Stop Motion Research

Stop motion is a form of animation, it uses inanimate objects to create lively and dramatic productions. It is a type of frame by frame animation, where instead of drawing out several frames, several ‘grabs’ are taken of the objects after they have been slightly moved. This allows for the illusion of movement and the more pictures taken the more accurate and fluid the animation.

   

Stop motion is a very time consuming and rigid animation form it requires about 30-50 frames per second in order to create the illusion, it can several years to finish a full-length feature production of a stop-motion animation. One very famous and successful stop-motion movie series ‘Wallace and Gromit’ had a very extensive production process as, it took a whole working day to get over 30 frames which totalled to one second of animation per day, so you can imagine how long it took to finish a full-length film.

When creating a stop-motion project it is imperative to keep a fixed camera, any sudden quick movements to the set up could destroy several frames and render them useless, as well as completely disrupt the illusion. A fixed camera ensures clean accurate frames to be taken, and it prevents people from having to hold a camera up for hours on end. Large production efforts would have several cameras at different angles focused on the scene so that multiple shots can be taken at the same time and is very helpful when implementing camera movements such as pans and dolly shots, as well as zooms.

In modern times new technology allows for even more materials for character build, previously they had been made with clay, paper cut-outs, puppets and other things. Now stop-motion studios such as Aardman; the creators of, Wallace and Gromit, have started implementing 3D printouts in their productions. As with many digital products 3D printers can come in handy as the artist would sculpt their character on various software and be able to print them out. 3D printouts can range from fully functional to exoskeletons and can be implemented into either pre-production and production. Some recent major stop-motion films that included the use of 3Dprintouts are; Coraline(2009), ParaNorman(2012), The Boxtrolls(2014) The Pirates in an Adventure with Scientists(2012) and Kubo and he two Strings (2016).

Idents are another popular use of stop-motion, MTV was notorious for these in the eighties, and now channel four also incorporated idents. Idents are shown prior to and during commercial breaks and are used to identify the network and so that a host can explain the incoming programme schedule.

   

Idents really took off in the 1980s when MTV made several in 2D animation, people were excited to see the short animated scened prior to viewing their show, colourful creative clips really broke up the monotony of the ads. But they all started back in the early 1950s when the BBC originated the ident. They started off really simple with still black and white photos that have now progressed into full out productions, a range of animation styles and music. They have now become a competitive industry as a stand-alone ident can really attract viewers to the channel or at least be a memorable event, E4 has some of the most commended idents.

 

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Animation Research

The first ever animation machine was the Magic lantern, invented in the 1650s it works through a feeble lantern and thin paper. It was used for storytelling and eventually was used in carnivals and circuses.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The zoopraxiscope was invented by Eadweard Muybridge in 1878, the praxinoscope by Charles-Emile Reynauld in 1877 the Zoetrope by William Homer in 1833, and the Phenakitoscope was invented by Joseph Plateau in 1829. These devices were important because they progressed the technology behind moving pictures and lead the way for early films.

Emile Cohl was born in 1857 and he became an animator in the 1880s/90s prior to this he was a writer which is what allowed him to join the Gaumont film company, where he later became an animator, he made the first animation called Fantasmagorie in 1908. The process for making this animation involved taking individual photographs of each drawing, there were 700 individual photographs of the character moving in total. He also produced the animations ‘Musical Mews’ and ‘ Feline Follies’ introduced the famous character ‘Felix the Cat’ this character was revolutionary because it was the first character drawn this way. A full-bodied character that had distinct and unique features of this cat was the blueprint for several subsequent characters the most blatantly obvious being Mickey Mouse.

Georges Melies was born on the 8th December 1861 and is referred to as the father of Special Effects. It was his work that he did, during his career that lead to a more widespread use of special effects in cinema and animation. He used a special process in 1902 to make the film L’ouef du Sorcier.

Windsor Mccay was born in  1868 and released Little Nemo in 1911 it was important because it had many processes of animation in it such as squash and stretch. He used the process of Split which then became frame by frame animation and has been adopted by the industry.

George Eastman invented the Kodak camera in 1888 and in 1889 he commissioned a chemist called Henry Reichenbach to develop a type of loose film that would easily fit into a camera this improved picture quality and made it easier to use the camera

Thomas Edison and William Laurie-Dickson patented the kinetoscope in 1891 the kinetoscope is a machine that allowed for movies to be viewed through a small peephole, this is a very early version of a moving picture viewing machine, that exhibited moving pictures when used. This was an influence on the industry because you could see the movies.

Emile Reynaud was born in 1844 and invented the praxinoscope this differed from the kinetoscope because the former used mirrors and the latter used cameras.

‘La Sortie des Usines’ means ‘Workers leaving the factory’ and the director of this film was Louis Lumiere and this brother August. They used the cinemaphotography machine which they had invented themselves to exhibit this film. On the 28th December 1895, at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris, the brothers premiered 10 short films including ‘La Sortie des Usines’.

J.Stuart Blackton was born in 1875 and is famous for releasing the film; ‘The Enchanted Drawing’ this used stop-motion which was a big thing at the time. He is considered to be the father of American Animation despite being a British immigrant, he is largely responsible for bringing animated moving pictures to America in a time of silent films.

Walt Disney Studios was established in 1923 and in 1928 ‘Steamboat Willie’ was released which showcased Mickey and Minnie Mouse on a boat it was groundbreaking as it had synchronised sound and therefore blew silent animation out the way.  But in 1937 more ground was broken when Snow White was released in full colour, synchronised sound animation In the 1900s Disney was able to establish itself through these events and has now simultaneously tied the brand with animation forever.

Cel animation involves hand drawing hand inking and doing everything by hand in order to produce the frames needed to be filmed for animation. Now using modern technology these hand-drawn images can be scanned into a computer system and thus be manipulated digitally, therefore, the artist doesn’t have to draw as many frames and can even enhance the quality of the frames digitally. More developments in recent technology have allowed for the use of computer-based animation to take place, now all drawings, colourings and touch-ups can be done on a computer. This way of animation is not only cheaper but also a lot faster. Now animators have a lot more options when creating and they can even opt to do 3D animation as well.

Eadweard Muybrigde

Eadweard Muybridge was born in Kingston London 1830 to his mother and his coal and grain merchant father, originally named Edward Muggeridge. He had three brothers, and a cousin, Norman Selfe emigrated to Australia to become a renowned engineer. In 1843 when his father died Edward’s mother continued the company. At the age of twenty, he left Kingston to work in New York as a book binder’s Agent, it wasn’t until he moved to San Francisco shortly after 1852 that his career took off.

  

In 1860 Muybridge sustained serious head injuries whilst planning a return trip to Europe in Texas, later psychologists have suggested this may have lead to Muybridge’s later erratic behaviours. Whilst recovering in England, over the next few years Muybridge learnt the wet-plate collodion process after having taken up professional photography. In this time he also managed to patent at least two of his inventions, after he returned to San Francisco as a professional photographer. It was here that his interest in photography bloomed, starting off as a landscape photographer, regularly capturing the Yosemite Valley and selling these pictures to the middle-class people In 1868 his large captures of the Yosemite made him world famous.

  

Here he caught the attention of Leland Stanford a former governor, this man commissioned Muybridge to solve an age-old argument through photography. Muybridge had to use his skills to prove whether or not at any point of a horse’s trot are all four feet off the ground. This lead to the ‘Horse in Motion’ the images of the trotting horse are lost to time but the images of the galloping horse are present all over the internet. Muybridge was able to complete the capture of a horse in motion in 1878 and it became a groundbreaking scientific find. It was through this incident with Stanford Muybridge was able to develop the early movie projector; the zoopraxiscope.

In 1868 travelled to Alaska to take pictures of Tlingit Native Americans and Russian immigrants, and in 1873 he was commissioned to photograph the Modoc war between the US Army and the Native Americans in California and Oregon.

  

When he returned to the UK after 1867 he began using the name Muybridge and often released several of his works under the pseudonym ‘Helios’ this was also the middle name he gave to his only child Florado Helios Muybridge. In 1875 he began his journey in Central and South America working under the pseudonym ‘Eduardo Santiago Muybridge’ in Guatemala. After a trip to England in 1882 he changed the ‘Edward’ to ‘Eadweard’ after seeing King Edward 1st’s coronation stone with the name ‘Eadweard’ in Old English in the Christian form it was re-erected in Kingston in 1850 a few yards from Muybridge’s childhood home.

                   

In 1884 to 1887 Muybridge spent time at the University of Pennsylvania making his most important photographic discoveries, he photographed naked human movements for scientific research in the form of a compendium. After this, he spent a lot of time working on; Animal Locomotion: An Electro-Photographic Investigation of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements. He kept working on these until the year 1900 when he returned to Kingston, London England, he bequeathed his work to Kingston museum in the 1890s. Then he died in 1904 after establishing himself in the world of early film and photography.

 

  

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Game Research

 

London 1980s

The car racing game I hope to create will take full advantage of London’s vibrant music and roaring self-expressionism scene in the 1980s. With so many unique and different sounds being explored in the city, there would be a wide range of individualistic fashions and personas that I can emulate onto my characters based on; the trends, styles and popular music at that time. So to make this game depict the era I chose, as realistically as possible I have undertaken some research to give me further insight to city life and contemporary culture during the 1980s as well as some political changes that were occurring that could centre around the storyline for this game.

Music

Some of the main genres of music that were in full force in the 1980s were; rock, soul, pop, Hip-Hop, Jazz, Reggae, and disco. Within these main genres, there were subgenres such as; glam rock, punk rock, and synth pop. As well as established genres there were upcoming underground genres rising through such as house music and grime(UK: Hip Hop). House music and other types of music lead to the generation of party goers in the eighties being dubbed as the raver generation. It was also from this that a wider sense of underground culture and music was being developed, created and becoming more popular especially amongst ethnic communities. such as grime; house music, Jamaican bashment, and Hip-Hop.

  

 

 

Sources: 1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_the_United_Kingdom_(1980s)         2http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/features/rave-on-the-rave-culture-of-the-late-eighties-still-affects-clubbing-today-8063324.html

Fashion

As means of self-expression, people tended to dress in a way that associated themselves with the type of music they listened and the type of ideals they identified with. Much like in the sixties and seventies having the hippies and the punks, the eighties had its’ music and fashion related trendsetters. Much of the fashions were quite similar to the 70’s but it did also begin to incorporate bright colours, velour clothing, and a vast range of expressive accessories. Headbands, leg warmers,    jumpers, tennis play apparel, sunglasses, jackets and big hair were all key features of eighties fashion trends. People began dressing more like celebrities as magazines, TV and other forms of media increasingly shaped and influenced how people saw fashion and the popularity of certain styles. But there was still a strong sense of self-expression and individuality amongst the trends sported by individuals.

Sources: 1 http://www.liketotally80s.com/80s-fashion/

            2 https://www.retrowaste.com/1980s/fashion-in-the-1980s/

Politics

Throughout the eighties, Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister and was in full control the entire decade, during this time that the UK had a tense political environment.

Key Events:

• 1982 Falklands War
• 1983 Margaret Thatcher re-elected
• 1984-5 Year Long Miners’ Strike
• 1984  IRA bombings on Conservative Conference in Brighton
• 1986 National Industries privatized (Macmillan said ‘It’s giving away the family’s silver) completely ends consensus politics and lingering socialism
• 1987 Margaret Thatcher re-elected
• 1989 Tim Berners Lee invents the World Wide Web
• 1990 introduction of Poll taxes in the UK sparks riots in London & the end of Margaret Thatcher (forced to resign)

Some of the events in the 1980s inspired music and a new form of comedy that mocked or challenged the powerful and rich, satire.

 

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/timeline/present_timeline_noflash.shtml

International events occurring were really beginning to shape the modern world such as the fall of the Berlin wall in 1989. The Apartheid was beginning to end(1991), and Nelson Mandela was to be freed in 1990. Talk shows were evolving and being popularised with the introduction of the Oprah Winfrey show. In 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded over Cape Canaveral, killing the astronauts aboard. Then three months later, the deadliest nuclear power plant accident to date occurred outside the Ukrainian city of Chernobyl, leaving radioactive material scattered across Europe. This amongst other things really showed how things were changing and seemed to be taking a different path from history.

 

Source: https://www.thoughtco.com/1980s-timeline-1779955

Game Art Styles

In groups, we were tasked with researching various game styles, and their uses in video games. I worked with Josh and Jack to create a powerpoint on the subject. Whilst Josh and Jack explore the various art styles in games I looked at older styles of art used predominately in the eighties and nighties.

When we completed our powerpoint we then had to present it to the class, taking it in turns to share information. This was our first group presentations and I feel we worked well as a team, though the actual presentation held some difficulty, it worked out in the end.

This is some of our powerpoint: