can be the same for one object to be moving with everything else being stationary, the motion will attract the eye.

This means that motion is very important on screen and needs to be placed appropriately for showing what needs to be shown.

EXTRACTS - from 'The Illusion of Life'


Staging, Page 53


"Staging" is the most general of the principles because it covers so many areas and goes back so far in the theatre. It's meanings how ever are very precise: it it the presentation of any idea so that it it completely and unmistakably clear.

This clip of the Flintstones is an example of staging, but any animation clip has had staging in mine. The posture of the characters as well as the angle on which the audience see's the scene going on.

-Curly

Appeal

"Not only do sympathetic characters need appeal in their design, but villians and comics should have just as much. Appeal is the pleasing and fascinating quality that makes a person enjoy looking at any drawing"

John K Stuff blog is a really useful blog site for gripping the basics of these principles. I especially liked this quote as it explains the principle of 'appeal' so simply. Appeal is the quality which makes you want to look at something.

An obvious example would be to look at the Disney Princesses, as the protagonists of the film, eg. Ariel, Aurora and Belle, the audience will spend most of the time looking at them and therfore it is vital that these characters have 'appeal' to entice the audience to continue watching. We could argue this is the explanation for this sterotypical image of this slim, generously assetted polite women, of whom young girls aspire to be, and men aspire to be with.

From a brief look at the Disney Princesses, their physical appeal is similar through out
- large eyes
- heart shaped faces- symmetrical faces are thought to be the most appealing
- usually long billowing hair (free loose hair has sexual connotations linking back to the 1800s)
- petite waist - further emphasising their femininaty
- clothes tailored to exentuate breasts

Again the physical appearance is the initial appeal of these characters, aswell a personality traits (will discuss later).
What is interesting to explore next is Disney's latest film 'Tangled', a modern twist on the fairy tale 'Rapunzel' in an attempt to appeal to the male population, the storyline follows a rebellious 'swash-buckling' male hero. There are some interesting theories as to their change in direction, those of which I will discuss in my next post!

Good  night!
Nibs X

Cycles

This principle is basic and very useful. Cycles are used to repeat a sequence of animation over and over again, they are very useful for walks where the main action is being repeated. Alternatively they are useful for things that are less important within the frame, for example a camp fire crackling away in the background. It isn't important enough in the story for viewers to be distracted by the movement and therefore a cycle is appropriate. On the other hand, if the fire was a a raging fire that was a threat to the character and therefore key to the story line, it would have to be animated as a full sequence such as in Bambi.

cycle of fire

bambi fire sequence

(the fire sequence begins at 2mins40)

follow through and over lapping action

Hi guys I'm Helena but to keep the theme you can call me Tootles.

Ive been trying to come up with a definition of follow through and over lapping and from what I've read on blackboard and looked at on YouTube (will show examples) iv discovered follow through is about the consequences of actions making the movement more believable. for example when a character kicks a ball he builds him self up in anticipation and then lets the movement go until it makes contact with the ball which subsequently forces the ball to move, during this time the characters body should also continue to move overlapping with the movement of the ball showing the consequences of the force the character used.
if the follow through was taken away then the characters movement would become stiff and unbelievable. The over lapping keeps the flow of the animation going, if the movement had to happen bit at a time the animation wouldn't be very hard to follow.        


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqzu9J6akDE

this link is just an example of a simple CG character kicking a ball as a visual example personally im not sure if this is the best example of the principal because it isnt exagerated enough.

Anticipation

Greetings!
My first post on the animation principle 'Anticipation', is centred heavily round information from Richard Williams' book 'The Animator's Survival Kit', haven't heard of it? Buy it, it's excelllant! And a great tool to help start up your hand drawing animation techniques.
Quoting Bill Tytla, Williams claims
" 3 things in animation-
1. Anticipation
2. Action
3. Reaction
And these will imply the rest. Learn to do these things well and you can animate well."

Anticipation is the preparation for an action. Especially in every big action
For example:
Chip and Dale's 'Working for nuts'

Here, where the chipmunks are pulling back the tree branch to have it spring forward, anticipation is used here, as this movement is in preparation of the main action; the branch whipping forward.

Arcs by Slighty

psssssssssst my real name is Lizzie, but lets just stay with Slighty,  yeahhh?


The three Principles of Animation that I am going to research are:

- Arcs
- Straight ahead or pose to pose
- Cycles

ARCS

spider diagram of my initial research

An example out of 'The animators survival kit' by Richard Williams

The Animator's Survival Kit (Animated)

The illusion of life - Disney Animation

by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston

From my research so far, I can conclude that arcs are important in order to retain a level of reality when dealing with natural motion. If animators didn't use arcs as a guide in their work, characters would become distorted and incorrect. This wouldn't apply to mechanical or robotic characters. 

STRAIGHT AHEAD OR POSE TO POSE

Why the to methods work well together: