Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating moving images. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both still images and moving images , while computer animation only refers to moving images. Modern computer animation usually uses 3D computer graphics .
104-486: Pantry Panic is the third animated cartoon short in the Woody Woodpecker series. Released theatrically on November 24, 1941, the film was produced by Walter Lantz Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures . This is one of the very few cartoons where Woody doesn't say "Guess Who?" in the opening titles, although his trademark laugh in the cartoon itself is still present. The local groundhog warns
208-411: A stop motion technique to two- and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts , puppets , or clay figures . A cartoon in the animation sense is an animated film, usually short, featuring an exaggerated visual style. The style takes inspiration from comic strips , often featuring anthropomorphic animals , superheroes , or the adventures of human protagonists. Especially with animals that form
312-464: A 3D model is intended to be a solid color, it must be painted with " textures " for realism. A bone/joint animation system is set up to deform the CGI model (e.g., to make a humanoid model walk). In a process known as rigging , the virtual marionette is given various controllers and handles for controlling movement. Animation data can be created using motion capture , or keyframing by a human animator, or
416-400: A character's arms can have a skeleton applied, and the joints can have transformation and rotation keyframes set. The movement of the arm joints will then cause the arm shape to deform. 3D animation software interpolates between keyframes by generating a spline between keys plotted on a graph which represents the animation. Additionally, these splines can follow bezier curves to control how
520-599: A combination of the two. 3D models rigged for animation may contain thousands of control points — for example, "Woody" from Toy Story uses 700 specialized animation controllers. Rhythm and Hues Studios labored for two years to create Aslan in the movie The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe , which had about 1,851 controllers (742 in the face alone). In the 2004 film The Day After Tomorrow , designers had to design forces of extreme weather with
624-444: A community of birds that a winter storm is imminent; the birds all quickly head south before it arrives, except Woody, who wants to continue swimming. Winter suddenly arrives, freezing the swimming hole solid while Woody is mid-dive ("must be hard water "); Woody is initially unfazed, as he has stockpiled much food to wait the winter out—until a funnel cloud breaks down Woody's door and sucks away all of his food. Two weeks later, Woody
728-460: A computer - such fluid simulation . 'CG' Animators can break physical laws by using mathematical algorithms to cheat mass , force and gravity , and more. Fundamentally, computer-generated animation is a powerful tool which can improve the quality of animation by using the power of computing to unleash the animator's imagination. This is because Computer Generated Animation allows for things like onion skinning which allows 2D animators to see
832-492: A computer and an animation software. Some impressive animation can be achieved even with basic programs; however, the rendering can require much time on an ordinary home computer. Professional animators of movies, television and video games could make photorealistic animation with high detail. This level of quality for movie animation would take hundreds of years to create on a home computer. Instead, many powerful workstation computers are used; Silicon Graphics said in 1989 that
936-431: A computer animation called " Kitty " was created with BESM -4 by Nikolai Konstantinov, depicting a cat moving around. In 1971, a computer animation called "Metadata" was created, showing various shapes. An early step in the history of computer animation was the sequel to the 1973 film Westworld , a science-fiction film about a society in which robots live and work among humans. The sequel, Futureworld (1976), used
1040-490: A consistent way to whatever style is employed on a particular film. Since the early 1980s, teams of about 500 to 600 people, of whom 50 to 70 are animators, typically have created feature-length animated films. It is relatively easy for two or three artists to match their styles; synchronizing those of dozens of artists is more difficult. This problem is usually solved by having a separate group of visual development artists develop an overall look and palette for each film before
1144-422: A dedicated Disneyana Fan Club (since 1984). Disneyland opened in 1955 and features many attractions that were based on Disney's cartoon characters. Its enormous success spawned several other Disney theme parks and resorts . Disney's earnings from the theme parks have relatively often been higher than those from their movies. As with any other form of media, animation has instituted awards for excellence in
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#17327904764851248-426: A natural predator/prey relationship (e.g. cats and mice, coyotes and birds), the action often centers on violent pratfalls such as falls, collisions, and explosions that would be lethal in real life. A cartoon can also be a still humorous drawing, often with the same elements as animated cartoons but with still versions. The illusion of animation—as in motion pictures in general—has traditionally been attributed to
1352-451: A new life on the small screen and by the end of the 1950s, the production of new animated cartoons started to shift from theatrical releases to TV series. Hanna-Barbera Productions was especially prolific and had huge hit series, such as The Flintstones (1960–1966) (the first prime time animated series), Scooby-Doo (since 1969) and Belgian co-production The Smurfs (1981–1989). The constraints of American television programming and
1456-477: A new similar image but advanced slightly in time (usually at a rate of 24, 25, or 30 frames/second). This technique is identical to how the illusion of movement is achieved with television and motion pictures . To trick the visual system into seeing a smoothly moving object, the pictures should be drawn at around 12 frames per second or faster (a frame is one complete image). With rates above 75 to 120 frames per second, no improvement in realism or smoothness
1560-504: A process known as tweening . However, in 3D computer animation, this is done automatically, and is called interpolation . Finally, the animation is rendered and composited . Before becoming a final product, 3D computer animations only exist as a series of moving shapes and systems within 3d software, and must be rendered . This can happen as a separate process for animations developed for movies and short films, or it can be done in real-time when animated for videogames. After an animation
1664-509: A raster graphic alternative to animated GIF files that enables multi-level transparency not available in GIFs. Computer animation uses different techniques to produce animations. Most frequently, sophisticated mathematics is used to manipulate complex three-dimensional polygons , apply " textures ", lighting and other effects to the polygons and finally rendering the complete image. A sophisticated graphical user interface may be used to create
1768-520: A separate background, computer animation is usually based on programming paths between key frames to maneuver digitally created figures throughout a digitally created environment. Analog mechanical animation media that rely on the rapid display of sequential images include the phenakistiscope , zoetrope , flip book , praxinoscope , and film. Television and video are popular electronic animation media that originally were analog and now operate digitally . For display on computers, technology such as
1872-404: A similar manner to those who use the commercial grade equipment. The realistic modeling of human facial features is both one of the most challenging and sought after elements in computer-generated imagery. Computer facial animation is a highly complex field where models typically include a very large number of animation variables. Historically speaking, the first SIGGRAPH tutorials on State of
1976-414: A simplified representation of a character's anatomy, which is analogous to a skeleton or stick figure . They are arranged into a default position known as a bind pose , or T-Pose. The position of each segment of the skeletal model is defined by animation variables, or Avars for short. In human and animal characters, many parts of the skeletal model correspond to the actual bones, but skeletal animation
2080-451: A softer version, while Woody's "Guess Who?", also provided by Blanc, would continue to be used in the opening titles until the end of the series and permanent closure of the Lantz studio in 1972. Pantry Panic was reworked in 1946 as Who's Cookin' Who? . The starvation personification would also reappear in the remake as well as 1951's The Redwood Sap . As of 2024, this entry is currently
2184-450: A true powerhouse of animation production, with its own recognizable and influential anime style of effective limited animation . Animation became very popular on television since the 1950s, when television sets started to become common in most developed countries. Cartoons were mainly programmed for children, on convenient time slots, and especially US youth spent many hours watching Saturday-morning cartoons . Many classic cartoons found
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#17327904764852288-531: A very long history in automata . Electronic automata were popularized by Disney as animatronics . The word animation stems from the Latin animātiōn , stem of animātiō , meaning 'bestowing of life'. The earlier meaning of the English word is 'liveliness' and has been in use much longer than the meaning of 'moving image medium'. Long before modern animation began, audiences around the world were captivated by
2392-409: A wide variety of styles, relatively often including stop motion and cutout animation techniques. Soviet Soyuzmultfilm animation studio, founded in 1936, produced 20 films (including shorts) per year on average and reached 1,582 titles in 2018. China, Czechoslovakia / Czech Republic, Italy, France, and Belgium were other countries that more than occasionally released feature films, while Japan became
2496-769: Is a career path which involves separate workflows, and different software and tools. The combination of all or some 3D computer animation disciplines is commonly referred to within the animation industry as the 3D animation pipeline. 2D computer graphics are still used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and faster real-time renderings . Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to stop motion techniques, but using 3D models, and traditional animation techniques using frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations. For 2D figure animations, separate objects (illustrations) and separate transparent layers are used with or without that virtual skeleton. In 2D computer animation, moving objects are often referred to as " sprites ." A sprite
2600-422: Is a digital successor to stop motion and traditional animation . Instead of a physical model or illustration, a digital equivalent is manipulated frame-by-frame. Also, computer-generated animations allow a single graphic artist to produce such content without using actors, expensive set pieces, or props . To create the illusion of movement, an image is displayed on the computer monitor and repeatedly replaced by
2704-684: Is a technique combining hand-drawn characters into live action shots or live-action actors into animated shots. One of the earlier uses was in Koko the Clown when Koko was drawn over live-action footage. Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks created a series of Alice Comedies (1923–1927), in which a live-action girl enters an animated world. Other examples include Allegro Non Troppo (Italy, 1976), Who Framed Roger Rabbit (US, 1988), Volere volare (Italy 1991), Space Jam (US, 1996) and Osmosis Jones (US, 2001). Computer animation Computer animation
2808-458: Is also used to animate other things, with facial features (though other methods for facial animation exist). The character "Woody" in Toy Story , for example, uses 712 Avars (212 in the face alone). The computer does not usually render the skeletal model directly (it is invisible), but it does use the skeletal model to compute the exact position and orientation of that certain character, which
2912-437: Is an image that has a location associated with it. The location of the sprite is changed slightly, between each displayed frame, to make the sprite appear to move. The following pseudocode makes a sprite move from left to right: Computer-assisted animation is usually classed as two-dimensional ( 2D ) animation and is also known as digital ink and paint. Drawings are either hand drawn (pencil to paper) or interactively drawn (on
3016-544: Is attended by thousands of computer professionals each year. Developers of computer games and 3D video cards strive to achieve the same visual quality on personal computers in real-time as is possible for CGI films and animation. With the rapid advancement of real-time rendering quality, artists began to use game engines to render non-interactive movies, which led to the art form Machinima . CGI short films have been produced as independent animation since 1976. Early examples of feature films incorporating CGI animation include
3120-517: Is eventually rendered into an image. Thus by changing the values of Avars over time, the animator creates motion by making the character move from frame to frame. There are several methods for generating the Avar values to obtain realistic motion. Traditionally, animators manipulate the Avars directly. Rather than set Avars for every frame, they usually set Avars at strategic points (frames) in time and let
3224-474: Is literally staring starvation, personified as something vaguely resembling the Grim Reaper , in the face. A month later, a hungry cat happens upon Woody's cabin (aware of the viewers reading one of the title cards and its description of said "hungry little kitty cat"), and conspires to eat the woodpecker, who likewise seeks to eat the cat. A battle ensues. Eventually, a moose appears at Woody's open door, and
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3328-512: Is not always to emulate live action as closely as possible, so many animated films instead feature characters who are anthropomorphic animals, legendary creatures and characters, superheroes, or otherwise have non-realistic, cartoon-like proportions. Computer animation can also be tailored to mimic or substitute for other kinds of animation, like traditional stop-motion animation (as shown in Flushed Away or The Peanuts Movie ). Some of
3432-510: Is not composed solely of rendering). A workstation typically costs $ 2,000 to $ 16,000 with the more expensive stations being able to render much faster due to the more technologically advanced hardware that they contain. Professionals also use digital movie cameras , motion/ performance capture , bluescreens , film editing software , props, and other tools used for movie animation. Programs like Blender allow for people who can not afford expensive animation and rendering software to be able to work in
3536-407: Is perceivable due to the way the eye and the brain both process images. At rates below 12 frames per second, most people can detect jerkiness associated with the drawing of new images that detracts from the illusion of realistic movement. Conventional hand-drawn cartoon animation often uses 15 frames per second in order to save on the number of drawings needed, but this is usually accepted because of
3640-413: Is pointless for a studio to pay the salaries of dozens of animators to spend weeks creating a visually dazzling five-minute scene if that scene fails to effectively advance the plot of the film. Thus, animation studios starting with Disney began the practice in the 1930s of maintaining story departments where storyboard artists develop every single scene through storyboards , then handing the film over to
3744-711: Is possible with traditional animation , while still retaining the stylistic elements of traditionally drawn characters or objects. Examples of films produced using computer-assisted animation are the rainbow sequence at the end of The Little Mermaid (the rest of the films listed use digital ink and paint in their entirety), The Rescuers Down Under , Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , The Lion King , Pocahontas , The Hunchback of Notre Dame , Hercules , Mulan , Tarzan , We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story , Balto , Anastasia , Titan A.E. , The Prince of Egypt , The Road to El Dorado , Spirit: Stallion of
3848-426: Is recorded to a computer using video cameras and markers and that performance is then applied to the animated character. Each method has its advantages and as of 2007, games and films are using either or both of these methods in productions. Keyframe animation can produce motions that would be difficult or impossible to act out, while motion capture can reproduce the subtleties of a particular actor. For example, in
3952-595: Is rendered, it can be composited into a final product. For 3D models, attributes can describe any characteristic of the object that can be animated. This includes transformation (movement from one point to another), scaling, rotation, and more complex attributes like blend shape progression (morphing from one shape to another). Each attribute gets a channel on which keyframes can be set. These keyframes can be used in more complex ways such as animating in layers (combining multiple sets of key frame data), or keying control objects to deform or control other objects. For instance,
4056-452: Is required, but the types of characters required exceed what can be done throughout the conventional costuming. 3D computer animation combines 3D models of objects and programmed or hand "keyframed" movement. These models are constructed out of geometrical vertices, faces, and edges in a 3D coordinate system. Objects are sculpted much like real clay or plaster, working from general forms to specific details with various sculpting tools. Unless
4160-449: Is that once a film is in the production phase, the marginal cost of one more shot is higher for animated films than live-action films. It is relatively easy for a director to ask for one more take during principal photography of a live-action film, but every take on an animated film must be manually rendered by animators (although the task of rendering slightly different takes has been made less tedious by modern computer animation). It
4264-404: Is the best known and most extreme example. Since first being licensed for a children's writing tablet in 1929, their Mickey Mouse mascot has been depicted on an enormous amount of products , as have many other Disney characters. This may have influenced some pejorative use of Mickey's name , but licensed Disney products sell well, and the so-called Disneyana has many avid collectors, and even
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4368-477: Is the process of producing high-quality traditionally animated films that regularly use detailed drawings and plausible movement, having a smooth animation. Fully animated films can be made in a variety of styles, from more realistically animated works like those produced by the Walt Disney studio ( The Little Mermaid , Beauty and the Beast , Aladdin , The Lion King ) to the more 'cartoon' styles of
4472-432: Is the process that was used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings, first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels , which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on
4576-548: Is then used to in a two-level structure – the PAD-PEP mapping and the PEP-FAP translation model. Realism in computer animation can mean making each frame look photorealistic , in the sense that the scene is rendered to resemble a photograph or make the characters' animation believable and lifelike. Computer animation can also be realistic with or without the photorealistic rendering . One trend in computer animation has been
4680-485: Is to use procedural tools such as 4D noise . Noise is any algorithm that plots pseudo-random values within a dimensional space. 4D noise can be used to do things like move a swarm of bees around; the first three dimensions correspond to the position of the bees in space, and the fourth is used to change the bee's position over time. Noise can also be used as a cheap replacement for simulation . For example, smoke and clouds can be animated using noise. Node-based animation
4784-485: Is useful for animating organic and chaotic shapes. By using nodes, an animator can build up a complex set of animation rules that can be applied either to many objects at once, or one very complex object. A good example of this would be setting the movement of particles to match the beat of a song. There are many different disciplines of 3D animation, some of which include entirely separate artforms. For example, hair simulation for computer animated characters in and of itself
4888-763: The Internet ( web cartoons ). Rotoscoping is a technique patented by Max Fleischer in 1917 where animators trace live-action movement, frame by frame. The source film can be directly copied from actors' outlines into animated drawings, as in The Lord of the Rings (US, 1978), or used in a stylized and expressive manner, as in Waking Life (US, 2001) and A Scanner Darkly (US, 2006). Some other examples are Fire and Ice (US, 1983), Heavy Metal (1981), and Aku no Hana (Japan, 2013). Live-action/animation
4992-525: The Warner Bros. animation studio . Many of the Disney animated features are examples of full animation, as are non-Disney works, The Secret of NIMH (US, 1982), The Iron Giant (US, 1999), and Nocturna (Spain, 2007). Fully animated films are often animated on "twos", sometimes on "ones", which means that 12 to 24 drawings are required for a single second of film. Limited animation involves
5096-556: The animated GIF and Flash animation were developed. In addition to short films , feature films , television series , animated GIFs, and other media dedicated to the display of moving images, animation is also prevalent in video games , motion graphics , user interfaces , and visual effects . The physical movement of image parts through simple mechanics—for instance, moving images in magic lantern shows—can also be considered animation. The mechanical manipulation of three-dimensional puppets and objects to emulate living beings has
5200-408: The entertainment industry . Many animations are either tradtional animations or computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation , in particular claymation , has continued to exist alongside these other forms. Animation is contrasted with live-action film , although the two do not exist in isolation. Many moviemakers have produced films that are a hybrid of
5304-462: The flip book (1868), the praxinoscope (1877) and film . When cinematography eventually broke through in the 1890s, the wonder of the realistic details in the new medium was seen as its biggest accomplishment. It took years before animation found its way to the cinemas. The successful short The Haunted Hotel (1907) by J. Stuart Blackton popularized stop motion and reportedly inspired Émile Cohl to create Fantasmagorie (1908), regarded as
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#17327904764855408-439: The persistence of vision and later to the phi phenomenon and beta movement , but the exact neurological causes are still uncertain. The illusion of motion caused by a rapid succession of images that minimally differ from each other, with unnoticeable interruptions, is a stroboscopic effect . While animators traditionally used to draw each part of the movements and changes of figures on transparent cels that could be moved over
5512-538: The 1960s, and European producers looking for affordable cel animators relatively often started co-productions with Japanese studios, resulting in hit series such as Barbapapa (The Netherlands/Japan/France 1973–1977), Wickie und die starken Männer/小さなバイキング ビッケ (Vicky the Viking) (Austria/Germany/Japan 1974), Maya the Honey Bee (Japan/Germany 1975) and The Jungle Book (Italy/Japan 1989). Computer animation
5616-477: The 2006 film Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest , Bill Nighy provided the performance for the character Davy Jones . Even though Nighy does not appear in the movie himself, the movie benefited from his performance by recording the nuances of his body language, posture, facial expressions, etc. Thus motion capture is appropriate in situations where believable, realistic behavior and action
5720-479: The 3D wire-frame imagery, which featured a computer-animated hand and face both created by University of Utah graduates Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke . This imagery originally appeared in their student film A Computer Animated Hand , which they completed in 1972. Developments in CGI technologies are reported each year at SIGGRAPH , an annual conference on computer graphics and interactive techniques that
5824-522: The Beast was the first animated film nominated for Best Picture , in 1991. Up (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) also received Best Picture nominations, after the academy expanded the number of nominees from five to ten. The creation of non-trivial animation works (i.e., longer than a few seconds) has developed as a form of filmmaking , with certain unique aspects. Traits common to both live-action and animated feature films are labor intensity and high production costs. The most important difference
5928-644: The Cimarron and Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas . Early digital computer animation was developed at Bell Telephone Laboratories in the 1960s by Edward E. Zajac, Frank W. Sinden, Kenneth C. Knowlton, and A. Michael Noll. Other digital animation was also practiced at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory . In 1967, a computer animation named "Hummingbird" was created by Charles Csuri and James Shaffer. In 1968,
6032-712: The Friendly Ghost (1945), Warner Bros. Cartoon Studios ' Looney Tunes ' Porky Pig (1935), Daffy Duck (1937), Elmer Fudd (1937–1940), Bugs Bunny (1938–1940), Tweety (1942), Sylvester the Cat (1945), Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner (1949), MGM cartoon studio 's Tom and Jerry (1940) and Droopy , Universal Cartoon Studios ' Woody Woodpecker (1940), Terrytoons / 20th Century Fox 's Mighty Mouse (1942), and United Artists ' Pink Panther (1963). In 1917, Italian-Argentine director Quirino Cristiani made
6136-594: The Tramp (1955) failed at the box office. For decades afterward, Disney would be the only American studio to regularly produce animated features, until Ralph Bakshi became the first to also release more than a handful features. Sullivan-Bluth Studios began to regularly produce animated features starting with An American Tail in 1986. Although relatively few titles became as successful as Disney's features, other countries developed their own animation industries that produced both short and feature theatrical animations in
6240-524: The US. Successful producer John Randolph Bray and animator Earl Hurd , patented the cel animation process that dominated the animation industry for the rest of the century. Felix the Cat , who debuted in 1919, became the first fully realized anthropomorphic animal character in the history of American animation. In 1928, Steamboat Willie , featuring Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse , popularized film-with-synchronized-sound and put Walt Disney 's studio at
6344-550: The Woody Woodpecker series, featuring an early, garish Woody Woodpecker design. It was the only short with Danny Webb as Woody's voice, and also the last short to feature Mel Blanc since Blanc had recorded Woody's earliest dialogue before he got an exclusive contract to do voice work for cartoons solely for Leon Schlesinger Productions . However, Blanc's recording of the woodpecker's trademark laugh would continue to be recycled until 1951, when Grace Stafford rerecorded
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#17327904764856448-469: The animation begins. Character designers on the visual development team draw model sheets to show how each character should look like with different facial expressions, posed in different positions, and viewed from different angles. On traditionally animated projects, maquettes were often sculpted to further help the animators see how characters would look from different angles. Unlike live-action films, animated films were traditionally developed beyond
6552-467: The animation industry's needs typically caused graphical innovations in workstations. Graphics workstation computers use two to four processors, and they are a lot more powerful than an actual home computer and are specialized for rendering. Many workstations (known as a " render farm " ) are networked together to effectively act as a giant computer, resulting in a computer-animated movie that can be completed in about one to five years (however, this process
6656-521: The animators only after the production team is satisfied that all the scenes make sense as a whole. While live-action films are now also storyboarded, they enjoy more latitude to depart from storyboards (i.e., real-time improvisation). Another problem unique to animation is the requirement to maintain a film's consistency from start to finish, even as films have grown longer and teams have grown larger. Animators, like all artists, necessarily have individual styles, but must subordinate their individuality in
6760-535: The art in Facial Animation in 1989 and 1990 proved to be a turning point in the field by bringing together and consolidating multiple research elements and sparked interest among a number of researchers. The Facial Action Coding System (with 46 "action units", "lip bite" or "squint"), which had been developed in 1976, became a popular basis for many systems. As early as 2001, MPEG-4 included 68 Face Animation Parameters (FAPs) for lips, jaws, etc., and
6864-433: The computer interpolate or tween between them in a process called keyframing . Keyframing puts control in the hands of the animator and has roots in hand-drawn traditional animation . In contrast, a newer method called motion capture makes use of live action footage. When computer animation is driven by motion capture, a real performer acts out the scene as if they were the character to be animated. Their motion
6968-438: The computer) using different assisting appliances and are positioned into specific software packages. Within the software package, the creator places drawings into different key frames which fundamentally create an outline of the most important movements. The computer then fills in the "in-between frames", a process commonly known as Tweening . Computer-assisted animation employs new technologies to produce content faster than
7072-714: The demand for an enormous quantity resulted in cheaper and quicker limited animation methods and much more formulaic scripts. Quality dwindled until more daring animation surfaced in the late 1980s and in the early 1990s with hit series, the first cartoon of The Simpsons (1987), which later developed into its own show (in 1989) and SpongeBob SquarePants (since 1999) as part of a "renaissance" of American animation. While US animated series also spawned successes internationally, many other countries produced their own child-oriented programming, relatively often preferring stop motion and puppetry over cel animation. Japanese anime TV series became very successful internationally since
7176-422: The drawings and simulate camera movement and effects. The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media with digital video . The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animators ' work has remained essentially the same over the past 90 years. Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" (a play on
7280-586: The effort to create human characters that look and move with the highest degree of realism. A possible outcome when attempting to make pleasing, realistic human characters is the uncanny valley , the concept where the human audience (up to a point) tends to have an increasingly negative, emotional response as a human replica looks and acts more and more human. Films that have attempted photorealistic human characters, such as The Polar Express , Beowulf , and A Christmas Carol have been criticized as "disconcerting" and "creepy". The goal of computer animation
7384-636: The field has made significant progress since then and the use of facial microexpression has increased. In some cases, an affective space , the PAD emotional state model , can be used to assign specific emotions to the faces of avatars . In this approach, the PAD model is used as a high level emotional space and the lower level space is the MPEG-4 Facial Animation Parameters (FAP). A mid-level Partial Expression Parameters (PEP) space
7488-493: The field of special effects ) skyrocketed during the modern era of U.S. animation . Films like Avatar (2009) and The Jungle Book (2016) use CGI for the majority of the movie runtime, but still incorporate human actors into the mix. Computer animation in this era has achieved photorealism, to the point that computer-animated films such as The Lion King (2019) are able to be marketed as if they were live-action. In most 3D computer animation systems, an animator creates
7592-868: The field. Many are part of general or regional film award programs, like the China's Golden Rooster Award for Best Animation (since 1981). Awards programs dedicated to animation, with many categories, include ASIFA-Hollywood 's Annie Awards , the Emile Awards in Europe and the Anima Mundi awards in Brazil. Apart from Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film (since 1932) and Best Animated Feature (since 2002), animated movies have been nominated and rewarded in other categories, relatively often for Best Original Song and Best Original Score . Beauty and
7696-458: The first feature-length film El Apóstol (now lost ), which became a critical and commercial success. It was followed by Cristiani's Sin dejar rastros in 1918, but one day after its premiere, the film was confiscated by the government. After working on it for three years, Lotte Reiniger released the German feature-length silhouette animation Die Abenteuer des Prinzen Achmed in 1926,
7800-426: The flow of their work all at once, and interpolation which allows 3D animators to automate the process of inbetweening . For 3D computer animations, objects (models) are built on the computer monitor (modeled) and 3D figures are rigged with a virtual skeleton . Then the limbs, eyes, mouth, clothes, etc. of the figure are moved by the animator on key frames . Normally, the differences between key frames are drawn in
7904-406: The forefront of the animation industry. Although Disney Animation's actual output relative to total global animation output, has always been very small; the studio has overwhelmingly dominated the "aesthetic norms" of animation ever since. The enormous success of Mickey Mouse is seen as the start of the golden age of American animation that would last until the 1960s. The United States dominated
8008-410: The gap by giving amateurs access to professional animations as clip art . The oldest (most backward compatible) web-based animations are in the animated GIF format, which can be uploaded and seen on the web easily. However, the raster graphics format of GIF animations slows the download and frame rate, especially with larger screen sizes. The growing demand for higher quality web-based animations
8112-445: The help of video references and accurate meteorological facts. For the 2005 remake of King Kong , actor Andy Serkis was used to help designers pinpoint the gorilla's prime location in the shots and used his expressions to model "human" characteristics onto the creature. Serkis had earlier provided the voice and performance for Gollum in J. R. R. Tolkien 's The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Computer animation can be created with
8216-611: The humour it can provide. Some animated characters in commercials have survived for decades, such as Snap, Crackle and Pop in advertisements for Kellogg's cereals. Tex Avery was the producer of the first Raid " Kills Bugs Dead " commercials in 1966, which were very successful for the company. Apart from their success in movie theaters and television series, many cartoon characters would also prove lucrative when licensed for all kinds of merchandise and for other media. Animation has traditionally been very closely related to comic books . While many comic book characters found their way to
8320-435: The late 1980s, in a style similar to traditional cel animation. The so-called 3D style, more often associated with computer animation, became the dominant technique following the success of Pixar's Toy Story (1995), the first computer-animated feature in this style. Most of the cel animation studios switched to producing mostly computer-animated films around the 1990s, as it proved cheaper and more profitable. Not only
8424-526: The live-action films Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Tron (both 1982), and the Japanese anime film Golgo 13: The Professional (1983). VeggieTales is the first American fully 3D computer-animated series sold directly (made in 1993); its success inspired other animation series, such as ReBoot (1994) and Transformers: Beast Wars (1996) to adopt a fully computer-generated style. The first full-length computer-animated television series
8528-761: The long-standing basic principles of animation , like squash and stretch , call for movement that is not strictly realistic, and such principles still see widespread application in computer animation. The popularity of websites that allow members to upload their own movies for others to view has created a growing community of independent and amateur computer animators. With utilities and programs often included free with modern operating systems , many users can make their own animated movies and shorts. Several free and open-source animation software applications exist as well. The ease at which these animations can be distributed has attracted professional animation talent also. Companies such as PowToon and Vyond attempt to bridge
8632-421: The magic of moving characters. For centuries, master artists and craftsmen have brought puppets, automatons , shadow puppets , and fantastical lanterns to life, inspiring the imagination through physically manipulated wonders. In 1833, the stroboscopic disc (better known as the phenakistiscope ) introduced the principle of modern animation, which would also be applied in the zoetrope (introduced in 1866),
8736-541: The more complex vector graphic animations had a slower frame rate due to complex rendering compared to some of the raster graphic alternatives. Many of the GIF and Flash animations were already converted to digital video formats, which were compatible with mobile devices and reduced file sizes via video compression technology. However, compatibility was still problematic as some of the video formats such as Apple's QuickTime and Microsoft Silverlight required plugins. YouTube
8840-824: The oldest extant animated feature. In 1937, Walt Disney Studios premiered their first animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs , still one of the highest-grossing traditional animation features as of May 2020 . The Fleischer studios followed this example in 1939 with Gulliver's Travels with some success. Partly due to foreign markets being cut off by the Second World War, Disney's next features Pinocchio , Fantasia (both 1940), Fleischer Studios' second animated feature Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941–1942) and Disney's feature films Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Lady and
8944-510: The oldest known example of a complete traditional (hand-drawn) animation on standard cinematographic film. Other great artistic and very influential short films were created by Ladislas Starevich with his puppet animations since 1910 and by Winsor McCay with detailed hand-drawn animation in films such as Little Nemo (1911) and Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). During the 1910s, the production of animated " cartoons " became an industry in
9048-587: The only Woody Woodpecker cartoon in the public domain . As such, it is freely distributed, and can be downloaded from the Internet Archive and seen on YouTube . Animated cartoon Animation is a filmmaking technique by which still images are manipulated to create moving images . In traditional animation , images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets ( cels ) to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within
9152-768: The screen (which is often the case in Japan, where many manga are adapted into anime ), original animated characters also commonly appear in comic books and magazines. Somewhat similarly, characters and plots for video games (an interactive form of animation that became its own medium) have been derived from films and vice versa. Some of the original content produced for the screen can be used and marketed in other media. Stories and images can easily be adapted into children's books and other printed media. Songs and music have appeared on records and as streaming media. While very many animation companies commercially exploit their creations outside moving image media, The Walt Disney Company
9256-458: The side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one against a painted background by a rostrum camera onto motion picture film. The traditional cel animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. In modern traditionally animated films, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color
9360-452: The spline curves relative to the keyframes. Using interpolation allows 3D animators to dynamically change animations without having to redo all the in-between animation. This also allows the creation of complex movements such as ellipses with only a few keyframes. Lastly, interpolation allows the animator to change the framerate, timing, and even scale of the movements at any point in the animation process. Another way to automate 3D animation
9464-400: The starving cat and woodpecker chase after it to capture and eat it. Afterwards, however, the meal proves not to be enough to satisfy Woody or the cat, who instantly resume their game of trying to eat each other. Like most of early 1940s Lantz cartoons, Pantry Panic carried no director's credit. Lantz himself has claimed to have directed this cartoon. Pantry Panic was the third cartoon in
9568-864: The stylized nature of cartoons. To produce more realistic imagery, computer animation demands higher frame rates. Films seen in theaters in the United States run at 24 frames per second, which is sufficient to create the illusion of continuous movement. For high resolution, adapters are used. Computer-generated animation is an umbrella term for three-dimensional ( 3D ) animation, and 2D computer animation. These also include subcategories like asset driven , hybrid, and digital drawn animation. Creators animate using code or software instead of pencil-to-paper drawings. There are many techniques and disciplines in computer generated animation, some of which are digital representations of traditional animation - such as key frame animation - and some of which are only possible with
9672-425: The synopsis stage through the storyboard format; the storyboard artists would then receive credit for writing the film. In the early 1960s, animation studios began hiring professional screenwriters to write screenplays (while also continuing to use story departments) and screenplays had become commonplace for animated films by the late 1980s. Traditional animation (also called cel animation or hand-drawn animation)
9776-462: The two . As CGI increasingly approximates photographic imagery , filmmakers can easily composite 3D animations into their film rather than using practical effects for showy visual effects (VFX). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation , while 2D computer animation (which may have the look of traditional animation) can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth, or faster real-time renderings . Other common animation methods apply
9880-847: The use of less detailed or more stylized drawings and methods of movement usually a choppy or "skippy" movement animation. Limited animation uses fewer drawings per second, thereby limiting the fluidity of the animation. This is a more economic technique. Pioneered by the artists at the American studio United Productions of America , limited animation can be used as a method of stylized artistic expression, as in Gerald McBoing-Boing (US, 1951), Yellow Submarine (UK, 1968), and certain anime produced in Japan. Its primary use, however, has been in producing cost-effective animated content for media for television (the work of Hanna-Barbera, Filmation , and other TV animation studios ) and later
9984-565: The value had increased to an estimated US$ 370 billion. Animated feature-length films returned the highest gross margins (around 52%) of all film genres between 2004 and 2013. Animation as an art and industry continues to thrive as of the early 2020s. The clarity of animation makes it a powerful tool for instruction, while its total malleability also allows exaggeration that can be employed to convey strong emotions and to thwart reality. It has therefore been widely used for other purposes than mere entertainment. During World War II, animation
10088-401: The very popular 3D animation style was generated with computers, but also most of the films and series with a more traditional hand-crafted appearance, in which the charming characteristics of cel animation could be emulated with software, while new digital tools helped developing new styles and effects. In 2010, the animation market was estimated to be worth circa US$ 80 billion. By 2021,
10192-683: The words "traditional" and "digital") to describe cel animation that uses significant computer technology. Examples of traditionally animated feature films include Pinocchio (United States, 1940), Animal Farm (United Kingdom, 1954), Lucky and Zorba (Italy, 1998), and The Illusionist (British-French, 2010). Traditionally animated films produced with the aid of computer technology include The Lion King (US, 1994), Anastasia (US, 1997), The Prince of Egypt (US, 1998), Akira (Japan, 1988), Spirited Away (Japan, 2001), The Triplets of Belleville (France, 2003), and The Secret of Kells (Irish-French-Belgian, 2009). Full animation
10296-482: The world market of animation with a plethora of cel-animated theatrical shorts. Several studios would introduce characters that would become very popular and would have long-lasting careers, including Walt Disney Productions ' Goofy (1932) and Donald Duck (1934), Fleischer Studios / Paramount Cartoon Studios ' Out of the Inkwell ' Koko the Clown (1918), Bimbo and Betty Boop (1930), Popeye (1933) and Casper
10400-520: Was ReBoot , which debuted in September 1994; the series followed the adventures of characters who lived inside a computer. The first feature-length computer-animated film is Toy Story (1995), which was made by Disney and Pixar : following an adventure centered around anthropomorphic toys and their owners, this groundbreaking film was also the first of many fully computer-animated movies. The popularity of computer animation (especially in
10504-636: Was also relying on the Flash plugin to deliver digital video in the Flash Video format. The latest alternatives are HTML5 compatible animations. Technologies such as JavaScript and CSS animations made sequencing the movement of images in HTML5 web pages more convenient. SVG animations offered a vector graphic alternative to the original Flash graphic format, SmartSketch . YouTube offers an HTML5 alternative for digital video. APNG (Animated PNG) offered
10608-543: Was gradually developed since the 1940s. 3D wireframe animation started popping up in the mainstream in the 1970s, with an early (short) appearance in the sci-fi thriller Futureworld (1976). The Rescuers Down Under was the first feature film to be completely created digitally without a camera. It was produced using the Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), developed by Pixar in collaboration with The Walt Disney Company in
10712-509: Was met by a vector graphics alternative that relied on the use of a plugin . For decades, Flash animations were a common format, until the web development community abandoned support for the Flash Player plugin. Web browsers on mobile devices and mobile operating systems never fully supported the Flash plugin. By this time, internet bandwidth and download speeds increased, making raster graphic animations more convenient. Some of
10816-482: Was widely exploited for propaganda. Many American studios , including Warner Bros. and Disney, lent their talents and their cartoon characters to convey to the public certain war values. Some countries, including China, Japan and the United Kingdom, produced their first feature-length animation for their war efforts. Animation has been very popular in television commercials, both due to its graphic appeal, and
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