Environment Animation 2 - CHILDREN 【自主制作アニメ】

CHILDREN is a 3D animation made by Takuya Okada as a metaphor for the Japanese school system and how it pushes conformity and non creativity in the children of their country. This animation is a beautiful example of how dark tones and bland, grey tones can create a sense of bleak desperation in an animation. All of the people in the animation have numbers on their heads, to show that students in japan are just numbers. All of the environments are dark and stale, giving it a repeating, depressing feel. Its also a makes a beautifully dark point on Japanese society in general.

Environment Animation 1 - Take On Me

The 1986 music video by A-ha, Take On Me, is a very good example of how environment in animation can change a piece. It depicts a woman who falls in love with a man who is in a drawing. She gets teleported into a comic to be with him. After she enters, the owner of the cafe she was in previously thinks she ran out on her bill and she crumples the comic the girl is in and throws it away. Then inside the comic, characters with wrenches begin to chase her and the man down a corridor and she escapes out of the comic just before they catch up to them. He, however is left inside. She then runs home with the comic and she tries to flatten it. the man then appears in comic form in her hallway and starts to phase into reality.
This is a nice example of how animation can interact with the real world.

Module Review

This Module was a really interesting one for me. It started off  slow, since I didn't have many ideas on how to do this project. Most of my ideas i came up with on the fly and then i just ran with it. That's how I came up with my main character, the jars of wind, and even using wind itself i basically decided on a metaphoric coin flip. I'm really glad about how it turned out though, because I did put in a ton of work for this to turn out the way it did.
During the start of this project, truthfully I was concerned with other pieces I was doing, most of the planning and pre-production I did was an afterthought at most. I chose my main character out of my various character sketches i come up with regularly. It was just a picture of an old man with a spherical body. After I started making little parts of his house, some utensils, I drew the jars of wind I used in the animation. I barely put together a storyboard that i used in my first crit presentation, along with the character design i made and the various bits of assets i made.
Making the Animation itself was probably the hardest part. I started off doing well, I finished 44 frames my first workday along with 3 backgrounds. It wasn't until Winter Break that I started having troubles. I didn't get my lightbox and animation paper until the week of Christmas, and my parents decided by themselves that I wasn't going to need a scanner, so i was out of luck until the last week of winter break. I made headway on the Monday of the last week, doing 50 frames a day was going to be my plan for that week, and then id scan all of it in in my dads office building. Basically that entire week consisted of me sitting in a room for several hours drawing for 5 days. I managed to get all of my frames done the night before my flight, but I wasn't able to scan them in, so i was going to do that the day i got in to Leeds. Then I accidentally slept for 5 hours, which was the worst possible thing that could happen.
My post production stages were probably the most stressful part of this project. I had to stay up 26 hours to finish the final edit of my animation. I got sick afterwards so I only went to school to turn it in and then I slept it off. I also did all of the sound design myself because I didn't have an internet connection to get the assets online.
This project overall was probably the hardest experience I've ever had doing a school assignment before. Nevertheless I'm extremely proud about how it turned out, and I'm looking forward to my next animation. Hopefully I'll be able to get it done without so much stress next time.

The Production of Winds

I havent really decided on going with water or air for my animation. And I decided that I'd use the element in a way that people wouldn't normally apply that element. I figured that a personified form of elements has been used a lot before so I think i'm going to use it in an applied form of the element.

I decided to go with air because my zodiac sign, Aquarius, is an air sign. Literally that's why, I really have no reason other than that.

I needed to come up with a main character for my animation so I decided to do the same thing i did with my 5 second flash animation Business Penguin. I found a picture of an old man that has a pretty simplified body form, so I'll use him. Also I decided that I'm going to make my main character cook with Air or Winds from different climates.

I'm going to have him have a cupboard filled with jars of different climates that hes going to do something with, I'm not sure what yet.

Since it's a cupboard of jarred winds, I figured he should cook with them, so today I drew a big cauldron in my sketchbook next to him to see how it worked. It looked nice so that's what I'm going with.

I want him to live in the middle of nowhere and since the western things been done I want him to live in the middle of a tundra in a weird house made of plank wood.

I finished my first 40 frames, It's the opening sequence. Basically it consists of him walking in a blizzard to his house. I didn't really have any idea that walking looks a certain way(my fault) so I drew it without reference. It was only until after that I realized he looks weird, so I drew a cloak over him, and it looks a lot better. I also Finished 3 of my 6 backgrounds that i'm going to use in the animation. This was a productive day.

I found out that i'm going to be finishing my animation over in America so I asked my parents to get me a scanner, a lightbox, and some animation paper to get there when I arrive in America, so I can finish it the first week and have the rest of my break to have fun.


I flew in today and asked my parents where my stuff is so i can get ready to make my animation tomorrow, and they said that they didnt order it yet. Bad turn of events. I got them to order it online so hopefully it should be getting here soon, and i guess ill finish half of my animation the week after Christmas and scan it in.

My stuff didnt get here until the week of christmas, and since i cant do my work during christmas i decided to dedicate the last week im here to sitting in my room and finishing all of my frames.

My parents decided that they didn't want to get me a scanner and that i'd use the one at my dads office. I told them that that wouldn't work since i need a scanner that can scan a4 pieces of paper, and they told me it would be fine. I guess i'm going to have to use it anyway.

Today is the monday of my last week here, i figure if i finish 50-75 frames a day i should be able to get done in time and still have fun with my friends. I had my girlfriend over to chill with me while i do my animation, it was nice. I ended up finishing the scene where my character goes into a living room and turns on a gramaphone. I want to have him play old jazz from the 1920s or something, i dunno. I've been writing down a bunch of jazz artists in my sketchbook that I think would sound nice with this animation.

Tuesday I finished a walk cycle for my character that I thought looked nice, and it should cover quite a lot of frames since he's going to be walking a lot. I have extra time that im going to hang out with my friends.

Thursday I finished a scene where he's looking for a shaker of snow and the rest of my backgrounds. I realized that my cauldron idea wasn't going to work so i decided that he'll use a pot on a stovetop oven.

Today is the last day i'm in America, and i don't have enough time to scan in all of my animations, so i'll be doing that when i get into Leeds, since its going to be in the morning. I managed to finish the rest of my scenes so now I can spend the rest of the day with my friends to have one last outing.

I flew into Leeds today and its the morning, i just got in and im gonna chill for a little while to rest my bones.

I accidentally overslept and now im going to have to finish all of my scanning, and put the animation together today. I'm probably going to have to do an all nighter because of the amount of work i have to do so i bought 2 liters of energy drink. Hopefully I wont get sick.


I barely managed to finish all of my animation and put it together. Final amount of time working on post production, 25 hours. The entire time i was doing this i didnt have an internet connection, until about 10 am. During that time i lost a set of scans to corruption, and i also went through 2 different songs, one of which was a windows 7 sample song. I also had to cut out an entire 6 second scene because it made my animation a lot longer than 20 seconds. I also recorded some SFX sounds at 3am, hopefully i didnt wake up my roommates.

Today was the crit, and they asked me to change around a few things in my animation. Since i was pretty much having an anxiety attack for 25 hours i didnt remember to save the photoshop versions of those animations, so im going to have to re-make them.

I redid those scenes and managed to make them a lot better than i did last time because im not on such a time constraint. I added an arc to the arm that looks through the cupboard and i also made the labels on the jars darker so people can read them. I also added a coat onto the coat rack inside his home, to add a sense of continuity.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 10 - Matches, An Appeal

Believed to be the oldest existing animated film, Matches, an Appeal was an advertisement made by a company that sold matches. It depicts a Stick person made of matches writing on a chalkboard, telling you why you should buy their matches. Probably one of the first forms of stop motion ever created, it was only meant as a gimmick to sell their product. It's amazing that the earliest known animation was made commercially, and how now Animation is seen as an entire art form. It just shows that things can be used for either causes, if not both at the same time.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 9 - Terry Gilliam

Terry Gilliam is one of the most notable figures in British animation History. This fact is really funny and interesting, considering he's the only American Monty Python. Still, his animated shorts featured in Monty Python's Films and TV shows are some of the most famous animations to come out of England. His iconic art style is part of what made the comedy troupe successful.
His animation style consists of found images and notable british iconography, things like english policeman and cutout images from ads from the 1900s add more to the surrealistic comedy type of the Pythons.














Terry Gilliam did quite well for an American in England. Hopefully the next two years i'm staying here i'll be able to do somewhat of the same thing.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 8 - Pixar

Pixar was originally called Graphics Group, which was a part of the computer division of Lucasfilm Studios. Their original task was to try and create ways to integrate computer technology into the film production industry, by making digital film and audio editing systems. They were also tasked with further research of computer graphics. In 1986 Steve Jobs purchased the group from Lucas and named this new group Pixar. Since then they have been tasked with making computer 3-D animated films like Toy Story, Finding Nemo, Brave, and Monsters Inc. In 2006, after doing many agreements for motion pictures, Disney Studios bought out Pixar.
Pixar has made it in the animation world after just 27 years of life, It's one of the few success stories in modern animation.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 7 - Humorous Phases of Funny Faces

Humorous Phases of Funny Faces is an animated short made in 1906 and is largely considered to be the first form of animation that used traditional practices. It consists of hand drawn scenes on a chalkboard, in which humorous things occur of varying types. While most of this animation is drawn directly on a chalkboard, some of the scenes use cutouts of characters, like a clown with cutout limbs. It also uses a form of stop motion as well. It's hard to imagine the reactions of the first people who watched this, since i've experienced all kinds of animation in my lifetime, but I assume it was received well. I wonder if the creator of this knew the legacy he would create for himself.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 6 - The Alice Comedies

The Alice Comedies were a series of Cartoons in the 1920s made by the bankrupted Laugh-O-Gram Studios. The story involves a young girl, Alice, who goes to watch his father draw animations. She then gets transported into a cartoon world, where antics ensue with her and an animated cat named Julius. The reason I chose to write about this is because I believe this is the first kind of animation that successfully composites a human being into an animation where they interact with the characters and their surroundings. The first kind of animation to interact with a real person was Gertie the Dinosaur, but Alice actually transfers a human being into an animation, when Gertie has a man interacting with her off screen.

Since then, Compositing has been used with different techniques like chroma key. Films like Roger Rabbit has done the reverse of this, where they animate a live action film with cartoon characters. There are so many instances of animation interacting with live action film, all of them done with different types of techniques that suit the specific needs of each animation.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 5 - The Zoetrope

The Zoetrope is another Pre-film device used for animation. The traditional zoetrope consists of a large cylindrical drum with slits in the side. This version was invented by William George Horner. The earliest form of projected moving images was used with a magic lantern zoetrope. Since its creation the Zoetrope has been used mostly for entertainment purposes. Nowadays however there are many kinds of zoetrope devices that are used in advertising. Surprisingly a lot of these advertising stunts involve a train moving in front of fast moving slits with paintings behind them, since a train can produce the kind of speeds needed to make a zoetrope animation move. The Zoetrope animation is what I believe was the zenith of the pre-film animation techniques. It allowed for multiple people to view them, it created a smooth form of repeated animation that was entertaining, and its still being used today in some forms of media, documentation, and advertising.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 4 - The Phenakistoscope

The Phenakistoscope was a device recognised throughout history by people such as Newton and Euclid, but it was only made into a firmly established idea in 1829 by a Belgian by the name of Joseph Plateau. It consists of a large spinning disc attached to a handle, with small slits running around the radius of the device. The user would put his eye in front of the slits and spin the device in front of a mirror, giving an illusion of movement of the drawings on the disc. Nowadays however, mostly they are just used as collectors items. While it is a form of valid animation, its limitations as a form of mass entertainment should be noted, as only one person could view these at a time. Still, it is a very creative precursor to animation, considering the limitations of the art form at the time.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 3 - The Thaumatrope

A Thaumatrope is a form of entertainment mostly used during the 1900s among children. It made use of a disk with two strings attached to either side, and when spun around it gave the illusion of the two images on either side of the disc blending together. The inventor of this device is unsure, although it is usually credited to either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Mark Roget. In 2012 it was reported that there had been a prehistoric Thaumatrope had been discovered in a cave in France. This device is a crude but effective form of illusion, but I don't believe it's a useful technique for animation since its basically only two frames being flipped back and forth to give an illusion of those to items merging, not moving.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 2 - Magic Lantern

The Magic Lantern is one of the earliest known forms of animation in history, as well as an early type of image projector. The invention of the lantern is credited to Christann Huygen, although the original inventor is subject to debate. During the 17th and 18th century this device was used for entertainment and educational purposes. During the later part of the 18th century however, this device had become widespread in the use of illusionists and magicians, to summon up things like ghosts and spirits. During the 1900s there were even some instances of it being used for pornographic imagery. Nowadays however mostly it's just a collectors item.

Historical and Contemporary Animation 1 - The Adaption of Mickey Mouse over the Years

Mickey Mouse has been the mascot of Disney Studios for 87 years, and over that many years a character can change a bit. The first way being character design. Although the ears and button shorts haven't been removed, Mickey has had several character redesigns over his life. The first one was before his debut in Steamboat Willie. The first few sketches of Mickey had an elongated nose along with separated eyes, but in his debut appearance his nose was shorter and pointed up rather than down, and his only his pupils were separated.

The second change happened in the animated short "The Karnival Kid" where he was given his iconic white gloves.

The third was when Mickey was in his first fully animated feature length film Fantasia.

In this, they added in full eyes rather than just pupils that moved around his head, as well as making his nose slightly more bulbous. Now he looks more like the Disney Classic Mickey everyone has seen.

During 1955 there was a redesign that was binned after an angry letter from a fan that said the modern art look of his appearance in a 55 Nash Car Commercial made Mickey look 'Communist'

So Mickeys design remained unchanging for over 50 years.

Then in 2013, a television produced by Paul Rudish redesigned Mickey into an echo of his 1930's era design. 

Back to sporting white skin and just pupils for eyes, Mickey's Renaissance came into being. Although he was still in colour, having yellow shoes and red shorts with gold buttons, Mickey was re-created into a fusion of his old and new self, with a few new things added in.

Mickey Mouse is one of the longest surviving cartoon characters existing today. I expect his character design to have little changes in the future, since he is a major mascot for a Studio Company.