(Summary) In the workshop we'll create an animation in sync with a soundtrack and see how to copy motion from one movie to another. I'll answer questions about StopMotion Station and we'll talk about your animation challenges. The cutout animation is fresh today. I was (of course) using the Dial feature in StopMotion Station to stay in sync with the soundtrack. I'm still learning how to think about motion while watching the counter to make sure I hit my marks. It's one of the things any actor has to do; in animation, we're doing it in slow motion.
The "gravel dancer" is an example of copying motion from one movie to another. In this case, it's live action copied to aquarium gravel. Working with sand, stones, seeds, beads or other loose material is almost another whole category of classic animation. Wikipedia has a short article on Sand Animation, with links to performance artists and animators.
I've made a minor change to StopMotion Station based on a workshop that I'll be doing at Quickdraw Animation Society (QAS) on November 10, 2007. One of the things I'll be doing in the workshop is animating in sync with a soundtrack. I animated to a soundtrack during QAS's Animation Lockdown earlier this year, and the sync was perfect; but I've realized I could make working with a soundtrack better and easier.
To animate to a soundtrack you use StopMotion Station's Dial counters. Just press the D key when you're Shooting or Viewing a movie, and the Dial overlay will pop up. Press D again to hide the Dial. The Dial includes two counters: a footage counter that shows you how many frames are in your current folder, and a frame counter that keeps track of how many frames you've shot since the last time you reset it (by pressing Alt-D).
I had set up the footage counter to be a literal footage counter - counting in frames, feet of 35 mm film (16 frames per foot) or 16mm feet (40 frames per foot). This was a throwback to animation stands, where that's how you kept track of your shooting. Working on a little promo video for the November workshop, I realized it would be a lot more useful to show the footage as seconds and frames.
So now (Ta-DAA) the footage counter shows frames or seconds and frames. And you can choose 30 frames per second, for working in NTSC video; 25 frames per second, for PAL video; or 24 frames per second for working film style. The Other options tab of the Setup dialog lets you choose the one you want.
This change lets us break down a soundtrack at the frame rate of the movie we're making and use those time and frame counts directly when we're animating. This also shows an important facet of my programming: I actually use my software in real-life creation and make the changes that I find genuinely helpful.
I'll be resubmitting StopMotion Station for the malware-free certifications. I also plan to shoot video at my QAS workshop, so you'll see me in action animating to a (short) soundtrack. The other technique I'll demonstrate is copying motion from one movie to another, a little like rotoscoping. If you check out my movie "Beginning" at Stopmotion-Software.com you'll see some of this at 1:14, where I copied a dancer's motion in aquarium gravel.
The updated StopMotion Station 1.3 installer is now online at Stopmotion-Software.com. If you've purchased StopMotion Station, the license file I emailed you works with the updated version as well. Just download the new installer, uninstall StopMotion Station, reinstall it from the new download, and unlock it as per the instructions in the email.
You want to create classic animation. I want you to do it using software that I've written. It's a big and potentially nasty Internet out there, with some people who are trying to do harm - or at least not telling you everything they've put in their software. People like you are naturally suspicious of "free" stuff - and rightly so.
This post is intended to help reduce your anxieties, and to reassure you that I'm being open with my agenda - to get you to try and, hopefully, buy my software. My programs have been on the Web for several years now, and I've gotten unsolicited emails about them. There's quite a few awards (check out the list at StopMotion-Software.com for details) but more importantly, several of my programs have been certified as free of viruses, spyware, and other malware by several independent download sites.
The download and monitoring sites are softdll.com, SuggestSoft.com, SoftPedia.com and DownloadSofts.com. Four of my programs have been checked so far and certified clean by one or more of them. I've put three of them in this post. My flagship program is StopMotion Station, which turns a PC and an Windows DirectX compatible image source into a single frame movie camera and advanced movie viewer. (Perfect for creating classic animation, of course!) Here are the certifications it's received. (All links should open a new browser tab or window.)
Naturally, I'm very pleased by these reports. The freware program that I really want you to try is FlipView Free. It looks at a folder of JPG images as a flipbook, from 0 to 30 real frames per second and virtual frame rates up to 90,000 frames per second. I'm just working on a minor update and will have it done and checked for malware soon. Meanwhile, the current version (on the freeware page at StopMotion-Software.com has been checked by SoftPedia.com.
My freeware program StopMotion Camera (at, where else, StopMotion-Software.com) captures JPG images, one at a time, from DirectX compatible cameras and image sources. StopMotion Camera and FlipView Free together let you shoot classic animation and view it instantly. Check out the Free Animation video on the freeware page of my site. StopMotion Camera has been checked out by SoftPedia.com.
I have more software for creating classic cinema on StopMotion-Software.com. But as I note in this page in the StopMotion Station Help file, a program reflects the programmer's personality - and doesn't necessarily make sense to its users. I made a movie about this idea way back in 1994. There's some Deluxe Paint animation here, from the glory days of the Amiga. The movie finally reveals what users do - or want to do - when prompted to "Strike any key when ready".
This film was shot in super-8, in a style deliberately imitating silent films. It premiered at the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers $100 film festival that year, and I had the chance to ask the audience how many people thought they understood it. Only one hand went up - and he was a programmer. I think now most people would get it.
Feel free to comment on the movie or on this post. The movie is on Google video at When What?.
The theme of this blog is classic animation; my purpose is to get you to create classic animation yourself - but what is classic animation? A quick search on "classic animation" (on Google, of course!) turns up 93,800 references as I write this. The number will have grown by the time you're reading it. A search on "classical animation" turns up another 84,600. A spot check of the sites shows that people think "classic animation" means cartoon animation.
Classic Animation Defined
To me, classic (or classical) animation means any animation in which the animator creates each frame individually. Cartoon animation is just one variety of classic animation. There are many more varieties already in existence, and yet more waiting to be invented.
Classic animation can be shot with a movie camera, a digital camera, or can be created using a computer - as long as the artist creates each frame individually, using classic visual arts techniques and media, or their digital equivalents. I exclude things like Flash animations and CG animation in which the computer generates frames algorithmically. Of course, the definition is pretty loose and there are gray areas. And the categories I list here shade into each other as well.
Types of Classic Animation
All animation can be regarded as stop motion animation; the subjects - drawings, clay, sand, puppets, paintings, or people - are all stopped in their motion and photographed one frame at a time. "Stop motion animation", though, conventionally means animation with dimensional models or armatures. While there are many ways of dividing animation into categories, I'm splitting classic animation into these broad types:
In cartoon animation, each frame in the movie is drawn and/or painted separately. I think we all know what cartoon animation is, but just for completeness, here's some cartoon animation on a demo reel from EdSeeman.com. There's a wide range if styles in his work, and combinations of cel animation with live action.
Cartoon animation can be anything from realistic to surreal. The work of animation pioneers is still inspiring. Here's the rather bizarre "Betty Boop, M.D." from the Fleischer Studio that includes four of their trademark characters.
Stop motion animation or model animation is another type of classic animation. The original King Kong (1933) and all of Ray Harryhausen's movies featured stop motion animation. Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" is a spectacular modern example. Here's an older movie, "The Milky Way", that I came across in some old 16mm films: it's one of a series of movies from Kinex Studios, made in the 1920s.
Modeling clay is another favorite medium for stop motion animation. Animator Jimmy Picker won the Academy Award in 1985 for "A Sundae in New York". Here's another of his movies, "Breakdance".
I think that Tim Burton's Corpse Bride is an authentically great movie, as well as having incredible animation. The "making of" documentary shows that the movie was shot with digital cameras - one frame at a time. Click on the link to order the DVD from Amazon.com.
Direct Animation
In this type of classic animation, the artist draws, paints, or scratches directly onto the film that goes into the projector. This is called "direct", "cameraless", or "scratch" animation. Once again, the artist creates the movie one frame at a time. Here's an example: "Aria", from glorialoyola:
"Aria" isn't strictly a cameraless movie. glorialoyola freezes some of the frames in the movie to accent the music. This is done in the editing, and is easy to do with digital movies.
Some artists add direct animation to images already on the film. Here's "Whiz!", a very creative example from gazzookabazookaz.
No collection of direct animation would be complete without a movie by the National Film Board of Canada'sNorman McLaren. Here's Begone Dull Care (1949). His work speaks for itself, and is one of my inspirations. The video was posted by JoniChe.
Cutout Animation
In still another type of classic animation, the animator moves cutouts or other objects around in front of a camera and shoots the movie one frame at a time. One of my movies in this style is "Face #1":
If the artist turns the cutouts into silhouettes, the animation has the look of shadow puppets. (Shadow puppetry is "one of the oldest art forms in the world" according to ArtsEdge at the Kennedy Center.) Here's an untitled example on YouTube, from Bhavpreet81.
Progressive (Painted) Animation
In progressive animation the artist shoots frames of a piece of artwork as it is being created. A painting paints itself or transforms as the artist changes it. "Darfur" from joefrechette is a very powerful example.
Some artists refuse to tie their art to a canvas or the camera to a tripod. Digital cameras are definitely making animation happen all around us, as in "Fantoche" from notblu.
"Progressive animation" is an older name for this type of animation. If you search for "progressive animation" videos, though, you won't find anything like these. People seem to be calling it "painted animation" now. I prefer "progressive animation" since that's what's happening - the movie records the progress of the artwork.
And the "artwork" can be very ephemeral. There are several kinds of sand animation. In one type, artists create flat images in (typically backlit) sand; in another, artists mold sand into shapes much the way they mold clay. Shoot them one frame at a time and you have animation, as in "EN TIERRA" from cesarlinga.
Pixillation
In "pixillation" the moviemaker shoots actor's performances one frame at a time. Norman McLaren's "Neighbors", done in this technique, is an Academy Award winner. The video was posted by JoniChe.
More modestly (much more modestly), there's a lot of pixillation in Zanymation Magic, which I edited from improvised animations created by the instructors and facilitators at Quickdraw Animation Society's Zanymation animation events. Of course, we're improvising with cutouts and other things as well...
A more recent development is "lightning doodles" - it's sort of "air animation" or "air drawing". You open the shutter on a camera, draw in the air with lights, and close the shutter. Shoot a sequence of frames and you have animation. This movie is from the people who originated the technique:
The common theme in all these styles is that the artist/animator creates each frame as an entity of its own, and determines what's happening and how things are moving, frame by frame. At times (especially when creating textures in scratch animation) the artist takes advantage of patterns that emerge by chance, but it's still created one frame at a time.
When animators began using computers, they were eager to automate parts of the process. The result is now a field of its own - CG animation. But computers can be just as useful in classic animation. Digital technology has made classic animation easier and better, and it's what I'm exploring through my software and my movies. My software is at StopMotion-Software.com and you'll be seeing more of my movies in this blog, on my site, and elsewhere on the Web. I'll be exploring all the classic animation styles in this blog, and showing how you can animate yourself.
Mixing it Up
Here's one more of my movies. See how many classic animation techniques you can find in it!
Norman McLaren is a master of classic animation in all its forms. Norman McLaren: The Masters Edition showcases all of Norman McLaren's work, not all of which is animation. This DVD set includes many documentaries. Some of the documentaries manage to make the principles of animation boring - but will reward close attention. These DVDs will stretch your mind. Click on the link to order them from Amazon.com.
My thanks to all the posters who upload movies and let us view them. Where no other poster is credited, the uploads are mine.
In the summer of 2004 I took the Introduction to Character Animation course at Quickdraw Animation Society. One of the assignments was an animated walk. I (of course) immediately grabbed my copy of Richard Williams's "The Animator's Survival Kit" and started work. My walking robot eventually looked pretty good (I thought), but of course the exercise also made me see how much I didn't know.
I started watching people walking. Williams makes a big point later in his book about the importance of the "whip" action, though he doesn't really define a "whip". I started to think I could see some whip action in walks, specifically when the rear leg swings forward. I thought it was worth checking further, but didn't want to just trust my impressions.
I was working with some of my super-8 movies (a Disneyland trip in 1976) and saw that I had a shot of some people walking at right angles to the camera, with nothing in front of them. I grabbed the frames and made loops that I could look at.
By coincidence, this walk loops on 24 frames - a magic number for animators. It's a real coincidence that it does. My super-8 film is at 18 frames per second, so a normal two step per second walk would be 18 frames. People just stroll at Disneyland, so my subject took 2/3 of a second for a step - 12 frames. A full left-right cycle came out to 24 frames.
One of the first things I saw was that weight isn't transferred from one foot to the other instantly. Williams's "normal" walk drawings imply that it is. He starts with a drawing like this one, showing full weight on the back toes and no weight on the front heel.
I didn't rotoscope my frames, but I see the weight transfer starting with this position
and finishing, about 3 frames later, with this position.
It's very clear in the movie frames.
Alan Ferguson, looking at these frames with me at Quickdraw, pointed out that this is just one example walk and is slightly slower than normal. The weight transfer could take proportionately less time in a normal walk. We could doubtless find out a lot more if we just asked the sports physiology professors at the University of Calgary. Or looked in a technical library.
After that little sidetrack, I got back to looking for the whip action, and confirmed what I thought I was seeing.
While the toes are still planted and the rear heel is coming up, the rear leg is bending and the rear thigh is already moving forward. Once the leg has bent to an angle of about 120 degrees, the toes lift off. The thigh keeps swinging forward, but the knee stays at about 120 degrees until the thigh stops, like this:
The lower leg and foot swing forward and out once the thigh has stopped rotating.
This is the part of the walk that I see as a whip action. The thigh moves before the lower leg and foot, and drags them along. The thigh stops, and the lower leg keeps going until it "snaps" into position. Williams doesn't define what a whip action is but leaves it to our intuition. I think whip actions happen with flexible objects (jointed or rope-like) that are anchored at one end and driven by forces that work from close to the point of attachment. Inertia delays motion in parts of the object further from the attachment. The details of the delays should give more or less feeling of weight.
And also (contrary to Williams) my film doesn't show the leading knee bending after it contacts the ground and starts receiving weight. Legs seem to stay straight all the time they carry weight.
Those last four drawings look suspiciously like a walk cycle. Here they are, in motion:
This was actually a pleasant surprise, since I hadn't planned these four drawings as a step cycle. The walk shows no weight whatsoever - it looks to me like the glide of a geisha.
Williams makes the point that, as animators, we are caricaturing motion and giving characters their own motions. And also that to do this, to show what's different about an individual, we need to know what the ordinary, common motion is. It seemed to me that even Williams's "normal" walk is a caricature. My film, of course, shows a "character-less" walk. It's an ordinary, casual stroll.
I decided to make a chart of the timing of what I could see in the walk. For the weight transfers, the chart looks like this:
A similar chart for Williams's "normal" walk might look like this:
This is a walk on the very edge of becoming a run. In a run, there are intervals when neither foot is in contact with the ground.
The chart for a different walk (say Daffy's as he enters the saloon in "Drip-Along Daffy") might look like this:
Here's the walk itself. This walk was animated on ones (one drawing for every frame, at 24 frames per second) and is a total of 30 frames long. It's definitely an expensive piece of animation. I've slowed it down to 12 frames per second to show the motion more clearly.
In this walk both feet bear weight most of the time. Each leg moves forward for the next step very quickly. This is like the pattern I used for the robot walk I mentioned earlier. Daffy brings his foot forward quicker than my robot does.
This is giving me another way of thinking about animating walks, and might even help me "get my brains in my pencil" (to quote from Williams) once it really sinks in. I could start by putting a grid onto the walk chart. The grid would contain the number of frames I want to draw - say 8, for example.
This grid gives me the four positions I used in the example cycle. Because the leg timing is symmetrical, the leg positions in the second four frames are the same as in the first four. Things are different when I want an odd total number of frames. (Williams doesn't discuss odd total numbers at all.)
In this case, the leg positions in the second half of the walk cycle aren't the same as in the first. I tried drawing this cycle and came up with these leg positions.
And the walk looks like this.
A few comments about this one. I'm still learning where to put the body relative to the legs so it balances properly. I actually had to lean the body a little forward in these drawings to get it to look better. There's a bit of a limp - the body does come down a bit as the right foot lands but not when the left foot does. And with an odd number of frames, there's ambiguity about just where the weight goes in the overall cycle. All of which just reminds me how much more I have to learn.
I charted more than just the weight transfers, hoping it'll help me learn more about animating walks. Click on the link for a PDF file of my walk chart.
I also grabbed some leg bones from the CorelDraw clipart collection and animated them according to what I saw in my film. I think the bone walk turned out pretty well. Doing it helped me understand what goes on in the bones and joints, even though I didn't do anything with motion in the toes.
Click on the link for a PDF file of the 24 frames in this walk.
I have another site devoted to animation - How-To-Make-Your-Own-Animation.com. It presents making classic animation in a different way - better organized than with a blog.
Start creating your own classic animation!
This 13 minute movie introduces animation fundamentals and shows you how to start animating with your PC and a webcam, video or DV camera using StopMotion Station from StopMotion-Software.com.
A shameless self-promotion movie that shows part of what I have done and what I'm about. Beware! At the end of the movie, I sing my "Moviemaker's Lament" while performing a movie. That's what you see in the screenshot - as I punch keys, I jump around in the movies I have on the system.
The whole purpose of this blog is to get you to create your own classic animation, preferably using my software, which is at StopMotion-Software.com. If you've made a movie you're proud of, using any of my shareware or freeware programs, please let me know and I'd be glad to post it here and help you share it with the world.
I am about as old as the transistor and have been watching movies for about half of their existence. I started playing wih movie cameras and projectors about 1960, and with the early microcomputers about 1978. I love combining knowledge and technology to create tools for moviemaking and especially animation, filling in the gaps I see that prevent me from making full use of hardware, software, and ideas.
is an authentically great movie, as well as having incredible animation. The "making of" documentary shows that the movie was shot with digital cameras - one frame at a time. Click on the link to order the DVD from Amazon.com.
showcases all of Norman McLaren's work, not all of which is animation. This DVD set includes many documentaries. Some of the documentaries manage to make the principles of animation boring - but will reward close attention. These DVDs will stretch your mind. Click on the link to order them from Amazon.com.
is an essential book if you want to do animation in any style. I wouldn't be without it. Click on the link to order it from Amazon.com.
