Persistence of vision is where they use 12 drawings per second. I have found out that one drawing for every two frames, when a character is made to do something quick like jumping, or galloping, they start to blend the slow motion and the fast motion together which makes it work really well. I found out that most Saturday morning cartoons are produced as cheaply as possible. The other name for persistence of vision is key frame animation and is the starting point and ending point of any smooth transition

Animation has been popular for many years now. Some of its early hits were Walt Disney cartoons like mickey mouse in steamboat willie which is a very simple cartoon where you just see mickey mouse whistling away in a simple back and white colour frame but is very effective. At the same time some other early forums of cartoon is the classic Tom and Jerry which has now been taken off the air for being too violent for kids which is silly. Another early forum is stuff like Looney tunes Wacky Races and The Flintstones. In more modern times animation for adults has become very popular with younger people stuff like The simpsons which kids love too, South Park, Family Guy. American Dad which are all known for their offensive style but funny humour.

A zoetrope is a device that creates things of Illusion and motion where you spin the device around and as you spin the device you see a picture form in a circle on the inside of the Zoetrope. You have a set of pictures that tend to form a pattern and form a circle. As you spin the device around the pictures that have been drawn start to blend together. One of the earliest Zoetropes dated back to China around 180 AD. Based on my experience I think at the time, the Zoetrope would have been amazing but when I used one I thought they were dull and boring and times have moved on. We have better things to play with now.

The Praxinoscope was the successor to the Zoetrope. It was created in France in 1877. Like the Zoetrope the device uses a set of pictures that again are placed inside the device of a spinning cylinder. Unlike the Zoetrope the Praxinoscope used mirrors with a set of images on them and as you spun the device around you saw a set of images but the picture at the time was a lot better than the stuff we can do with pictures now. Also the Praxinoscope pictures were a lot brighter something which the Zoetrope could not do.

The Thaumatrope was created in the Victorian times. With this device you get two pieces of string and you get a disk or a card with a picture on it .When you have done this you then start to spin the pictures around quickly and as you spin them the image starts appearing. The quicker you spin the device, the picture starts to move faster which can be hard to see.

Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay. With Stop motion clay Animation you film the sequences bit by bit so if you move the clay you film it, stop the camera, move him again, etc. One of the most controversial clay animation films created was a film called Plasticine Cow and at one point Russia tried to get it banned. Another one of Russia's controversial stop motion clay Animation films was called Last Years snow was Falling. Again the Russians wanted it banned for being mindless and stupid. In more recent times Clay animation is not used as much, it is very rare.
 

The Flipbook is a creation where you draw a set of pictures on some short thin paper but the pictures you draw have to create a story. Then you get a rubber band, put it on the side of the Flipbook, you then get your thumb on the other side of the paper then use your thumb and flick the pictures until you get to the end. I think Flipobooks are still great today depending on what you draw. The other things you can do with Flipbooks is get a set of photographs and do the same thing.

 CGI is used a lot in Animation now they use so much special effects you lose sight of what is going on with the story in the film. However if the effects are done well I really do not care. In more recent times live action feature films blend live Action and CGI and animation together. A classic example is the lord of the rings films where they have the creature Gollum. What they did with this was they had the actor with a blue set of clothing with wires stripped to his head and body with the greenscreen behind him and got him to film his scenes. One of the good things about CGI is that it is getting better and better as time goes on but as I said people can lose sight of what is going on with the story because the special effects take over.

One of the animators I am going to talk about is the controversial Seth MacFarlane who is best known for the Family Guy series.  One of the first popular cartoon series he wrote for and produced was Cow and Chicken, the show aired on Cartoon Network and ran for years and was one of cartoon networks most popular shows ever. Some parents thought the naked red guy was highly creepy for a kids show and was complained about a few times. One of the complained about episodes was an episode called Buffalo Girls. In this episode there is a bike gang full of women and they break into Cow and chickens house and start to munch and eat the carpet hinting that they are lesbian and in the whole episode the parents are only hinting but making lesbian jokes. in 1999 Seth Macfarlane finally got to air his popular TV series Family guy which is loved and hated by Americans and people around the world. The series has been cancelled by the network Fox twice for being too offensive to the American public. Also the writers of the show have been called racist for their many Black and Chinese jokes .Before, the show was called family guy he created an animation short called Larry and Steve which was popular but the same as family guy. You have two characters as the head of the house who is called Steve and a dog called Larry which in family guy is the same but the dad has a family. In more recent times I think family guy has sort of lost its way and become unfunny although there are sometimes funny cutaways which is a very big part of the show. Another one of his popular TV Shows is American Dad which in some ways is the same as Family guy. Again there is a father with a family but he works for the CIA and helps protect the world. Unlike Family guy the show does not use cutaways but follows a straight story. The show again had controversy with parents saying it is bad for kids to be watching this because again the shows humour is offensive. It is shown after the watershed when most kids should be in bed. In 2007 he was asked to host the 59th primetime Emmy awards but stepped down after parents complained about him hosting worrying about the jokes he would make.  This year he is set to be in a episode of the Simpsons which a lot of fans are looking forward to. The episode is called Danger on a train. Seth Macfarlane has also made Animated films. One of them is being Stewie Griffin the untold Story which was about Stewie trying to find his older self. When Seth MacFarlane left college he got a job at Hanna Barbera studios and then he got a job at 20th century fox.

I think with animation in advertising it works really well .One of the best adverts I have seen for animation advertising was for a mobile phone. That phone was the Sony Xperia and what they did it was just amazing. I think animation for adverts can be much more effective than live action adverts and the way animation is now the stuff that appears on our TV screens and computers is mind blowing and it just shows you how much CGI has come on in recent years.

Idents are the company's opening logo to a film before it is shown. Some of the most well known ones are 20th Century fox, dreamworks with the sitting on the sign fishing, warner bros. Those Idents are known around the world and have been around for years. TV companies like BBC, ITV and MTV also have their own Idents. The BBC usually have a circle forming at the end and then the show is broadcast. I think the BBC Idents are very good and clever and sometimes can be funny.

With Animation Music videos, one of the most popular is Aha and Take On Me. I think the music video was good at the time but is awful now. The whole thing looks like it was drawn but the director didn't like the drawings so he threw them in the bin. You really don't see much animated music videos any more. South Park is one of the last animated series and Family Guy that make music videos and their music videos can be very funny and offensive at the same time.

Video games are some of the most popular animation forums ever created. The way they create the games is just incredible. Games like Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, Grand Theft Auto 4, Call Of Duty Modern Warfare 2, Red Dead Redemption, Fallout 3, Mortal Kombat, Left 4 dead 2, Call Of Duty Black Ops, Mafia 2, Counter Strike, Grand Theft Auto Vice City, Mass effect 3. Video games are getting more and more popular each day. Most people play them to escape into another world but they are everywhere - magazines, cinemas, adverts, billboards, etc and I think they will grow even more popular as time goes on.

Animation Timeline

1824	Peter Mark Roget, who did research in physiology at the University of London, published "Persistence of Vision with Regard to Moving Objects." This book presented the idea that a succession of still images could create the appearance of motion.
1832	Joseph Plateau (a Belgian scientist) developed the phenakistiscope.
1889	Emile Reynaud (from France) patents the praxinoscope .. a device that used mirrors to project a sequence of images (along with a fixed background) onto a screen. It was sufficiently complex that only he could run it. The infinite length tape changed the medium from a curiosity into entertainment.
1895	The age of movie camera and projector begins .. experimentors discover they can stop the crank and restart it again to obtain special effects. Example: James Stuart Blackton creates "The Enchanted Drawing" in 1900 .. a caricature is drawn with no evidence of an artist.
1907	Emil Cohl (from France) begins a long animation career..
1914	Windsor McCay produces perhaps the first popular animation .. Gertie the Dinosaur, which becomes part of his vaudeville act
1915	John Bray patents the use of clear cels over a background
1917	John Bray patents rotoscoping (developed by Max Fleischer)
1919	Koko the clown (Max Fleischer) appears
1920's	Otto Mesmer creates Felix the Cat
1928	Walt Disney releases "Steamboat Willie" .. an early cartoon w/ sound -- cartoons are now seen as entertainment. Disney innovations over the next 10-20 years include the storyboard, pencil tests, and the multi-plane camera stand (3D effects). Disney also promoted the analysis of real-life motion.
1937	Snow White is released at cost of $1.5M
1930's	Fleischer studios create Betty Boop and Popeye
1930's	Warner Bros .. Porky Pig, Daffy Duck, and Bugs Bunny appear
1940's	Walter Lantz and Woody Woodpecker, Paul Terry and Mighty Mouse, MGM w/ Tom & Jerry (animators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera)
1963	Ivan Sutherland and SKETCHPAD at MIT/Lincoln Labs
1972	University of Utah, Ed Catmull develops an animation scripting language and creates an animation of a smooth shaded hand. Ref: E. Catmull, "A System for Computer Generated Movies", Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, 1972. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1972	University of Utah, Fred Parke creates first computer generated facial animation. Ref: F. Parke, "Computer Generated Animation of Faces", Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, 1972. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1974	National Research Council of Canada releases Hunger/La Faim directed by Peter Foldes and featuring Burtnyk and Wein interactive keyframing techniques. Ref: N. Burtnyk and M. Wein, "Interactive Skeleton Techniques for Enhancing Motion Dynamics in Key Frame Animation", Communications of the ACM, 19(10), October 1976. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1982	Tron, MAGI, movie with CG premise
1983	Bill Reeves at Lucasfilm publishes techniques for modeling particle systems. "Demo" is Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn. The paper also promotes motion blur. Ref: W. Reeves, "Particle Systems -- A Technique for Modeling a Class of Fuzzy Objects", Computer Graphics, 17(3), July 1983. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1984	The Last Starfighter, CG is used in place of models
1984	Porter and Duff at Lucusfilm publish paper on digital compositing using an alpha channel. Ref: T. Porter and T. Duff, "Compositing Digital Images", Computer Graphics, 18(3), July 1984. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1985	Girard and Maciejewski at OSU publish a paper describing the use of inverse kinematics and dynamics for animation. Their techniques are used in the animation "Eurythmy." Ref: M. Girard and A. A. Maciejewski, "Computational Modeling for the Computer Animation of Legged Figures", Computer Graphics, 19(3), July 1985. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1985	Ken Perlin at NYU publishes a paper on noise functions for textures. He later applied this technique to add realism to character animations. Ref: K. Perlin, "An Image Synthesizer", Computer Graphics, 19(3), July 1985. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1987	John Lasseter at Pixar publishes a paper describing traditional animation principles. "Demos" are Andre and Wally B and Luxo Jr. Ref: J. Lasseter, "Principles of Traditional Animation Applied to 3D Computer Animation", Computer Graphics, 21(4), July 1987. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1987	Craig Reynolds then at Symbolics (now at Dreamworks SKG) publishes a paper on self-organizing behavior for groups. "Demos" are Stanley and Stella and Batman Returns. Ref: C. W. Reynolds, "Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model", Computer Graphics, 21(4), July 1987. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1988	Willow uses morphing in live action film
1992	Beier and Neely, at SGI and PDI respectively publish an algorithm where line correspondences guide morphing between 2D images. "Demo" is Michael Jackson video Black and White. Ref: T. Beier and S. Neely, "Feature-Based Image Metamorphosis", Computer Graphics, 26(2), July 1992. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1993	Chen and Williams at Apple publish a paper on view interpolation for 3D walkthroughs. Ref: S. E. Chen and L. Williams, "View Interpolation for Image Synthesis", Computer Graphics Proceedings, Annual Conference Series, 1993. (In the SIGGRAPH 98 Seminal Graphics collection.)
1993	Jurassic Park use of CG for realistic living creatures
1995	Toy Story first full-length 3D CG feature film

By Adam Merchant