Cartoon genre. Animation - what is it? Meaning, definition

When we hear the word “animation,” first of all, our favorite cartoons come to mind, and we feel a sense of gratitude for the pleasure we received in childhood (and not only in childhood!) to the people who create them. But animation in the broad sense of the word is not just cartoons.

So what is animation? The definition of this concept is interpreted throughout the world as “revival.” In general, the word animation is a borrowed word, it comes from the Latin “anima”, which is translated from this dead language- soul, and “animation”, accordingly, means revival, spirituality, inspiration. That's what animation is, the meaning of the word, or rather.

Animation = cartoon?

No one will argue that animation is an art form, the representation of movement in cartoons or computer graphics by displaying a series of frames changing at a certain frequency, providing a holistic visual perception. That is, animation is an illusion that creates the impression that something that cannot move on its own is moving. This impression is achieved by showing many independent drawings one after another.

This is where animation differs from video, where truly continuous movement is filmed.

A synonym for the word "animation" is "cartoon". This is a more familiar word for Russian-speaking people; it is derived from the Latin “multi”, which means “many”. And this is understandable: for the hero to “come to life”, his movement must be repeated many times. How many? At least 10 frames per second.

But still, it is the definition of “animation” that reflects more accurately modern capabilities animated films - masters not only “revive” the heroes of their creations by drawing a sequence of pictures, but do this by putting a piece of their soul into them.

The roots of “revitalizing” pictures go back to ancient times...

Animation - what is it, and when were the first attempts to animate a drawing made? Such attempts were made by cavemen who tried to capture movement in Paleolithic rock paintings. They depicted animals with many legs that overlap each other.

A clay vessel was found in Iran, on the walls of which there are 5 drawings of a goat in motion. The age of this vessel is determined to be 5 thousand years!

Similar drawings dating back to 2000 BC were found in Egypt.

What are not the first examples of animation?

But then the only device capable of reviving these drawings, showing them in motion, was the imagination of ancient people.

Such devices were first mentioned in the second century AD. Around 180 in China, Ding Huan invented the zoetrope for this purpose. In the 18th century, the phenakistiscope, kineograph and praxinoscope were invented. These were the first popular animation devices. What kind of devices are these?

The operation of a phenakistoscope is based on the use of a set of rotating slits.

The observer could see a sequence of images thanks to two disks that were placed on the same axis and rotated simultaneously. One of these disks had slots, the other contained images. The viewer looked along this axis of rotation, and the slits passed before the eyes, thanks to which he could see images from the second disk in succession.

But the praxinoscope used rotating mirrors inside a large cylinder to animate the pictures. The images “looked” towards the mirrors.
With the help of these devices, only one viewer could see animated pictures.

Animation prototypes

First famous history An example of animation was recorded in 1828. Frenchman Paul Roget demonstrated a rotating disk, on one side of which a bird was depicted, and on the other - a cage for it. When this disk moved, it seemed as if the bird was sitting in a cage.

In 1892, the first show of “light pantomimes” took place in the optical theater of Emile Reynaud, a French inventor and artist. Reynaud made an apparatus for his theater based on a zoetrope, improving it with a system of mirrors, and the inventor also connected the apparatus with a lantern. Thanks to its “magic” light, the image was shown on the screen, and many viewers could already see it at the same time.

True animation became possible with the creation of the camera and projector by inventor Tom A. Edison.

History of animation

Many historians consider the Englishman James Stewart Blackton to be the first true animator, his first animated film entitled “Magic Drawings” was published in 1900. The animator created his masterpieces like this: he drew an image on the board, then photographed it, and then erased it. And so in a circle: again I drew, photographed, erased...

The most famous among animators is Walt Disney, who not only developed the technology for producing cartoons, but also created a cartoon empire.

In 1923, Walt Disney released the series “Alice in Animation Land,” which revolutionized animation. Then, one by one, Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and other “cartoon” characters, who won the love of children all over the world, appeared. The Disney studio received as many as 12 Oscars for its work!

In Japan, the first animation experiments date back to 1913. And in 1932, the first animation studio. In 1933, the first animated film with sound appeared.

In 1943, the first full-length animated film, Momotaro, the Sea Eagle, was produced in Japan.

The founder of volumetric animation was Russian director Vladislav Starevich, who was also an artist and cameraman.

We can talk endlessly about the history of animation. But it’s hard for us to imagine it without good and instructive Soviet cartoons. One of the most famous is “Well, wait a minute!” This serial cartoon began to be filmed in 1969 at Soyuzmultfilm.

When the word of a dead language was “revived”

The term “animation” was first used in France at the beginning of the twentieth century, when a law on the creation of associations was introduced in that country.

Is that when the term “animation” came into being? What did this mean? The term meant an action or activity designed to enhance a keen interest in artistic creativity and culture in general.

Already in the second half of this century, the term "animation" began to be used in several meanings. It was then that for the first time this concept began to be interpreted as a creative activity in the production of cartoons.

And at the end of the twentieth century, animation began to represent a separate direction of cultural leisure.

Now the reader knows the translation of the word “animation”, the definition of the concept, the history of the creation of the first “live pictures”. It remains to give more specific definitions of this term.

Animation - what is...

How can this term be explained today? “Animation” - what is hidden behind this word? There are several definitions in which the same term means different types activities. So, animation is:

A technology that creates the illusion of motion of stationary inanimate objects. The most famous form of such technology is animation. She achieves this effect through a series of hand-drawn images.

Organization of leisure time at various events, including children's parties, children's health camps, in hotels. A leisure activity that involves the direct participation of vacationers themselves in mass events. Joint action with the organizers involves increasing the vitality and inspiration of the people taking part in it.

The importance of animation cannot be overestimated. Both as a synonym for animation and as a form of organizing leisure time, animation is designed to give people joy and revitalize them spiritually.

Animation(from lat. multiplicatio- multiplication, increase, increase, reproduction) - technique creating the illusion of moving images (movement and/or changing the shape of objects - morphing) using a sequence of still images (frames) replacing each other with a certain frequency. Animation(from fr. animation: revival, animation) is the Western name for animation: a type of cinematic art and its work (cartoon), as well as the corresponding technology.

According to the famous animator Fyodor Khitruk, the use of the terms “animation” and “animator” in the USSR is associated with the technology used before the introduction of classical hand-drawn animation - creating images by overlaying character elements on a sheet of paper, which is akin to appliqué. In consonance with this word, the new art was called animation.

In art, animation is a type of art that typically uses animation technology as the main element of creativity.

Story

The first steps in animation were taken long before the Lumiere brothers invented cinema. Attempts to capture movement in drawing began in primitive era, continued in ancient times and led to the emergence of primitive animation in the first half of the 19th century. Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau, Austrian professor-geometer Simon von Stampfer and other scientists and inventors used a rotating disk or tape with drawings, a system of mirrors and a light source (flashlight) - (phenakistiscope, strobe) to reproduce moving images on the screen. Further development This technology, combined with photography, led to the invention of the motion picture camera.

In 1914, Winsor McCay created the first ever cartoon character with colorful personal qualities- Gertie the dinosaur. Simultaneously, great amount The drawings made for the film required the invention of a new production technology, leading for the first time to a division of labor between an animator and a background artist: while McKay drew the phases of movement of the dinosaur, a student he hired copied the outlines of mountains, lakes and wood (celluloid film was not yet used at that time).

Subsequently, animation became a part of cinema, taking a strong place in it as one of the genres. To produce cartoons, film cameras were used that were suitable for time-lapse shooting on one of the standard film formats. To create hand-drawn animation, there were cartoon machines, which were a complex reproduction installation with a special film camera, usually having a design similar to devices for combined filming and allowing you to adjust the opening angle of the shutter and perform darkening and fades. Such devices were produced in a special version for animation, distinguished by vertical installation and a special magnifying glass for ease of sighting from this position. The design of professional cartoon machines made it possible to create multi-layered images on separate media and included lighting equipment. Currently, for hand-drawn animation, a computer or an animation machine with a digital camera is used.

First attempts

August 30, 1877 is considered the birthday of hand-drawn animation - Emile Renault's invention was patented.
October 28, 1892 - Emile Renault demonstrates the first graphic film at the Musée Grévin in Paris using "optical theatre" devices, operating differently than a film projector - before the invention of cinema.
1898 - George Stewart Blackton and Albert E. Smith filmed the first puppet film“Circus of the Lilliputians” (“The Humptu Dumptu Circus”). Wooden toys were used in the film.
1899 - The first surviving animated commercial, Matches: An Appeal, was filmed (voluminous, by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper).
1900 - George Stuart Blackton creates the film "The Enchanted Drawing", which has not yet had intermediate phases. During this period, he discovers the secret of animation, frame-by-frame animation shooting - image by image, which in the USA was called “One turn, one picture”.
1906 - The American company Vitagraph Company of America releases one of the first animated films by George Stuart Blackton, shot on film - “Humorous Phases of Funny Faces”, which was a series of simple drawings depicting funny faces.
1908 - French cartoonist Emile Col begins to actively engage in graphic animation. He created the animated film “Fantasmagorie”. This film became a landmark for the development of animation not only because it was the first European animated film, but also because it was the first to have a structured, self-contained plot, and main character Fantosh was endowed with a certain character.
1910 - Vladislav Aleksandrovich Starevich shot the world’s first three-dimensional animated film “Beautiful Lyukanida, or the war of stags with barbels.”
1911 - 1922 - in the USA, cartoonist Winsor McCay raises hand-drawn animation to a new level of quality, in 1914 he creates the prototype of an animated series with a common cartoon character (Gertie the Dinosaur), and in 1918 he shoots a documentary cartoon “The Sinking of the Lusitania” ( "The Death of Lusitania").
1911 - Winsor McCay created the film "Little Nemo" based on a newspaper comic strip.
1913 - Starevich creates the film “The Dragonfly and the Ant”. Created on the basis of Krylov's fable, the film was a tremendous success and worldwide popularity.

Further development

The further rapid development of animation was facilitated not only by films made earlier, but also by the development technical progress. The most important achievement in this area was the discovery of Raoul Barra - perforated celluloid, which made it possible to fix a sheet with a pattern using pins.

1918 - the premiere of the first full-length film took place feature film“The Apostle” (“El Apostol”) by Argentine director Quirini Cristiani.
1928 - Walt Disney creates the most popular cartoon character in the history of animation - Mickey Mouse. In the same year, his first sound animated film “Steamboat Willie” was released.
1929 - Walt Disney films Skeleton Dance, the first of his Merry Symphonies series. In general, Walt Disney's arrival in animation was marked by the creation of certain canons, the so-called “Disney animation.”
1931 - Quirini Cristiani directs the first full-length sound film, Reludopolis.
1932 - Walt Disney's first color animated film, Flowers and Trees.
1936 - the Soyuzmultfilm film studio (originally Soyuzdetmultfilm) was founded in the USSR.
1937 - Walt Disney first used a camera that allowed deep perspective in the film “The Old Mill”. In the same year, Disney released its first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, based on the Brothers Grimm fairy tale. “Snow White” brought Disney enormous success: worldwide popularity, over $8 million in revenue and rave reviews in the professional press.
1940 - William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, who later created the Hanna-Barbera Studio, begin work on the Tom and Jerry cartoon series.
1943 - Premiere of Paul Grimaud's animated color film “The Scarecrow” (“L’Epouvantail”).
1947 - The first animated television series “Crusader Rabbit” by Alex Anderson and Jay Bard. Animation is beginning to be used frequently in television advertising.
1956 - An animation film studio is created in Zagreb (Dusan Vukotic, A. Marks, B. Kolar, Z. Bourek, Vatroslav Mimica). The first film of the Zagreb School was the short film Nestasni Robot, directed by Dusan Vukotic.
1958 - Through the efforts of Osama Tezuka, a unique style of hand-drawn animation - anime - is created in Japan.
1960 - the start of production of the series "The Flinstones", which was shown on American television. It was the first animated series for adults.
1967-1971 - the first Soviet animated series (before that there were almanacs under common names) “Mowgli”, director: Roman Davydov.
1969 - in Roman Kachanov’s film “Crocodile Gena” the visual image of Cheburashka appears for the first time.
1983 - the film “Tango” by the Pole Zbigniew Rybczynski received an Oscar in the category of short animated films.
1988 - the first non-state animation studio in the USSR, Pilot, was founded.
1990 - The Simpsons series begins production.
1993 - Kodak introduces the Сineon system - the first full set equipment for creating special effects.
1995 - the first full-length computer animated film - “Toy Story” (Pixar studio).
In 1999, the cartoon “The Old Man and the Sea” directed by Alexander Petrov became the first cartoon in the history of cinema for large format IMAX cinemas. In 2000, the same cartoon was awarded the Academy Award.

Basic techniques

In graphic animation, one film frame (photo image) is a photograph of hand-drawn objects (graphic, pictorial, shadow (silhouette), powder), based on flat puppets and transfers, including photo cutouts). The phases of movement of individual objects or characters are drawn on sheets of transparent film (celluloid and other similar sheet materials), and then superimposed on glass located above the image of the background or habitat of the characters.

In volumetric animation, the frame is a photograph of volumetric, semi-volume, bas-relief and flat doll-actors.

Awards

Like any other art form, animation too has awards for excellence. The original Animation Awards have been given out by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for animated short films since 1932, during the 5th Academy Awards. The first Academy Award winner was the short film Flowers and Trees produced by Walt Disney Productions and United Artists. However, the Academy Award for Animated Feature Film was established only in 2001, and was won during the 74th Academy Awards (2002) by the film Shrek, produced by DreamWorks and Pacific Data Images. Disney/Pixar has since produced greatest number films, both winning and nominated for the award.

Throughout his existence, man has tried to reflect movement in his art. The first attempts to convey movement in a drawing date back to approximately 2000 BC (Egypt).

Another example of movement was found in the caves of Northern Spain: this is a drawing of a boar with eight legs.

Today, the transfer of motion can be realized using animation.

Animation is the artificial representation of motion in film, television, or computer graphics by displaying a sequence of drawings or frames at a frequency that ensures a holistic visual perception of the images.

Animation, unlike video which uses continuous motion, uses many independent drawings.

Synonym for "animation" - "animation"- very widespread in our country. Animation and animation are just different definitions of the same art form.

The term more familiar to us comes from Latin word“multi” – a lot and corresponds to the traditional technology of drawing reproduction, because in order for the hero to “come to life”, you need to repeat his movement many times: from 10 to 30 drawn frames per second.

Internationally accepted professional definition "animation"(translated from Latin “anima” - soul, “animation” - revival, animation) most accurately reflects all modern technical and artistic possibilities animated films, because animation masters not only bring their characters to life, but put a piece of their soul into their creation.

From the history of animation

Animation is like any other art form, has its own history. The principle of inertia of visual perception, which underlies animation, was first demonstrated in 1828 by the Frenchman Paul Roget. The object of the demonstration was a disk with an image of a bird on one side and a cage on the other. As the disk rotated, viewers were given the illusion of a bird in a cage.

The first real practical way to create animation came from the creation of a camera and projector by Thomas A. Edison.

Already in 1906, Steward Blakton created the short film “Funny Expressions of Funny Faces” (Humorous Phases of Funny Faces). The author drew on the board, photographed, erased, and then drew again, photographed and erased...

A real revolution in the world of animation was made by WALT DISNEY (1901-1966), an American director, artist and producer.

This is not a complete story animation, small retreat from the lecture material. More details from the amazing and interesting story animations you can get acquainted with yourself.

Animation technologies

Currently, there are various technologies for creating animation:

Classic (traditional) animation represents an alternating change of drawings, each of which is drawn separately. This is a very labor-intensive process, as animators have to create each frame separately.

Stop-frame (puppet) animation. Objects placed in space are fixed by the frame, after which their position changes and is fixed again.

Sprite animation implemented using a programming language.

Morphing– transformation of one object into another by generating a specified number of intermediate frames.

Color animation– with it, only the color, and not the position of the object, changes.

3 D-animation created using special programs (for example, 3D MAX). Pictures are obtained by visualizing a scene, and each scene is a set of objects, light sources, textures.

Motion capture (MotionCapture) – the first direction of animation, which makes it possible to convey natural, realistic movements in real time. Sensors are attached to the live actor in places that will be aligned with control points in the computer model to input and digitize movement. The actor's coordinates and orientation in space are transmitted to the graphics station, and the animation models come to life.

Principles of Animation

When creating animated films, some general principles are used. Most of them are formulated for Disney animation and originally applied to cartoons made in traditional animation techniques, but almost all of them are applicable to other technologies.
Here are the main ones:

"Compression and stretching"(squash & stretch). This principle revolutionized the world of animation. The essence of the principle is that a living body always contracts and stretches during movement. Before a jump, the character is compressed like a spring, but during a jump, on the contrary, it is stretched. The main rule in this case is a constant volume - if a character is stretched (stretch - deformation along the Y axis), then he must be compressed to maintain the volume of his body (squash - deformation along the X axis).

"Preparatory action" (Anticipation). IN real life To perform any action, a person often has to make preparatory movements. For example, before jumping a person needs to sit down; in order to throw something, the hand must be brought back. Such actions are called refusal movements, because before doing something, the character seems to refuse the action. This movement prepares the viewer for the character’s subsequent action and gives inertia to the movements.

Stage performance(staging). For the audience to correctly perceive the character, all his movements, poses and facial expressions must be extremely simple and expressive. This principle is based on the main rule of the theater. The camera should be positioned so that the viewer can see all the character's movements.

"Key Frames" (Pose to Pose). Before the discovery of this principle, movements were drawn, and therefore the result was difficult to predict, because the artist himself did not yet know what he would draw. This principle involves preliminary composition of movements - the artist draws the main points and places the character on the stage, and only then the assistants draw all the frames of the movement. This approach dramatically increased productivity because... All movements were planned in advance, and the result was exactly as intended. But in order to create any specific movement, careful elaboration of each “piece” was necessary. When developing expressive poses, the artist puts all his skill into it, so these moments should be visible to the viewer longer. To do this, assistants complete the movements so that most of the frames end up next to the key poses. In this case, the character seems to slip movement from one layout to another, slowly emerging from a pose and slowing down at another.

"Through Traffic and Overwhelm"(follow through / Overlapping actions).
The essence of the principle is that movement should never stop. There are elements such as ears, tails, clothes that must constantly be in motion. “Through movement” ensures continuity of movement and smooth transition of phases, for example, from running to walking and vice versa. The movement of individual elements of the body, while the body is no longer moving, is called overlap. Overwhelm is expressed in scenes of changing phases of movement. If a character suddenly brakes after running, the soft parts of the body cannot stop along with the hard ones and a slight overlap occurs (hair, ears, tails, etc.). When walking, the movement starts from the hips and then extends to the ankles. Thus, all the character’s movements are connected in a separate chain, and it becomes possible to strictly describe the rules by which he moves. A movement in which one element follows another is called through motion.

"Movements in arcs" (arcs). Living organisms always move along arcuate trajectories. Before this, the method of rectilinear movement was used, and therefore the movements looked mechanical - like those of robots. The nature of the trajectory depends, as a rule, on the speed of movement. If the character moves sharply, the trajectory straightens, but if it moves slowly, the trajectory bends even more.

Minor Actions (Secondary actions). Often, secondary movements are used to give the character greater expressiveness. They serve to focus attention on something. For example, a grieving character may frequently blow his nose into a handkerchief, while a surprised character may twitch his shoulders. Secondary actions have become widespread in world animation. Thanks to their use, the characters become more alive and emotional.

Timing(Timing). This principle allows you to give the character weight and mood. How does the viewer judge the weight of the characters? The character's weight consists of factors such as movement speed and inertia. In order for the character to move according to his weight, the artist calculates the movement and overlap time for each character. When calculating time, the hero's weight, inertia, volume and emotional state are taken into account. The mood is also conveyed by the speed of the character's movements. Thus, a depressed character moves very sluggishly, while an inspired one moves quite energetically.

Exaggeration (Exaggerate and Caricature). Walt Disney always demanded more realism from his workers, in fact striving more for "cartoon realism." If a character was to be sad, he demanded that he be made gloomy, but a happy one had to be made dazzlingly shining. With the help of exaggeration, the emotional impact on the audience is increased, however, the character becomes caricatured.

Professional drawing. Drawing is the basis of everything. At the Disney Studios, it's quite common to see signs like: "Does your drawing have weight, depth, and balance?" The principle of professional drawing also prohibits drawing “twins”. “Twins” are any elements of a drawing that are repeated twice or are symmetrical. “Twins” very often appear against the will of the artist, without noticing it, he draws two hands in the same position.

Attractiveness (Appeal). The attractiveness of the character is the key to the success of the entire film. How can you tell if a character is attractive? Any object can be attractive if you look at it with pleasure, discovering simplicity, charm, good design, charm and magnetism in it. It is impossible to take your eyes off the attractive character. Even the nastiest movie character must be attractive to keep viewers glued to the screen.

Animation has been considered a branch of the film industry since its inception. However this interesting direction can also be successfully associated with painting and graphics. Artist talent plus technical capabilities- and art is born that leaves neither children nor adults indifferent.

The origins of animation are associated with the strobe light, an optical toy invented by the Belgian inventor Joseph Plateau in 1832. The principle of this device was simple - a cyclic pattern was applied to the edge of the circle. For example, a running horse, which was depicted several times in different stages of movement. When the circle rotated, the pattern merged, and the illusion of a moving object arose.

The first real animator is considered to be the Frenchman Emile Reynaud. He created a praxinoscope apparatus, which consisted of a rotating drum, a system of mirrors and a lantern. In 1892, Reynaud launched a unique attraction - an optical theater. There he showed the audience comic stories lasting 15-20 minutes. This happened several years before the famous premiere, that is, animation became known to the French even a little earlier than films.

Further development of animation, as well as cinema, took place in France. Emil Kohl, another bright director and artist, began his career with acting productions. In 1908 he created the first animated films. They resembled hand-drawn comics, only in motion. Emil Kohl drew thousands of drawings to bring them to life. He sought to achieve realism by copying real objects, and even used photography. Modern animators consider his legacy valuable.

Emil Kohl

Another bright name in the history of animation is associated with Russia. In 1912 he created the first puppet cartoon called “Beautiful Lyukanida, or the war of stags and barbels.” This figure became famous for his love of insects. He made a lot of films dedicated to them, and they looked very natural on the screen. Vladislav Starevich is a subtle psychologist and talented artist. He cared not only about the visual side of cartoons, but also filled them with deep meaning.

Vladislav Starevich

If in Europe the filming took place in an almost artisanal way, then in America everything was much better with the technical base. Here he appeared, who in 1929 shot his first hand-drawn cartoon with musical accompaniment, “Dance of the Skeletons.” Disney is considered to be the father of animation; his work deserves a separate story, because he alone received 30 times. His experience is still used as a basis today.

Subsequently, cinema masters introduced another interesting technology- combining the play of live actors and cartoon characters.

Animation is the creation of a moving image on the screen. Or rather, the illusion of continuous movement. In fact, this is a sequence of static frames. And also - technically complex and constantly evolving art. So if someone tells you that cartoons are not serious, protest vigorously and give reasons. Here is a brief educational program on the main types of moving pictures, from which it will become clear why animation is not inferior to feature films, and in some ways even surpasses it.

Classic hand-drawn cartoon

Many in childhood drew figures in the margins of notebook sheets, changing poses with each page. If you quickly flip through such a notebook, it will seem that the character is running and the flower is blooming. Classic frame-by-frame animation works in a similar way.

The standard format for the frequency at which pictures change is 24 frames per second. And all these frames need to be drawn! Previously, this was done manually. Over time they came to the rescue special programs editing, so now only reference frames are drawn by hand. However, creating a frame-by-frame animated film- still painstaking and difficult work.

The first variation of stop-motion animation is sometimes called the thaumatrope, a vintage disc-shaped toy with designs on both sides. By quickly rotating the circle on the thread, it was possible to achieve the effect of combining pictures. For example, a bird and a cage turned into an image of a bird in a cage, and flowers and a vase - into a full-fledged still life. At the beginning of the twentieth century, the first animated films began to appear. Steward Blackton directed a short film "Funny expressions on happy faces", and Emil Kohl - "Phantasmagoria". In both films, the authors draw characters on a board, and then they come to life. Kohl found out that each phase of movement needed its own pattern and used a vertically mounted camera.

Then a great event happened - Walt Disney came to animation. He came up with, in particular, a way to create volume by combining different plans, as well as a layer-by-layer technique in which transparent celluloid films with images were superimposed on each other, so that the frame no longer had to be drawn from scratch. Using the three-color Technicolor system (combining monochrome images shot through red, blue and green filters), Disney created the first color cartoon, Flowers and Trees. He also directed the first sound cartoon in history (“Steamboat Willie” with Mickey Mouse whistling in leading role) and the first full-length animated film - "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", which created a real sensation.

It turned out that people are interested in animation different ages. Moreover, it allows you to achieve a special emotional effect using unique means.

An actor, even with the mimicry skills of Jim Carrey and the dedication of Christian Bale, who lost up to 30 kilograms for roles, still cannot go beyond the limits of human capabilities. But drawn heroes are not obliged to strictly obey the laws of nature and physics. Therefore, the artist can award them with any proportions, external features and plasticity - as long as it all works to reveal the image.

For this, we also need to thank Disney, who created a whole pantheon of iconic characters, whose character is reflected in their appearance. His methods were adopted by other animation directors. Thanks to them, today there are hundreds of memorable animated characters and villains.

The style of classical animation can be different. Disney or soviet cartoon, European author's or even abstract animation, anime - different styles, which you will never confuse. However, technically this is all stop-motion animation.

Puppet animation

Stop-motion technology uses a mock-up stage, which serves as a stage set, like in a theater, and puppet “actors.” To create the illusion of movement, the poses of the figures are slightly changed, photographed frame by frame, and then the whole thing is turned into a film. Such animation appeared along with classical cinema. For example, the famous scene from the film “A Trip to the Moon”, where a spaceship hits the Earth’s satellite right in the eye - this is also stop-motion.

Puppet cartoons - always special story in the world of animation. They are not turned into huge franchises (they won’t because of the complexity of production), and they are not the most successful commercially. However, there is a special magic in this method of reviving the static.

Such cartoons make it possible to create volume that classic hand-drawn animation is not capable of, and also provide detail without the need to draw anything - just place objects in the frame. However, this is not at all simple. The scenery for puppet cartoons is created by hand, and this is truly hellish work.

To depict sakura in the film “Coraline in the Land of Nightmares”, they used painted pink color popcorn.

Each flower on the toy trees is created by the hands of cartoonists and placed as required for the scene. In Kubo. Legend of the Samurai" monkey hair is made from tiny pieces of silicone, each of which was glued onto the figurine. All these things need to be thought out in advance, because when the item has already been created in the material, pressing undo will not work. When dubbing puppet animation, each movement of the lips of the puppet-actor is created separately, synchronizing facial expressions with the sound track. Today, many parts are printed on a 3D printer, and yet it is still a piece of work.

In the 60-80s, puppet animation was very popular in the USSR - for its textured materials and cozy intimacy. “Mitten” by Roman Kachanov, where a lump of red wool evokes a storm of emotions, and “Plasticine Crow” by Alexander Tatarsky, with its virtuoso play of forms (plasticine animation is also a subtype of stop-motion) and cheerful songs, earned special popular sympathy.

At some point puppet animation left behind the computer one in terms of complexity and naturalness of the characters’ movements. However, today CG technologies have stepped forward, and computer heroes are not inferior to their puppet counterparts, but in many ways surpass them.

Over time, difficult to produce and time-consuming stop-motion animation began to lose popularity. Oddly enough, this does her good. Only ideological directors who know exactly what they want to talk about and have an original style decide to work in this genre. For example, Tim Burton with his famous films about singing skeletons and dead pets, or Wes Anderson, who directed the film “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”

Computer animation

In this case, moving images are produced using computer-generated 3D animation. 3D object models move and interact the way the directors want them to.

George Lucas was one of the first to use computer animation in cinema. The special effects of the early Star Wars episodes are still valued more highly by many fans than the graphics in modern films. Lucas' ILM studio has also worked on many famous film epics with outstanding effects (Indiana Jones, Back to the Future, Star Trek"), as well as the film "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", combining actors and drawn characters.

Then it turned out that animation can not only serve films with actors, but also create own world. The pioneers in the field of computer animation, who did no less for it than Disney did for traditional animation, were the Pixar studio. Today it is the most successful animation studio in the history of cinema.

The 1986 animated short Luxo Jr. features a small table lamp, watched over by a parent lamp, playing with a ball. The lamps were given the honor of becoming cartoon characters because they allowed us to work with light and demonstrate how different surfaces reflect it. This short cartoon has what Pixar's work is still praised for - innovative technology and emotional liveliness of the characters. In 1995, the studio released the first completely computer-generated feature film- “Toy Story.”

The studio is constantly improving technology and looking for new opportunities. Curly hair in the wind, objects sinking in water, cloud movements, millions of grains of sand on the beach...

In the case of CG films, making it all convincing requires taking into account textures, weight, motion paths and many other factors. The fact that objects are virtual makes them " material characteristics"Only more important. After all, artists and developers want the rubber ball to spring back and the fabric to flutter in the wind, just like the real thing.

These methods have been adopted by other studios, for example, Blue Sky Studios, which released " glacial period”, and Dreamworks (franchises “Shrek”, “Madagascar”, “Kung Fu Panda”, “How to Train Your Dragon”).

Computer animation gave the viewer the depth of the picture, as well as the opportunity to run with the characters and make dizzying flights. Such dashing turns of the camera were not possible in classical animation, or even in regular cinema. This is why there are so many races and adventures in 3D cartoons, and scripts are written with visual components and dynamics in mind.

Of course, good cartoons are attractive not only due to technology. However, it is precisely the wide possibilities of animation that allow directors not only to convey experiences, but also to touch upon complex topics. Hayao Miyazaki talks about harmony with nature, Tim Burton makes even talking about death fun, and Pixar films teach you to accept yourself and understand your own feelings.