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Writer's pictureDan Woodward
Mar 274 min read

Responding to a Brief - Research 3.8: Animation Styles

For this exercise, I was tasked to pick a range of animations and identify how they had been made and to see if I could identify illustrators using animations to push boundaries. First, I decided to concentrate on the animation styles. My research [6] first led me to the five types of animation:

  1. Traditional

  2. 2D Animation

  3. 3D Animation

  4. Stop-motion

  5. Motion Capture


Traditional

The first animation I will look at is the 1982 film "The Secret of Nimh" which was a film favourite in our household when I was a child. I really enjoy the movies from Don Bluth, as they always felt to me that they treated the children with more respect; they didn't patronise them. They let you know that the world could be weird, scary and funny.



The film used the 'cel animation' approach whereby each frame was drawn by hand, then inked and painted by hand onto a sheet of plastic acetate. These would then be layered on top of a hand-painted background before being photographed. Then the next frame's cel would be used, photographed and so on. Walt Disney was the one to take this form and industrialise it, where it was the dominant approach until the early 1990s.



Disney pushed the boundaries of animation technology, creating ways to add a sense of depth even within a two-dimensional world. The MultiPlane camera allowed Disney to create animations that utilised the parallax effect, allowing the camera to feel as if it was moving through a three-dimensional space.



Animators also experimented with combining film and animation (see stop-motion, below). Mary Poppins won an Academy Award for its seamless use of animation in a film. However, animations had already used another technique to help animators achieve realistic movement. Rotoscoping used a live-action actor, who was filmed performing a movement. Then artists would capture that movement by tracing the film frame by frame to paper and then the cel.


2D Animation

In the early 1990s animation started to become digital. The same general frame-by-frame process was used, but it was done with a computer instead. This allowed for much more dynamic settings and backgrounds, but still kept the hand-drawn feel.

With the advent of Pixar's disruption of the animation industry, and later with films like Shrek, 2D animation seemed to die a death



That does not mean that this animation approach has stopped. The films of Hayao Miyazaki prove that there is still a place for hand-drawn stories. In fact, they are artistically more successful than a lot of the 3D commercially-focused feature animations.


3D Animation

Pixar changed how animation was produced forever, and other studios quickly followed suit in the pursuit of market share. Since then, the technology has become better and better, and it is more efficient than ever to create the animation itself once the 3D models and rigging have been established.



With 3D animation, the animator can set up keyframes and breakdowns, and then the computer can simulate all the 'in-betweens' frames without the need for human intervention (well, maybe for some tweaks here and there). This is why I really like the "Spider-Verse" films as they intentionally look to break the rules and reclaim aspects of 2D animation. Things like smear frames instead of in-between frames, animating on 2's instead of 1's and comic-style textures.


Stop-motion

Stop motion in 20th century films involved models, miniatures and mattes to fantastical scenes that would otherwise be impossible to create at the time. Stop motion takes a model, and then photographs it in position. Then it is manually moved ever-so-slightly to its next position, and filmed again. Then put together and run in standard time, the movements blend together to create the animation.



This approach was used in its own right for projects like the 'California Raisins' TV adverts. These models were made out of clay, leading to the approach being called 'claymation.'



I really enjoy the films from the Laika studio, who specialise in this technique. They have taken the approach to a whole new level. While the models still have the appearance of clay, they are actually placed on sophisticated metal armatures, sometimes with replaceable body parts and even facial expressions. The film combines these more hand-made techniques with other more modern filming techniques like chroma key so that backgrounds can be added in digitally later.


Motion Capture


The line between film, animation and games is blurring all the time. Motion (or sometimes called performance) capture. Rotoscoping was a kind of motion capture, but now the technology is so much more sophisticated. Using suits with reference points on them, special cameras can record the movement of the performer's body and even their face. These can then be mapped to a 3D model in a computer simulation. With this information, you can have an actor appear directly in an animation, or translate the performance into a new role, like the aliens of Avatar or the apes of Planet of the Apes.


 
References

  1. Bluth, D. (2021) The secret of nimh (1982): Official Trailer: MGM Studios, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/W4xHs01SUA4 (Accessed: 26 March 2024).

  2. Disney, W. (2008) Walt Disney’s Multiplane Camera (filmed: Feb. 13, 1957), YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdHTlUGN1zw (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  3. Insider (2018) How mary poppins changed movies forever | movies insider, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0I03N885QGU (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  4. Insider (2019a) How actors train for motion capture roles | movies insider, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uvSTbkBZi0 (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  5. Insider (2019b) How ‘spider-man: Into the spider-verse’ was animated | movies insider, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jEXUG_vN540 (Accessed: 26 March 2024).

  6. Katatikarn, J. (2024) What are the 5 main types of animation? (2024 guide), Academy of Animated Art. Available at: https://academyofanimatedart.com/types-of-animation/ (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  7. Laika (2018) Unboxing the world of the Boxtrolls | laika studios, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0i29loX06A4 (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  8. Little, S. (2011) The animation process from 1938, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ORkIrHUbg (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  9. Miyazaki, H. (2023) The boy and the Heron: Official English trailer, YouTube. Available at: https://youtu.be/t5khm-VjEu4?si=qzq0u3McJ0BlFopl (Accessed: 26 March 2024).

  10. Postpace (2020) What is motion capture? | how motion capture works in filmmaking, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj0rXLEZWOg (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  11. Segers, X. (2021) Typographic Bacteria, The AOI. Available at: https://theaoi.com/wia/xavier-segers-typographic-bacteria-2/ (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

  12. Vox (2019) The trick that made animation realistic, YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS1hCSsmH1E (Accessed: 24 March 2024).

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