Animation - Making Your Own Film

Anyone aspiring to be taken seriously as an animator would be well advised to first learn how to draw and then to learn the animation basics.

No matter if you are interested in doing 3d computer animation or stylised 2d drawings if you can’t draw you are at a disadvantage. Drawing is best learned from doing life drawing lessons, from studying other people’s work who can draw and from just practising.

The Digital Era

The 90’s Disney Boom

While the British features stumbled in and out of the cinemas Disney stormed ahead with their animation revival which had began with Roger Rabbit. In the two decades since Walt Disney’s death their feature output had become decidedly patchy. Some high points had been ‘The Aristocats’ (1967) and ‘The Rescuers’ (1977) and by the time of ‘The Fox and the Hound’ (1979) the ‘Nine Old Men of...

The Fading Lightbox

Terry Gilliam and Monty Python

Gilliam was born in Minneapolis and studied political science before finding his way into being a writer and cartoonist. When work dried up in the USA he came to London, worked, or tried to work, at various animation studios (Bob Godfrey’s Movie Emporium turned him away for being ‘too good’!), then through John Cleese got some sketches on the children’s comedy ‘Do Not Adjust your Set...[ read full article ] »

Post War Animation - The TV Age

‘Animaland’: David Hand and Gaumont British Animation Studios

In 1945, David Hand, the director of Disney’s ‘Snow White’ was hired by the great British film producer J. Arthur Rank (more rhyming slang?) to come to Britain to set up a Disney type animation studio here. They chose not to locate in London or another of Britain’s bombed out cities, but in the picturesque Moor Hall in the village of...

The Rise Of Disney and The First Sound Cartoons

In 1927 the first ‘talking’ motion picture was released, The Jazz Singer starring Al Jolsen, which helped to popularize sound in films. Many cinemas now fitted the sound technology to show the new films.

Walt Disney

In 1928 Walt Disney rushed out ‘Steamboat Wille’ the first widely distributed synchronised sound cartoon, ‘Steamboat Wille’ (synchronised or sync, means when the sound...

The beginnings of animation can perhaps be traced back to a paper published by Peter Roget in 1824 for The British Royal Society called ‘The persistence of vision with regard to moving objects’. Following this came the invention of such devices as the phenakitstoscope (1831), the zoetrope (1834) and the praxinoscope (1892), all variations of the idea of sequence of images viewed on a rotating drum, although these were all somewhat preceded...

Windsor McCay and The Silent Animation Boom

Windsor McCay

In New York Windsor McCay was a successful newspaper cartoonist of the time, his most popular strip being ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’, a brilliantly designed and illustrated full page colour comic strip. He spent four years turning this into a cartoon ‘Little Nemo’ (1911) which was met with much success and followed this with ‘Gertie the Dinosaur’ (1913) which became a...

British Animation 100 Years at The Cutting Edge

The United Kingdom has had a rather underrated part to play in the history of animation. As is often the case though, a lot of the important ideas and inventions in the development of animation came from British minds but were often better exploited elsewhere.

This exporting of innovation however has always attracted, and been balanced by, an influx of talent from abroad. Some of the great names...

These quizzes are best viewed in Firefox.

Firefox is an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer which is available free for both PCs and Macs.

These quizzes are best viewed in Firefox.

Firefox is an excellent alternative to Internet Explorer which is available free for both PCs and Macs.

Animated Film Teachers Approach.ppt

Animated Films Mock Exam.doc

Animation Films Essay Frame.doc

Computer Animation

Though animation can be traced to the back to the 19th Century with flip books and zoetropes its history as an industry is entwined with the film industry. Georges Méliès’s accidental discovery of stop start animation, for example, lead to the development of many narrative devices that are now a standard part of post-production,...

2D Animation Software

Adobe AfterEffects [PC & Mac]
Publisher: Adobe
License: Free Trial
Comments: Motion graphics and visual effects for film and media.

Animator-9 3.6 [PC]
Publisher: Key Technology
License: Free
Comments: Make animated GIFs from your digital camera.

AniS 1.0 [PC]
Publisher: Tom Whittaker
License: Free
Comments: Simple image manipulation for the web.

Bauhaus Mirage [PC]

Jumpwel [PC]
Publisher: Phildes
License: Free...[ read full article ] »