a little background on animation…
Taken from Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Animation&oldid=190177928
Past methods of animation:
Leonardo shoulder study (ca. 1510)
Seven drawings extending over two folios in the Windsor Collection, Anatomical Studies of the Muscles of the Neck, Shoulder, Chest, and Arm, show detailed drawings of the upper body (with a less-detailed facial image), illustrating the changes as the torso turns from profile to frontal position and the forearm extends.
The Magic Lantern (1671)
The Magic Lantern was classed as the inventor of the modern day projector. It consisted of a translucent oil painting and a simple lamp. When put together in a darkened room, the image would appear larger on a flat surface. Euthanasia’s Kirchner spoke about this originating from China in the 1600’s.
Thaumatrope (1824)
A Thaumatrope was a toy used in the Victorian era. It was a disk or card with two different pictures on each side that was attached to two pieces of string. When the strings were twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image. The creator of this invention may have been either John Ayrton Paris or Charles Babbage.
Zoetrope (1832)
A Zoetrope is a device which creates the image of a moving picture. This contraption was produced in 1834 by George Horner. The device is basically a cylinder with vertical slits around the sides. Around the inside edge of the cylinder there are a series of pictures on the opposite side to the slits. As the cylinder is spun, the user then looks through the slits producing the illusion of motion.
Praxinoscope (1877)
The Praxinoscope, invented by French scientist Charles-Émile Reynaud, was a more sophisticated version of the zoetrope. It used the same basic mechanism of a strip of images placed on the inside of a spinning cylinder, but instead of viewing it through slits, it was viewed in a series of stationary mirrors around the inside of the cylinder, so that the animation would stay in place, and also provided a clearer image. Reynaud also developed a larger version of the praxinoscope that could be projected onto a screen, called the Théâtre Optique.
Flip book (1868)
The first flip book was patented in 1868 by a John Barnes Linnet. This was another step closer to the development of animation. Like the Zoetrope, the Flip Book creates the illusion of motion. A set of sequential pictures seen at a high speed creates this effect. The Mutoscope (1894) is essentially a flip book in a box with a crank handle to flip the pages.
Present methods of animation:
Stop Motion
Stop Motion is used for many animation productions using physical objects rather than images, as with traditional animation. An object will be photographed, moved slightly, and then photographed again. When the pictures are played back in normal speed the object will appear to move by itself. This process is used for many productions, for example, clay animations such as Chicken Run and Wallace and Gromit, as well as animated movies which use poseable figures, such as The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach. Sometimes even objects are used, such as with the films of Jan Svankmajer.
Stop motion animation was also commonly used for special effects work in many live-action films, such as The 1933 version of King Kong and The 7th Voyage of Sinbad.
CGI Animation
Computer-generated imagery changed animated films forever. The first fully computer generated feature film created was Toy Story, produced by Pixar Animation Studios in 1995. Toy Story proved that companies were slowly making the transition from traditional animation to CGI animation. The process of CGI animation is still very tedious and similar in that sense to traditional animation, and it still adheres to many of the same principles.
A principal difference of CGI Animation compared to traditional animation is that drawing is replaced by 3D modeling, though a form of animation that combines the two worlds can be considered to be computer aided animation but on 2D computer drawing (which can be considered close to traditional drawing and sometimes based on it).
Future methods of animation:
here is where I will probably do most of my research, on the cutting edge of technology… after all that is what is most interesting to me!
Animated Humans
Most CGI created films are based on animal characters, monsters, machines or cartoon-like humans. Animation studios are now trying to develop ways of creating realistic-looking humans. A couple films that attempted this were Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within in 2001, and Beowulf in 2007. However, due to the complexity of the human body functions, emotions and interactions, this method of animation is rarely used. Of principal complexity is the creation of a convincing human face model. Of secondary complexity but still a modern approach are techniques for the production of convincing hair or cloth movement. Later this form was tried again by scanning humans into computers such as the movie Beowulf in 2007.
I will update this with any info I can find in the future, stay tuned!
if u liked Final Fantasy, i bolieve the same teame, or parts of it did a famous piece in animatrix, if i remember corectly that was a first movie in animatrix series.