Zoe-trope

Phi phenomenon  is the optical of perceiving a series of still images, when viewed in a chain of continuous motion. This is the reason motion illusion in cinema, animation and including the zeotrope. There is also a way to test this with a experimental demonstration, this would have to viewed by a person to get the phi phenomenon involves a viewer or audience watching  a screen, upon which the experimenter projects two image in succession.

Persistence of vision is another optical illusion where multiple discrete image blend together to make a single image in the human mind when there is not one in actual fact. For example the famous jesus optical illusion is the effect of this as you stare at the dots in the middle you start to realise that now the image has turned into Jesus in colour.

The Zoetrope is type of pre-film animation that produces an illusiion of movement by showing a sequence of drawings or images that show the stages of motion.  The name "Zoetrope" came from the  greek root words ζωή"life" and τρόπος"turning". the zoetrope features a cylinder with slits vertically cut in the sides which is what the viewer will look the through, this will stop the blurring that will happen if you just stare at the paper which turns around in circles. The zoetrope has barely changed over the years and still feature the same set of equipment.

It was modern zoetrope was invented in 1834 by a British mathmetician called William george Horner  which he called the daedalum which actually means the wheel of the devil
however it was actually first invented over 5000 years ago from Iran which was the early stages of  Zoetrope we know today.  William f licoln had rented it to  zoetrope meaning the wheel of life, the popularity of the zoetrope came in the late 19th Century. Since the late 20th century zoetropes have been used for artwork, entertainment and in other media use such as in horror films which have been used several times.

We were asked to make our own zoetropes, I began with a simple design which was a ball moving around, which was fairly easy to do, but I wanted to make them more complex which is involving movement of a stick man and having constant shapes for each image which was harder.  The zoetrope overall has limitations as you can only do so much with it and you would need a larger zoetrope to do something incredibly creative. The zoetrope overall has many limitations as you cannot tell much of a story as it only goes round in circles which means a receptive narrative which has a maximum length in which to present it.

Animation

What is animation?

Animation is the process of motion using it to create an illusion of movement and is shown as a sequence. It can be presented in different amount of ways on all technological platforms such as television, internet etc. There is a difference between animation and video, as video is takes continuous motion and splits it into frames while animation takes individual frames and puts them together to create the the continuous motion.

Animation has been around since the 19th century and existed before being consumed on a screen. Such as on a flip book and the next frame would be drawn on the next page. There has been evolution of animation since then and has advanced with the modern age.

The different types of animation 


There is a huge variety of animation the most popular of the 20th century being traditional animation which is hand drawn. The create the illusion movement each frame has slightly different drawings from the next so it appears as it is moving. This was the most popular and well known of animation up until the late 90s to the early 2000s. The first animated film was snow white and the seven dwarfs which was traditional animation and still one the highest grossing films of all time. This style had dominated for almost 60 years. Until the release of CGI animation with the opening of toy story.

Computer animated films are fully computer animated films to appear as 3 dimensional.  Cgi animation films have been around for 21 years, beginning  with toy story 1995. However computer generated imagery has been round for longer and then when CgI got advanced enough it become part of the animation genre of films as many people were still cautious if it would succeed. The first feature film to use Cgi was Tron (1982) and John Lasseter had worked on it and was inspired to have computer animation.

Another is stop motion animation which is an animation technique that physically manipulates an object that appears to move on its own. The object is moved in small steps between photographed frames. This will create the deception of movement when you have a huge amount of photos of the next movement in a large sequence. Similar to traditional animation it has been around since the 19th century but never reached the popularity of the latter. It has had been incredibly succsful in the live action genre such as for king kong (1933) and star wars (Empire strikes back and return of the Jedi).
However there are many successful sop motion franchises such as Wallace and Gromit, which began with the short "A grand day out". Which then finally had a full feature film in 2005 called "curse of the white rabbit". Another successful franchise is "Chicken run" which is the most successful stop motion animated film of all time grossing 225 million dollars worldwide.

The next one is the next step of traditional animation, the difference is when the animators are done the frames they are brought over to a process called Ink and paint in which they place a plastic sheet of celluloid o top the transparent paper containing the characters. This had a prominent part in the animation from the 80-90s but then once Computer animation it never had the same popularity.


Platforms which animation appears on


This is the media device to which you can view the animation. They were first performed on pieces of paper as a flipbook. So You have the next frame on the next page, then you would flip the pages at  a fast rate and it would create the animation, this is for hand drawn image.
This had began in the 1800s and was the most popular way to view animation up until the 1900s when animated films came into the mix.

This is what took animation to the next level, this was with the release of snow white and the seven dwarfs which came out in 1937, it became one of the highest grossing films of all time. This platform is still hugely prominent today and hugely profitable.. These would be viewed in movie theatres and mostly the only way they could be viewed until many people had televisions.

This is televsion which is another huge platform to watch animation and similar to film, still is today. The first animated TV show was released in 1958, but first joined mainstream TV with the Flinstones on 1960. Animation in general is aimed more towards chldren and this made it more accessible to them. There are now television channels just dedicated to animated shows.

Another platform is gaming which is where the viewer can actually participate om the screen, this would be to complete different tasks dependng on the game. All games are animated you are controlling whatever is on screen. Such as a character, some franchsses have even been turned unto live action films.

Last is the internet which can gather all platforms and put on the web. You can even cerate your own animation with a computer and put on the internet, this has only been around for teh last few years, so overall animation is always looking for ways to evolve and no one can exactly predict where animation will go next.

My favourite animated film: Toy story 3 (2010)

My favourite animated film is Toy story 3 which was released in the summer of 2010. It is a computer animated film by Pixar and distributed by Disney, its style followed the previous films while improving the technology of the animation. The budget was 200 million dollars which the second most expensive animated film. The main style of the film was to appeal to adults and children unlike alot of bad animated films which would only feature funny scnes but forget to be emotional as well which Toy story 3 excels in. Another style is to focus on characters and story which are then added with the animation.

For the content, the film is 103 minutes which is just above the average for animated films as the usual length is close to 90 minutes, as they do not want it too long for children but also have a complete story and this is to close off a trilogy. The film is a fully computer animated film and recorded in a sound stage. The film contains some of the best animation for the time, completely wiping out the level of effects of the previous films. We also have extremely detailed animation and the way the characters move it is more fluid than ever.

The Storyline is fairly similar to 1 and 2 but has it own spin on it where the characters are placed in the wrong box after the toys thought they were being thrown to the trash but they weren't. So they go to sunny side and think life is good now. But there is a clever twist that the head toy is actually a villain and there has not been a plot point like this in the previous films but still in the same spirit of toy story which is going on a adventure and trying to get home. We also have another storyline to develop a new child as woody manages to get to her house and he gets played with. This puts the characters in a situation they have never been in where it is almost impossible to leave and adds a different genre of heist into the film to not be a rehash. They also make this the most emotional as there are moments where our main characters could die especially at the end, where they assume its the end which create an affect on the audience, young and old. There are a few storylines in the film but the important part is that they all integrate to make one story which is the case here, as many other animated filsm have too many sub-plots which do not add up to the story.

All the main characters are back and still have the same affect as they did 15 years ago from the original, They still have brilliant chemistry as the dialogue fits the characters and the lines do not feel forced. They also keep the focus on the main protagonist which is Woody and still focusing on the other members. We are also introduced a new character who is the villain called "lotso". We then have an introduction to new side characters such as "ken" and the female t-rex. Lotso is the most interesting new character, as they first introduce him he seems nice and caring but you realise he is the complete opposite. The clever part is that he is not a card-board villain and has a compelling back story which we are shown visually. Usually a villain in animated film is evil because they are without any motivation.