Traditional 2D Techniques

Flick Book - The first ever flick book was made in 1968 by John Barnes under the name of Kineograph. This was the first form of animation in a liner sequence, rather than circular.

In 1894 the Mutoscope was invented by Herman Casler. This facilitated the flipping of the pages by mounting the pages on a central rotating cylinder. This device remained a popular attraction in penny arcades and amusement parks throughout the early 20th century.

Cel Animation - Short for celluloid, is when a transparent sheet is used to draw upon, which is then layered with others to create a single frame. This was a very important innovation as it allowed parts of the frame to be repeated frame to frame without having to redraw it.

This meant that the background could remain still without giving a "jittery" appearance. In early very early animations before the use of cel, such as Gertie The Dinosaur, which was released in 1914 by Winson McCay, the entire frame, including the background, were drawn on sheets of paper and then photographed, so everything had to be redrawn for each frame containing movement.
This method was used for a very long time and in major film productions such as Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. 

Rotoscoping - Was invented by Max Fleischer in 1915 and used it for his series Out Of The Inkwell. It consists of tracing over footage, where the footage is projected onto frosted glass and then re-drawn. This was used in live-action and animated films, however this technique has been replaced by digital software.

Drawn on film - This is an unusual method, especially nowadays, but is extremely creative and if done well can have amazing results. It consist of drawing directly onto the footage. Meaning that you can make a film without needing a camera.

This task is extremely difficult as the frame on the footage is very small, and it requires a very steady hand and a lot of patience, as every frame has to be drawn individually.
A well known artist who used this method is Len Lye, who made 27 films, and would often draw on film to create patterns and abstract movements.

Photographic stills - This is when photos, artwork or other objects are filmed with the use of an animation stand. The first time this technique was used, was in 1897 in the film The Humpty Dumpty Circus. It was directed by Albert E. Smith and L. Stuart Blackton.

There are two possibilities when it comes to photographic stills, one option is to make a 3D animation, usually using clay models, however 2D animation can also be achieved, such as South Park. When it first started, everything on screen were cut outs and were arranged accordingly depending on the movement occurring on screen. However, this was eventually replaced by digital software.

Digital 2D Techniques

2D Bitmap - This file is basically a map of pixels. These files will be made up of pixels, meaning that they will suffer from quality loss when scaled. They are dependent on resolution and the amount of pixels in the image. They were first used widely for animations, as digital animations are much quicker and easier. However due to their problems with scaling were quickly replaced by vector graphics.

Some common bitmap file formats include:

• BMP - Bitmap File Format
• GIF - Graphics Interchange Format
• JPEG - Joint Photographic Experts Group
• PNG - Portable Network Graphics
• PCX - Personal Computer eXchange
• TIFF - Tagged Image File Format
• PSD - PhotoShop Document

2D Vector Graphics - Contrary to using pixels, vector graphics use geometrical shapes, lines and curves to create images. Because of this, these images are suitable for animation as the file can be resized to any proportion without losing its quality.

The file size depend on the number of graphic elements it contains, so the file sizes are not affected in a large way as the information is within the structure.

Application Software

Adobe Flash - This is an application which allows users to create vector graphics, animations and also games, which are viewed and played using Adobe Flash Player.
Flash originated from an application called SmartSketch which was published by FutureWave. In 1996 this software was acquired by Macromedia who released it as Flash. Adobe Systems then went on to buy Macromedia later in 2005, which is why today it's called Adobe Flash.
This application is most commonly used for video and audio players, advertisements and interactive multimedia on websites.
It allows great freedom in manipulating vector and raster graphics to create animations of images, drawing and/or text using a range of peripherals.

The game The Binding Of Isaac, which has sold over 2 million copies as of June 2012, was developed in Flash. It inspired a full range of new gaming genres and has since received a sequel, The Binding Of Isaac: Rebirth, however the sequel was not developed using Flash.

Adobe After Effects - This software is a digital motion graphics, visuals and compositing application, often used in post-production of films and television programs. It allows the user to render 2D and 3D files into a productions, and offers various tools and settings to animate the file and create visually appealing graphics and motions with intricate and complex designs.
After Effects was originally created by The Company of Science and Art in Providence USA, who released the first version of the application in 1993. The Company was purchased by Aldus in July 1993 and then later acquired by Adobe in 1994, who released the versions we know today.

The powers of After Effects are used in a wide range of productions, however, Samsung created a very creative and unique ad for their Samsung Galaxy SII using After Effects CS5 which particularly caught my eye. They use the software to animate a single clip using 2D and 3D objects and shapes.

Anime Studio - This software is similar to Flash, as its based on vector graphics and mainly used for 2D animations. It also has some aspects of After Effects, as it also uses a layer system, however it features different tools and functions which create more efficient designs and creations. It also has a physics engine which allows the effect of gravity to be produced as well as tools to create more natural animations.






Toon Boom Studio - This software is purely aimed at the production of 2D cartoon animations, it has a very simple interface however is a very powerful program to produce traditional looking animations.
This software is widely used in the industry, including:

• Family Guy
• Bob's Burgers
• The Lego Movie
• The Inner World
• The Simpsons Movie

This is the standard software for studios like Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox Animation and Universal.

2D Animation Techniques

This is an example of the works which I have produced in Adobe Flash.
I used the Brush Tool to draw and design the animations, then I used the Paint Bucket Tool to colour it in and assorted them in layers accordingly.
I used Keyframes and Motion, Postion and Scale Tweens on different frames in order to have the animations move, but before I did that, I had to convert each drawing I did into a Symbol, which I did and saves as a Graphic Symbol. By doing this it allows me to reuse the same object for an infinite amount of times, and also edit it if I needed to. It also meant that the creation would be a vector graphic, meaning I could scale it without losing quality in the drawing if I had to.

I used the Text Tool to write the text and scale it accordingly, it also allowed me to chose a font and the Fill, which is the colour of the text and also the Stroke, which is the outline of the text. I made sure the text was on a separate layer so that it wouldn't intervene in the future if I had to adjust some things. After that I used the Scale and Rotation Tweens to animate it as it is, making sure that each keyframe is the correct frame of the scene.
To export it and import the animation onto this blog, I exported the Movie as an Animated GIF, which allows short clips to be played on the web.

This is another example of one of my works done in Adobe Flash.
I imported a JPEG onto the stage in Flash, and then created a second layer and using the Brush Tool traced around it. To create the motion in the left arm, I created another layer and on that layer traced around the arm, so that the body and the arm aren't together on one layer. Then I deleted the JPEG image beneath it to have just the outline.
To create the motion in the arm I used the Rotation Tween, and moved the rotation point to his elbow so it would pivot on that point rather than in the centre. I created a keyframe at the point where his arm is almost extended, and then created another keyframe at the end of the animation and moved the arm back to the contracted position with the Rotation Tween.
To export this project I did the same as in the previous example.

Pioneers

Joseph Plateau - Plateau was the inventor of the Phenakitoscope. He had established the idea in 1829 and started to plan it in 1839, and by 1841 he had created his first prototype.
This device used a spinning disk with images painted on the edge, which were slightly different from one to the next and using the persistence of vision it would create the illusion of motion to the viewer.





William Horner - The modern Zoetrope was invented by Horner in 1833. This mechanism worked similarly to the Phenakitoscope, but the images are within a spinning cylinder which has vertical slits on the sides. The user would look through the slits and as the images spin, it would give the illusion of motion.
The device didn't become popular until the 1860s, when a variant with the slots on a level above the pictures, which meant that the continuous strips of image could be replaced, was patented by English and American makers.


Emile Reynaud - Reynaud was a French inventor, and is responsible for the first projected animation. He invented the Praxinoscope in 1877, which was an adaptation of the Zoetrope. Contrary to the viewing slits of the Zoetrope, Reynaud used a prism of mirrors to reflect the images, which created clearer and better quality images.


Later he went on to adapt this device so it could be projected, by replacing the opaque drawings with drawings on small glass plates, which he then joined together into a single strip. This device was succesfull however it was very jerky and slow, and the strips of paintings could not be easily reproduced.






Eadward Muybridge - Muybridge had a reputation for landscape photography. He was once approached by a racehorse owner, who had wagered on whether a galloping horse was ever airborne.
Muybridge had set up a series of 24 cameras at the side of a racetrack, connecting electrically controlled shutters to trip wire connected to the cameras, which when triggered would take a photograph. He had the galloping horse run past and trigger the cameras. After reviewing the photographs he had noticed that if they are quickly shown one after another it would create the illusion of motion, this lead to the creation of "Sallie Gardner at a Gallop" in 1878.

He also invented the zoopraxiscope to project the silhouettes of his works on a screen. He would have the silhouettes on the edge of a wheel, and then spin the wheel which had a projection light behind it.











Thomas Edison - Edison is known for his many inventions including the electirc lightbulb, the phonograph, alkaline storage batteries and the kinetoscope.
The kinetoscope at first only allowed one person at a time to watch the animation, which are better known as "peep shows". The development of the kinetoscope meant that a group of people could enjoy silent movies on a projector wall.
With the invention of the phonograph, he also aided in the development of non silent films, allowing audio to be included in the film.



The Lumière brothers - They patented the Cinematograph in 1895, which was far more practical than the Kinetoscope, as it allowed more than one person to view at a time, similar to a current cinema. They are known for being the first people to create a motion picture and showcase it in a theater as a form of income, using their La Sortie Des Ouvriers De L'usine Lumiere short film.
The apparatus was able to work 16 frames per second, which meant that compared to Edison's invention, would use less footage and also the clatter and grinding would be reduced.
The Lumiere brothers had opened theaters to showcase their films in London, Brussels and New York. By 1907 they produced the first practical colour photography process, which they called the Autochrome Plate.

Walt Disney - Walt Disney was an American business man, animator and cartoonist. He is known for being the co-founder of The Walt Disney Company. In

Walt Disney (1901-1966) (The Walt Disney Company 1923)

Walt Disney an American business man, animator and cartoonist; a major figure most infamously known for being the co-founder of The Walt Disney Company. He is entrepreneur, film producer and showman but more importantly an innovator of animation design. In 1923 he created a short film called Alice’s Wonderland which had actress interacting with animated characters. M.J. Winkler Productions contacted Disney with plans for a whole series of Alice whilst Walt and his brother formed Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio then in 1926 the name was changed to Walt Disney Studio.

After a few less popular animations, Steam Boat Willie was produced that had an animation with matching sound and went down well with the public and even went on to create Mickey Mouse the animated character in the 1930s everybody knows and loves. Now after many hits and success with titles such as Snow White and The Princess and the frog, Walt Disney Company is one of the biggest businesses in world making 45 billion (2013) and releasing a recent feature film titled ‘Frozen’.