Animation History Quiz

Mock Exam Information

• Exam duration: 45 minutes
• Put student ID card on table
• Leave notes, books, and phones under chair

Exam Format

• 2 hours long
• 10 Multiple Choice Questions (20%)
• 3 Short Answer Questions (50%)
• 1 Long Answer Question (30%)

Exam Reminders

• Be punctual (arrive at least 15 minutes before start)
• Bring student ID card
• Answer every question
• Do not participate in dishonest activities
• Apply for deferral if unable to attend

Course Recap - What is Animation?

• Animation is the creative interpretation of motion
• Drawings, objects, or characters are filmed frame-by-frame
• Alterations are made between each frame to create the illusion of movement

Early Animation Pioneers

• Emile Cohl (1857-1938, French) - "Father of the Animated Cartoon"
  • Created a surrealistic cartoon style, pre-dating Disney and Warner Bros' realism.
  • Famous work: Fantasmagorie (1908)
• J. Stuart Blackton (1875-1941, American) - Considered the father of American animation.
  • Created the first silent film with animated sequences (The Enchanted Drawing, 1900)
  • Used stop motion and drawn animation techniques.
  • Founder of Vitagraph Studios.
  • Famous work: Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906).
• Winsor McCay (1871-1934, American)
  • Started as a newspaper cartoonist, gaining national reputation for "Little Nemo in Slumberland" and "Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend".
  • Took four years to create his animated cartoon "Little Nemo" (1911).
  • Famous work: "Gertie the Dinosaur" (1913)
• John R. Bray (1879-1978) & Earl Hurd (1880-1940)
  • Invented and patented the use of large background drawings and panning camera in 1915, becoming a standard for hand-drawn animation.
  • Patented Translucent Cels and Registration Peg for drawing alignment.

Golden Age of American Animation (1930s-1960s)

• Walt Disney (1901-1966)
  • Entrepreneur, animator, film producer.
  • Pioneer of the animation industry.
  • Walt Disney Company subsidiaries include Pixar, Marvel, Lucas Films, Disneyland Resorts, ABC network, ESPN.
  • Company net worth US$74.9 billion (at time of assessment)
• Walt Disney Strategies
  • Heavily invested in advanced technologies
  • Introduced one feature film per year model
  • Set up animation assembly lines
  • Developed a character-centric strategy
  • Founded the business model (copyright/centric) for animation studios.
  • Funded CalArts
• Flowers & Trees - Silly Symphonies (1932)
  • First commercially released full-color film using the three-strip Technicolor process.
  • First animated film to receive an Academy Award for animation.
• The Nine Old Men
  • Les Clark
  • Marc Davis
  • Ollie Johnston
  • Milt Kahl
  • Eric Larson
  • John Lounsbery
  • Wolfgang Reitherman
  • Frank Thomas
  • Ward Kimball
• Disney's Legacy
  • Set the standard for top-notch animation assembly lines.
  • Raised the bar for feature animation.
  • Created many cartoon superstars.
  • Provided a business model for animation studios.
  • Funded CalArts.

Max Fleischer

• Invented the rotoscope technique in 1915.
• This technique traced motion picture footage to create lifelike animation.

UPA Limited Animation

• Broadcast medium (theatre vs. television)
• Frame per second, limited to 8 frames.
• Horizontal movement, limited perspective.
• Repeated footage (running gag).
• Interesting background music and dialogue.

Warner Bros Cartoons

• Chuck Jones
• Friz Freleng
• Robert McKimson
• Tex Avery
• Robert Clampett
• Frank Tashlin

National Film Board of Canada (NFB)

• John Grierson arrived from England in 1939.
• First director of the NFB
• In 1941 he appointed Norman McLaren to head the NFB's animation department.
• Explore experimental forms to establish an identity.
• Differentiate animation from commercial mainstream of the USA.

British Animation

• Halas & Batchelor (1940), affectionately referred to as the British Disney.
• Aardman Animations (1972), stop motion animation.

Dutch Animation

• Hungarian émigré George Pal, established puppet animation tradition in the Netherlands during 1930s.
• Michaël Dudok de Wit, won an Academy Award for Animated Short Film (Father and Daughter, 2000) and was nominated for Animated Feature (The Red Turtle, 2016).

French Animation

• Tradition since pioneering days of Charles-Emile Reynaud, Georges Méliés, and Emile Cohl.
• Passion for cinema, animation, and comic books.
• Independent movies from directors like Michel Ocelot and Sylvain Chomet.

Russian Animation

• Large-scale development driven by politics rather than economics.
• Ladislaw Starevicz, hailed as Russia's first animator for 1910 stop motion work.
• Used dead insects.
• Animators experimented with techniques, including puppet animation, painting on glass, and cutouts.
• Examples: Fyodor Khitruk's Story of One Crime (1962) and Yuri Norstein's Hedgehog in the Fog (1975).

Stop-motion Animation

• A. Clay Animation (Claymation)
• B. Pixillation
• C. Model/Puppet Animation
• D. Cutout Animation

Stop-motion Animation Masters

• Ladislaw Starevicz (1882-1965) - Father of stop-motion animation, used insects and other animals in films.
• Willis Harold O'Brien (1886-1962) - American pioneer of motion picture special effects, stop motion animator with works like The Lost World, King Kong, and Mighty Joe Young (1950 Academy Award).
• Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013) - American visual effects, invented "Dynamation"
• Phil Tippett (1951 - ) - Visual effects supervisor & producer specialized in creature & character animation. Worked with Star Wars, Robocop and Jurassic Park.

Aardman

• Founded in 1972 by Peter Lord and David Sproxton in Bristol.
• Known for stop-motion clay animation techniques.
• Nick Park joined in 1985, producing the Oscar-winning Wallace and Gromit series.

LAIKA

• Laika Entertainment (previously Will Vinton Studio), re-purposed into a feature film production studio in 2002.
• Joined by Henry Selick to produce Coraline.
• Other productions include ParaNorman, Boxtrolls, and Kubo and the Two Strings.

Japanese Pioneers

• Kenzō Masaoka
• Masao Kumakawa
• Yasuji Mori
• Akira Daikubara (UPA)
• Yasuo Ōtsuka

Osamu Tezuka

• Most important and famous person in manga history.
• "God of Manga"
• Works include:
  • 火の鳥
  • Black Jack
  • 怪醫秦博士
  • AstroBoy
  • 小白獅
  • 三眼神童
  • 藍寶石王子(リボン
• Introduced innovative movie techniques to manga creation.
• Expanded audience base to adult readers.
• Found his way into the TV animation market.

Astro Boy (1963)

• Runaway success, rating roars above 40% on local TV.
• One half-hour show a week, to produce volume.

Tezuka's Approach

• Bank system
• Emphasis on storyboards
• Refinement of still images
• Distinctive sound production

Japanese Anime vs American Animation

• Frame per second (8 vs 24 frames per second)
• Emphasis on layout vs motion
• Broadcast medium (TV vs Theatre)
• Creative source (Manga vs Screenwriter)

Japanese Anime Properties

• More detailed and stylized characters
• Wide variety of age groups and genres
• Heavily influenced by by-products

Important Anime Works

(Dates and Titles)

• Astro Boy (1963)
• Space Cruiser Yamato (1974)
• Mobile Suit Gundam (1979)
• Macross (1982)
• Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984)
• Akira (1988)
• Ghost in the Shell (1995)
• Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995)
• Perfect Blue (1997)
• The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006)

C. Major Genres

• Mecha
• Sports
• Science Fiction (Sci-fi)
• Romance
• Comedy

Xerox Popularity

• Reduced workload of repetitive tasks in animation production.
• Provided new creative alternatives to comic artists and animators.

Impact of VHS

• Audience ownership of favorite anime.
• Rise of Original Video Animation (OVA) as a business model.
• Video replay helped up and coming animators improve by studying the masters.

Sakuga Artists

• Mitsuo Iso
• Yoshimichi Kameda
• Toshiyuki Inoue
• You Yoshinari
• Yutaka Nakamura

Conclusion

• Japanese anime is unique to its cultural and social environment, making replication hard
• Tight integration of manga, toys, and anime provided a clear business model, but limited growth direction.
• Anime genre diversity is unmatched in other societies, influencing global anime lovers.

Animation in Greater China

• The Wan Brothers
  • Early 20th century, Nanjing, China
  • Founders and pioneers of Chinese animation industry
  • Made the first Asian animation feature-length film "Princess Iron Fan" (1941)
• Havoc in Heaven (大鬧天宮)
  • Adaptation of the novel "Journey to the West"
  • Directed by Wan Lai Ming and produced by the Wan brothers.
  • Produced during the height of the Chinese animation industry in the 1960s.
  • Received numerous international awards.
• Te Wei (特偉, 1915-2010)
  • Influential Chinese animation artist.
  • Supervisor of Shanghai Animation Film Studio since 1957.
  • Notable works in Chinese ink and paint series.

The 1980s Reform Period

• Animation development stalled in the 1960s and 70s
• Brief recovery occurred in the 1980s.
• Open economy increased exposure to Japanese and American programs.
• Audience's aesthetic standards changed.

Reform at the Millennium

• Survey showed Japan dominated top 20 animated shows (with Tom and Jerry as the only exception).
• SAFS attempted to create Japanese-styled anime "Music Up" to target young adults in 2001.

Early 2000s TV Animation

• China's rise as a global economic power during the "Socialist Market Economy Period."
• Central policy encouraged local animation productions.
• Paola Voci documented TV animation growth.
• Grew from 12,000 minutes in 2003 to 100,000 minutes by 2007

OEM Animation of Taiwan

• Taiwanese economy's growth, appreciation of the Taiwan dollar.
• Lack of cheap labor resulted in OEM production to Mainland China (Shenzhen, Shanghai, Suzhou etc)
• Wang Film productions struggled to create original feature films.

1970s to 1980s in Taiwan

• Marshall law suspended, creativity increased.
• Demand of Japanese and US animated productions lead to more OEM work in Taiwan.
• Wang Film, at the time, led the market for these productions.

1990s Taiwan

• Taiwan dollar value appreciation, removing cheap labor advantages.
• OEM production moved towards newly open Mainland China market (Shenzhen, Shanghai, Suzhou etc)
• Wang Film production struggled with original feature films.

Government Policy in Taiwan

• Taiwan government lacks well-planned policy for comics and animation.
• Comics under Ministry of Culture, animation under Ministry of Commerce.
• 臺灣新聞局 (Taiwan News Agency) introduced a patronage program.

Taiwan Local Productions

• Original animation focused on local topics.
• Example: "Grandma and Her Ghosts" (1998, directed by 王小棣).

Hong Kong Animation

• Early success with Old Master Q (1983), although produced in Taiwan.
• Computer animation rapidly increased in the 21st century.
• Subjects of animated productions became localized in this period.

Imagi Studios

• Founded in 2000.
• Works include:
  • Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles (2007)
  • Zentrix
  • Astro Boy (2009)
• Helped pioneer winning formula with computer animation for reboots of classic anime like Gatchaman and Astro Boy

Hong Kong Animation Industry Strengths

• Lots of creative talents.
• Strong pop culture tradition in film and music.
• International city where East meets West.

Why Hong Kong Faled in Animation Productions

• Extremely small local market
• Marginalization by the Mainland market
• Lack of long-term development.
• Lack of mainstream genres.

Visual Effects

• Technological Breakthroughs
  • Invention of Motion Pictures
  • Sounded Movie
  • Color Film
  • Digital Film-making
• Georges Méliès inventions
  • Jump Cut
  • Dissolve
  • The Matte
  • Made 500 films (1896-1912)
  • Father of Motion Picture Visual Effects
• How Méliès' inventions changed the film industry
  • Changing perception of visual narratives
  • Providing a platform for image manipulation
  • Foundation of practical and optical effects
• Infant Stage of Visual Effects (1900-1945)
  • French and German film pioneers more superior in terms of creative and technique
  • Sound recording overtook silent films in the 1930s.
  • WWII halting progress of European film makers
• Schüfftan Process.
• Post-War Improvements (1950s)
  • Availability of Kodak Eastmancolor changed production landscape.
  • Widescreen epics emerged.
• Post-War Visual Effects (1960s)
  • Popularity of color television changed entertainment.
  • Cold War space race sparked space-related fantasies (e.g., Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968)

Star Wars (1977-1983)

• Landmark films that changed visual effects.
• George Lucas, visionary behind the project, oversaw the VFX team (John Dykstra, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Phil Tippett).
• VFX powerhouses Industrial Light & Magic (ILM) and Skywalker Studio created to handle the large-scale production.
• Star Wars Inventions
  • Revolutionary Miniatures
  • Groundbreaking Stop-Motion
  • Motion Control Camera (Dykstraflex)
  • Lightsaber Rotoscoping
  • Gigantic Matte Painting
  • Multi-head Optical Printer

Industrial Light & Magic (ILM)

• Reinvented VFX techniques: motion-controlled photography, chroma-keying, realistic miniatures, computer graphics.
• Held a monopoly on Oscar awards for two decades.
• Graphics division revolutionized computer-generated imagery (CGI)

VFX Techniques

• Practical effects
  • Scale Models (miniature)
  • Special Props
  • Special Makeups
  • Motion-control Camera
  • Physical Effects (atmospheric effects, stunts, vehicle stunts, explosives)
• Optical effects
  • Jump Cut
  • Multi-exposure
  • Matte Painting
  • Rear Projection
  • Chroma Keying
  • Rotoscoping
• Digital effects
  • Digital Backgrounds (Backlots)
  • Motion Tracking
  • Dynamic Simulation
  • Crowd Animation
  • Pre-visualization
  • Motion Capture Animation
• Advantages of Digital Effects
  • Infinite layers of images
  • More realistic composites
  • Time and cost savings in certain genres
  • Revolutionized film distribution

Computer Animation

• IBM
  • Created IBM 360 series of mainframe computers
  • First disk drive (1954)
  • Big Blue employed John Whitney Sr. to create art (1966)
• AT&T Bell Labs
  • Invented first fax machine (1947)
  • Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie developed "C" languages (1972)
  • Computer sung the song Daisy (Bell Labs experimentation)

Xerox PARC

• 1935 - Chester Carlson invented the photocopier.
• 1970 - Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) founded.
• Robert Taylor, Alan Kay, Alvy Ray Smith hired to develop next generation computers (Ethernet, computer mouse, WYSIWYG system, GUI, Superpaint, Dynabook - notebook computer).

Academia Development

• US top universities (MIT, Stanford, Cornell, UCLA, Ohio State) established computer science departments by 1960s.
• Charles Csuri founded Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD) at Ohio State University (1968)
• Utah State University
  • Founded a computer science department, focusing on graphics.
  • Built a defense department flight simulator
• Utah Graduates
  • Alan Kay (laptop)
  • Alan Ashton (WordPerfect)
  • Nolan Bushnell (Atari)
  • John Warnock (Adobe)
  • Jim Clark (Silicon Graphics & Netscape)
  • Ed Catmull (Pixar)
• Other Utah Alumni
  • Henri Gouraud (shading)
  • Bui Tuong Phong (Phong Shading)
  • Jim Blinn (bump mapping)

University of Montreal

• Philippe Bergeron and Daniel Langlois secretly made 7 minute film "Tony de Peltrie (1985).

Tony de Peltrie

• First character acting, thinking, fleshy (not mechanical).
• Expressed real emotions.
• Bergeron became a successful film maker in Hollywood.
• Langlois left the Centre d'animatique, formed company Softimage (1986).

National Film Board of Canada

• Pioneer in computer animation
• Created first computer keyframe animation "Metadata" (1971).
• Oscar-nominated animation "Hunger" (1974).
• Formed Centre d'animatique in 1980 to advance CGI technologies.

Robert Abel and Associates

• Commercial art intern Robert Abel started a boutique service house (1971).
• "Brilliance - The Sexy Robot" ad (1985 Super Bowl), landmark achievement in CGI.

Rhythm and Hue

• Founded by some of the CG pioneers at Abel & Associates.
• Developed Wavefront (predecessor of Maya).
• VFX powerhouse in Hollywood for over 30 years, winning numerous awards.

Advantages of Computer Animation

• Much more realistic rendering (than traditional animation)
• Works with other digital production techniques
• Better scalability (with computing power growth)
• Less labor-intensive
• Shorter learning curve
• Infinite potential of production (with AI)

CG Effects in Star Wars

• Targeting diagram screens on X-wings and TIE fighters
• Computer motion controls on miniatures
• Rebel Alliance briefing schematic showing Luke Skywalker's bomb trajectory.

Industrial Light and Magic (ILM)

• Cash-flow issues forced George Lucas to sell off his computer graphics department.
• Continued to expand ILM's development of CG for increasingly lifelike effects in motion pictures (e.g., The Abyss, 1989).
• Cameron's film, The Abyss featured a realistic 3D alien character.
• Breakthrough with digital mattes in Forrest Gump (1994)

The ILM Graphics Group

• Lucas created an independent computer lab adjunct to his ILM effects operation.
• Hired NYIT director Ed Catmull and top talent (e.g., Alvy Ray Smith, Loren Carpenter, etc).

Story of John Lasseter

• CalArts Disney trainee program (traditional animation)
• Intrigued by computer graphics after seeing friends collaborating on Tron.
• Committed to CG in his own work, causing expulsion from Disney.

Formation of Pixar

• Jobs acquired Lucas Graphics Group under Alan Kay's advice, renaming it Pixar.
• Initially a hardware company, trying to market their Pixar Image Computer.
• Ed Catmull and John Lasseter believed in Pixar's potential to profit from animated films.

The Story of Toy Story

• Tin Toy (1988) won Pixar's first Academy Award.
• Toy Story, a three-part feature film contract, was the first contract signed after Tin Toy's success.

Success of Pixar

• John Lasseter adopted Walt Disney Studios growth strategies to achieve long-term Pixar success.
• Built a strong storyboard team.
• A "Brain Trust"-creative group, formed by John Lasseter, Joe Ranft, Pete Docter, and Andrew Stanton, was formed.

Test your knowledge on the history of animation with this engaging quiz! Explore the contributions of key figures and innovations in the field, from Max Fleischer to Walt Disney and beyond. See how much you really know about the evolution of animated films and techniques.