COMPUTERIZATION OF ANIMATIONS
INTRODUCTION
As people can see, the world of animation is becoming more and more computerised. We go from the beginning of this century, when computers weren’t used by people yet, and animations were black and white, "fake", with discontinuous (unflowing) scenes, and no sound....... To NOW, where movie animations are flooded with computer generated special effects, life-like, sophisticated, and colourful. More and more cartoon animations are now appearing more 3D. The cartoon characters are being mixed with real life actors in movies, such as in the movie "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" Computers are developing at such a fast rate, becoming part of every aspect of society in its path! How would it be like in the 21st century?
Looking at the History
Magic Lantern, the ancestor camera of animation
The magic lantern was one of the most important machines used in the world of animations. It was invented in the 17th century and projected images from transparencies onto a screen, using a light source (such as a candle or a carbon arc) and a lens. It is an ancestor of the movie camera.
Cartoon
The cartoon is the oldest form of animation, dating back to the 19th century. Drawing cartoon was horrid at first. Every second of action requires 24 separate drawings!! So every 10 minute story needs 14,400 individual drawings!!!! And the backgrounds had to be reproduced exactly the same for each drawing! Then comes the invention of cels (short for celluloid). These are transparent celluloid sheets on which the sequence of pictures required for any one particular movement are drawn. Until the recent development of computer animation, almost all cartoons used the cel animation method. The earlier cartoons appears flat, vary from the simplest outlines, and just doesn’t look as good as the ones today, thanks to the help of computers.
Film
At the beginning of this century, when computer aren’t yet known, animation films were like this.…..
Dull, isn’t it? There were No Sounds!! And the cameras weren’t fast enough to let the movements "flow", backgrounds were very simple…. So these animations appear Unrealistic!! Before long, audiences became tired of captions and silent films… Just then, Sound came along in the 1920s, and was proved to be so successful that Hollywood entered the most productive period in its history!! Colours came in the 1930s. Then, the Computer came to the world of animations in the 1960s.
NOW
Things have changed since then. Animations are now dependent on computers. Old-style cel animation continues to be the sole technique by which quality animators, such as Disney Productions, create their characters. However, backgrounds, and the movement of objects within a scene are computer-generated. Cartoon and live character film "Who framed Roger Rabbit" (1988) was generated by computer to enable the real life actors and cartoons to mix together. In "Terminator 2" (1991), the mercury man was computer generated to enable it to morph. Below is a beautiful 3D looking computer generated animation:
"Toy Story" is the First Step in a Film-Making Revolution!! This is the first ever full-length film made entirely on computer! A breakthrough in movies technology! No Cameras, No Superstars, No Films!!! This is entirely the product of Mouse, Keyboard, and Screen!!!
THE FUTURE
Year 2050
Teenager: "Grandpa, I remembered that you used to be an actor about 50 years ago. How was it like to produce films when you were my age?"
Grandpa: "I was a teenage actor then. Producing a film was hard work. The actors were the most important on the scene. However, there were many important people behind the scenes. A producer arranges for the financing of the project, assembling the key members of the production team, and, finally, making arrangements for distributing the finished product. A screenwriter writes the dialogue, gives details of visual images, action, sound effects, etc. The director is the individual who visualizes the script and guides the production crew and actors to carry out that vision. This director’s got several directors below him, such as assistant director, director of photography, and casting director. The editor arranges the shots into a flowing piece of art. The composer is in charge of the music. Designers deal with costumes, lighting, makeup, and other visual aspects of the production."
Teenager: "ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzZZZZZZZzzzzzzzz"
Grandpa: "Wakey wakey!"
Teenager: "That was such complicated hard work. No wonder all the animations now are computer generated. It’s so simple now. No need to go through all these troubles for actors, producers, directors, and all those bunch of people!! Nowadays, anyone can make a movie as long as they have the ‘3D Movie Maker’ on their computer."
Grandpa: "Yep, I do recall that 3D Movie Maker program for children during my teenage years. Its features are so advanced now that almost all professionals uses it!! Yet, it’s so simple to operate that a little child can still play with it!!"
Teenager: "And all we have to do is to discuss the story we’ve created with this virtual woman on the 3D Movie Maker and select the actors, sounds, scenes, and camera angles, etc. and the 3D Movie Maker will automatically put them together. The effect is way more advanced than the old human generated movies. The virtual reality now is so advanced! Movies nowadays seem to be happening before our eyes, and we can step into the movie to take a full view of all the things happening! All you need is your computer and 3D viewing glasses and 3D sound effect earphone. These ‘no different than real life’ 3D images are produced through the development of holography about 100 years ago!! Thanks to the lasers!"
Grandpa: "The microchips on computers 50 years ago has now shrunk to the size of a cell, and microchips nowadays and can carry 10000 times more transistors than 55 years ago!! Information are all stored on lasers!! Laser’s high intensity and short wavelengths enables it to store the most information! The computers nowadays can store 1020 times more information than 50 years ago!"
Teenager: "Yeah! This enables us
to do so much more things on the computer! All those holography
must have taken up trillions of memory if it was put onto
computers half a century ago, and yet it only takes a tiny weeny
space on the computer memory now. No wonder the world now is
totally computer dependant. What can we do without
computers??"
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Encarta 1998
SIRS
Grolier Encyclopedia
The Young Oxford Book of Cinema by David Parkinson
Yahoo Search Engine - to search for animation pictures
(C) 1998 by Yvonne Wang