A Brief Look-back at Animation
Animation has come a long way in its history. We're at a stage where animation has become entirely seamless, obscenely high-def and so widely accepted that a large percentage of current high-budget movies and television programming falls into the category of animation - however it wasn't always like this. You only have to look back 22 years to see the first feature film made entirely from animated material.
There have been many milestones on this journey to the media mainstream though:
Oldest Remaining Animated Feature Film -
1926
Though it's by no means the earliest animated feature film, The Adventure of Prince Achmed, by Lotte Reiniger, is the oldest known remaining animated feature film.
As we're now in a visually spoiling age in the world of animation anyone would be forgiven for looking at images from this film and judging them to be graphically awful, but you have to take into consideration that it came from an age where the field of animation was completely bare and the concept of it all was entirely new.
The method of animation used is called
silhouette animation, invented by Reiniger herself, where cardboard cutouts were manipulated and subject to frame by frame animation. This method would've been very time-intensive and luckily modern methods have advanced and improved since then, allowing for more aesthetically pleasing and easier to produce media.
First Feature Filmed in Three-Strip Technicolour -
1937
It should come by no surprise that Walt Disney, probably the most well known name in animation, attained a fair number of firsts in animation. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was incredible for its time and was the first animated feature filmed in three-strip technicolour.
In just 11 short years it's amazing to see how far the field had come and as a result, The Adventure of Prince Achmed to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs are incomparable, possibly due to the sheer man-power required to make Snow White.
A method called rotoscoping was employed for the film, in which footage is painstakingly traced, frame by frame, to make sure that each frame is consistent with the last. In total, during the making of Snow White 166352 hand-painted cels were exposed to the camera at a rate of 1960 per day. Once again though, luckily technology has advanced past the need for individual frames.
Despite being so old however, the story of Snow White has more than stood up to the test of time and still stands comfortably in many top 50 films lists, and by doing so securing itself a Bluray rerelease in late 2009.
First Feature Film Using Xerography Process -
1961
Disney later followed on from Snow White, Fantasia and Lady and the Tramp, all of which were firsts in the field of animation, and produced the first feature film using the xerography process. 101 Dalmatians used this process primarily to cut prices after the flop of a Sleeping Beauty, which was incredibly expensive.
The animators were aided in production by the use of modified Xerox camera. They used this to transfer the animators sketches directly to the animation cels. By using xerography it became a lot easier to reproduce each frame, but at the price of not being able to deviate form a scratchy outlined style.
One of the huge difficulties that came with animating the dogs was the spots on each individual dog and keeping up continuity between frames. In total, the film contained 6,469,952 spots, all individually drawn. The animators would place one 'anchor spot' on each dog and placed the remaining spots in relation to that. A daunting task considering the parent dalmatians had 72 and 68 spots respectively, and each puppy had 32.
Fully Computer-Animated Feature Film -
1995
With the release of Toy Story in 1995 the very logical milestone of fully computer animated film was met. Apart from the previous accolade, Toy Story will also be known as the film made that started the Disney/Pixar collaboration, one that to this day stands and puts out many great animated movies.
With the development of computer generated graphics there was a huge amount of potential for what could be done in terms of aesthetically pleasing characters and backdrops. As the graphics increased, so did the difficulty and complexity of the animation. Each character was initially made out of either clay or modelled from a computer-drawn diagram before becoming their final computer animated state. Every character was then coded to allow them to talk, walk and jump. Woody alone required 723 motion controls, including 212 for his face and 58 for his mouth.
Director John Lasseter spoke about the challenges and expectations of the first fully computer animated film: "We had to make things look more organic. Every leaf and blade of grass had to be created. We had to give the world a sense of history. So the doors are banged up, the floors have scuffs." It's easy to see where this intense dedication to detail got them, Toy Story is now a modern classic and a major franchise.
The field of animated media is ever growing. With every passing year the amazing graphics and attention to detail where character design and scenes are concerned become increasingly amazing. I remember when Monsters Inc had just released in the cinema and how incredible I found the fact that each of Sully's hairs moved independently. Monsters Inc is now 11 years old and films have been getting ever more beautiful with every passing year. I eagerly await the future and the next important milestone for animation.
