Out of all the components of Unit 1, this was the project I was most nervous about doing. Having to assist somebody I didn’t know and understand their vision for their project is a daunting task. I’m a visual person and struggle sometimes when things are being explained, so I often take my time digesting the information before producing, but for this project, I was aware that time was of the essence and I was making myself available to help, not hinder their project.
We were allocated a year 2 student to assist, so I reached out to them via email. Unfortunately, after some back and forth we were not able to arrange the work experience, so I contacted my tutor and they were able to put me in contact with another student to assist.
In my meeting with the year 2 student, they asked me to do the keyframing for three scenes. I was given the live-action videos to view, so I knew what movement was required for the character in that scene. Then using TV paint, I drew the characters making the movements.
Keyframing scene one
I completed the first scene and asked them if they were happy with the outcome. They confirmed I had done what they wanted and that they liked how I had translated the ‘walking style’. I offered to complete the two further scenes after my own submission deadline for unit one which was due the following day.
I really enjoyed this experience because I got to see somebody else’s project and their vision. My main challenge was the tight timeline because I would have liked to spend more time supporting this project. I feel that I should have been more proactive in informing the tutor when my initial pairing fell through because that took up a lot of the time we were allocated for this project. So, this is a lesson I have learned from this project. However, I’m aware that challenging timelines will be a part of animation jobs, so this was a good takeaway from this experience.
As somebody who recently completed a BA in Fine Art Painting, where all my creations had been still images, I was looking forward to creating moving images. One area, I really enjoyed was the silent movie body acting brief because I was able to use the skills, I had learned from creating still images of figures and apply them to this brief.
The brief was to create a moving image between 10 and 20 seconds long in the style of a silent movie. To contextualise the process, I started by watching silent movie scenes online and seeing a range of different body movements depending on the mood and situation. Then, answered the seven acting questions which ranged from the character’s name, temperament, and environment to get an idea of the character and situation I wanted to create.
The Seven Acting Questions
I decided on a silhouette trying to get a jar of sweets from the top of a tall fridge and getting frustrated in their attempt to get the jar. At this stage, I wasn’t sure if I wanted this scene to be comical, in a Mr Bean style, or for it to be a more serious scene in the style of a training video.
I sketched a background scene which was a kitchen with the fridge in the centre and then I filmed myself acting out the scene. Part of this process was to stand in one spot, without walking around, so my body movements would be more animated in one space.
Kitchen BackgroundLive Action Video
I followed this up by creating storyboards for each frame of the scene because I had to consider the length of the outcome and ensure all elements were included so the outcome made sense to the viewer.
StoryboardStoryboard
The final part of this process was to develop the project, so using TV Paint software and the sketches, live-action video, and storyboards I had created were used to facilitate the outcome.
My journey in creating the silent movie challenged me to look beyond the static silhouette, I was so used to creating in fine art and instead, breaking down the body parts and focusing on each part individually to create believable movements.
The television set had been in development since the late 1920s, but it wasn’t until the late 1950’s and early 1960’s that it became a staple in most households and with the popularity of television, the film companies needed to produce programming for the TV schedule.
Prior to television, cartoons were often shown in cinemas before a main feature, giving media companies more time to create these productions, but with the need to provide content for television, came the need to speed up the production and as a result Limited Animation became a constant part of television since its inception in the 1950’s.
At the turn of the 20th century, the popularity of the cinema started and animated shorts would be shown in what became known as ‘traditional animation’, a technique where each frame is drawn by hand with each drawing is slightly different to the previous one, thereby creating a sequence. For these animated shorts the frames would range from 16 to 22 frames per second, therefore it was a labour-intensive process to create these productions which meant a lot of time and finance was required.
Image 1: Felix the Cat at the North Pole (1920)
Limited Animation is a process that makes use of techniques to limit the labour required to produce animation so that not every frame has to be drawn individually. This technique uses fewer drawings by reducing the number of images required per second by re-using drawings, and putting different parts of a character, like the head or arms, layered onto the drawing so that only the part of the body moving needed to be animated for each scene. Take an example of a character drinking, most of the body remains the same while the arm is redrawn to show up and down motion with the cup moving towards their mouth.
Image 2: The Flintstones (1960)
Another example used in limited animation is reusing walk cycles. This is where a character is walking and a standard 8-frame walk cycle has been created, instead of drawing several frames, the 8-frame walk cycle walk is repeated over.
In traditional animation the scenes are depicted with a smooth gliding movement and more detailed in comparison limited animation where the visuals appear stiffer and more lifeless with fewer details.
Animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera who had previously worked together at MGM set up Hanna-Barbera animation studios which had a lot of success with animated sitcoms through the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. The studio relied on limited animation in these productions to keep up with the speed of the tv schedules. Barbera said in 1988 ‘Instead of the 25,000 to 40,000 drawings we used in a Tom and Jerry short, we were able to make a cartoon with 1,200 to 1,800 drawings’.
Image 4: Top Cat (1961)
The use of limited animation slowly declined through the 1990’s, with computer-generated imagery (CGI) became heavily relied on to increase the style, duration, and content of animation on a smaller budget. However, limited animation is still used in productions with one of the most common being the Anime medium. However, I feel the reason for still using limited animation in some productions isn’t a question of budget, but more for the stilted movement and minimalism that the technique brings, and audiences still appreciate.
