Creature comforts was a British animated program created by Nick Park and Aardman Animations in 1989 originally to show "how animals felt about living in a zoo". They later produced advertisements for the Electricity Board in the UK, and in 2003 a series in the same animation style was released in the UK and US.
A variety of clips from the show can be seen in this video here:
There are over 150 different characters, each with a lot of varied expressions and opinions. They create differences in facial expression so they can make a realistic profile of them talking.
Willis O'Brien was a famous stop-motion animation and special effects pioneer. He's most known for his creation of King Kong using stop-motion animation. The film had an incredible effect on its audience as they hadn't seen anything else like it before. His talent came from experimenting with models, connecting them with rubber and bringing them to life. This all came from his interest in Sculpturing. This lead to him creating several films, inspring other film makers and animators like himself.
Jan Svankmajer
Jan Svankmajer is a surrealist film producer, who was born in Czech Republic in 1934. He is most famous for his surrealist films associated with food, which are sometimes disturbing and not to everyone's taste. However, his work is still massively famous and has inspired other animators like Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Quay. Svankmajer has many awards for his originality. This is one of his pieces of work "Breakfast"
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen is one of the most successful stop-motion animators in history, hugely inspired by Willis O'Brien from a young age. He created stop motion films the moment he had his own camera, taking his interest further, studying it at university. Whilst he was there, he came up with the idea of creating a film; his first of which was a failure and went unrecognised However, his second film was recognised by George Pal and hired him to create puppetoons.
Joseph Plateau was a Belgian Physicist who attended the University of Liege. He did research on the human eye and how it works, mainly focusing on the retina as that is the part of the eye which lets us see in colour. In 1832, he and his sons created and introduced the Phenakistoscope which is a spindle viewer. This consisted of two disks that spins in opposite directions from each other. The Phenakistoscope uses the persistence of vision to create the illusion of movement. Here is one in action:
William Horner
William Horner was a famous pioneer who invented the Zoetrope in 1834, originally naming it a Daedalum (wheel of the devil) this invention was based on another, called phenakistoscope, created by Joseph Plateau. Again, the Zoetrop uses the persistence of vision principle to create the illusion of movement. This is a Zoetrop:
Charles-Emile Reynaud
Charles-Emile Raynaud was a French science teacher who projected the first animated cartoon film. He is mostly known for creating his device he called the Praxinoscope. He presented his first animated film at the Musee Grevin in Paris to the public.
Eadweard Muybridge
Eadweard Muybridge was an English photographer who was very important for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and in motion-picture projection. He went to the US when he was young, which was when his photographs of Yosemite Valley made him very famous. In 1893, Muybridge lectures on the Science of Animal Locomotion and used his zoopraxiscope to show his moving pictures making this the very first commercial movie theatre.
Willis O'Brien
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen was an American visual effects creator, producer and writer, whom created "Dynamation" which is a form of stop-motion animation. He produces and Academy Award winning film called "Mighty Joe Young"
Jan Svankmajer
Jan Svankmajer is a Czech filmmaker is a self-labeled surrealist known for his abstract animations and features, known to influence other artists such as Terry Gilliam and the Brothers Quay. His work has spans several media.
Persistence of vision is the illusion of movement through frames. In animation, a picture would have to move 25 frames per second to create this illusion - our retina cannot detect the black frames between each image, hence the illusion of movement.
Some animations, like pixelation, play with this fact to achieve a "jerky" sense or movement by slowing down the frames so the human eye can detect the illusion. In cartoon animation, images are "in twos" meaning each picture is shown twice. There are usually 24 frames per second, meaning only 12 images are used. By doing this, it tricks the human eye, and saves time in doing so.
The first and most important principle to animation is definitely this one. With the concept of "squashing and stretching" something in a frame, it gives the human eye the illusion the object is constantly moving. The key is to keep the volume of the object the same through-out each frame, to keep the realism. However, this can be warped or manipulated to create a sense comedic value, or even to create a greater sense of realism.
Above is an example of this technique being used.
2Anticipation
Anticipation is used to prepare an audience before an action to make it more realistic. For example, when jumping, the body bends its knees and launches itself upwards. This lets the audience know what action the person will be doing from their anticipation.
3Staging
Staging is the presentation of an idea so that it is clear what is happening in the frame. This idea can be an action, a personality, a facial or body expression, or a mood. The key is so the idea is made clear to the viewer. For this to be achieved, the main object in the frame must contrast from the background so it stands out most. A good example of this is motion, the way it can move unlike everything else in the particular shot.
4Straight ahead action and pose to pose
Straight ahead action is where every single frame of an animation is drawn to create a realistic and smoothly flowing animation. However, it is often hard to maintain proportions, so it is a long, complicated process which takes time. Whereas pose to pose is a technique where only a few key frames are drawn and the rest are filled in later. Straight ahead action is best for creating realism, and pose to pose is best for creating dramatic or emotional scenes.
5Follow through and overlapping action
When applied to animation, follow through and overlapping action techniques can help to render movement more realistically, making it more smooth and help to give the impression that characters follow the laws of physics. "Follow through" means that different parts of a body will keep moving even after the character themselves has stopped. "Overlapping action" is the process for parts of the body to move at different rates (an arm will move on different timing of the head and so on). These both help to create realism in the frames.
6Slow in and slow out
When you move, your body builds up momentum and it takes time for that momentum to build up and to stop. When your body is trying to stop moving it often will cushion that movements halt. When you start running the first step will not have the same speed as when you’re at full throttle. It will also take time for you to slow down. This also applies to subtitle movements, a slight twist of the neck will slowly move at the beginning of the movement and at the end of the movement. A characters movement can be slowed by adding more drawings into the scene.
7Arcs
Arcs are what makes movement more fluid in animation, so for this you must make sure track them, whether you're working on computer or paper. Everything in nature moves on an arc, with the few exceptions like insects.
8Secondary action
In animation, a secondary action is something that follows up a previous action as a result of the action being made. This helps add emotion or effect to a scene. For example, if a character is upset, they could turn their back to the camera.. whilst they are turning, they put their hand up to their face, to hide how they are feeling. This would add the sympathetic feeling toward the character in question, as you feel sorry for them.
9Timing
Each frame has movement, and the timing of it is essential. Treat your scene like music; it needs rhythm. If a large man is in frame, his movements would need to be slow and sluggish, as he has more weight to move, contrastingly, if a skinny man is in frame, he would move fast and fluently as he has less weight to move.
Baring this in mind, if you time images correctly, you will successfully manage to portray the illusion of movement.
10Exaggeration
Exaggeration is used in animation when trying to decide whether to be realistic or not by playing with the levels of exaggeration used an animator can achieve this. Exaggeration can be used on the character or elements in the storyline itself... that doesn't just mean distorting the objects or actions, but the animator must choose which properties to exaggerate very carefully. If only one thing is exaggerated then it may stand out too much. If everything is exaggerated then the entire scene may appear too unrealistic, the balance must be right.
11Solid drawing
Solid drawing is taking into account the concepts of three-dimensional vision into a drawing, so that your character looks alive. For example, in this image, we can see Bugs Bunny readying his fists for a fight. This pose looks real,
making us believe that this character could actually exist. When you take into account certain angles of perspective, you are able to illustrate in such a way that your character looks real.
12Appeal
The properties of a character have to be appealing, whether it's a good sense of humour, or a simple yet cute face, the audience need to engage with a character or they will not want to watch. For example, if a characters arms and legs move in the same way, the movement is restricted and they will not be appealing to watch. You want to make the character interesting but realistic if you want them to appeal to your audience.
