Cel Animation

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Gertie the dinosaur, from Winsor McCay's 1914 film of the same name. The earliest widely popular animated short films in the US, it was drawn frame-by-frame entirely by hand on paper.

Celluloid or cel animation is a film-based media form, where transparent individually-created films frames are projected with light sequentially onto a reflective screen, creating an illusion of motion. Although contemporary cinematic animation has been transformed through use of the computer, historically cel animation has been created by hand. Due to this manual quality, traditional cel animation pre-dated the photographic automation that became 20th century cinema.

This visual phantasmagoria derives from the phenomenon of 'persistence of vision,' or the visual perception of minute sequential differences. As fundamentally discontinuous not just in sequence but in visual representation, cel animation is inherently modular. Its fundamental construction gives cel animation a rarely-acknowledged aesthetic range. Historically, its hand-drawn nature and demand for labor has made animated cartoons visually oversimplified, yet the computational capacity of the computer has made the form exceedingly complex.

Precursors

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The phenakistoscope's sequential images appeared to move when the disc was spun.

Many technical genealogies have been written about the precursors to what became established in the early 1900s as 16mm motion picture cinema. In perceptual effect, these devices can be divided visually into hand-painted or hand-drawn, as contrasted with mimetic, and temporally into static and dynamic representation.

In static visual terms, Western art established the painted, typically rectangular visual image. In the 18th century, the magic lantern transposed painting onto a small transparent surface, which could be projected on a wall, as a slide projector does. The camera obscura, an ancient device, constructed a dark, enclosed room with a single small perforation; as light refracts through the hole, an inverted image appears on the far wall, effecting both a mimetic and constructed effect. In the mid-19th century, photography's inscription of light onto transparent film with chemical processes transposed mimetic images onto tin and paper.

In dynamic visual terms, image sequences have been found on ancient pottery and tablets, but came to 'move' only in the 19th century, with parlor amusements like the phenakistoscope. This device has hand-painted or hand-drawn figures rounding the edge of a circular disc; when the disc is spun, the figures appear to move. Photography's mimetic images were static until technicians such as Étienne-Jules Marey's experiments in chronophotography began to impose mechanical order on movement. Edison's kinetoscope first imposed a mechanical seriality upon motion, and cinema was born.

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Marey's stroboscopic chronophotography revealed a discontinuity in motion.

Cinematic Presence

The word animation derives from the latin verb 'animare,' which means 'to give life to' (Wells, 10).

Historically, cel animation pre-dated traditional cinema



deriving from the latin verb



Outline:

Presence Gumbrecht Example: McCay’s Gertie the dinosaur

Illusion of motion Persistence of vision

Intertwine theory with history: Animation as a system Modularity From simple to complex


Early animation Late animation

History and theory: Manovich Gitelman Crary

Precursors Representation: Magic lantern Seen as mystical Example: picture Photography Mimesis not immediately grasped Especially since exposure time long Example: war photo picture

Time: Phenakistiscope Example animated gif //http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a2/Phenakistoscope_3g07690a.gif// Kinetoscope (film) Example: Edison film boxing match http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiTXye62mAY&feature=channel

Differentiation from film Mixture of live-action and animation Example: Disney’s Alices’ Wonderland Wonders of animation

Representation of space Crary

Abstraction of vision into mechanism Subjective truth and perceptual effects

Example: Disney’s Fantasia


Representation of time Doane and Freud Crary Example: Road Runner Stopping of time

Persistence of vision


Televisionization of animation Economic and cultural changes Example: Scooby Doo Disney’s mid-period “English” films

Future:

Special Effects as supplement Dichotomy Example: Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Special Effects as enhancer of verisimilitude: Manovich

Example: Jurassic Park

Digital video, with live-action as a supplement Manovich

Example: Avatar