I tried to look at different types of animations to understand the techniques involved and how they evolved over time.
Cel animations
Cinematography changed the world of animations and allowed the creation of cel animations, where illustrations are hand-drawn on a transparent sheet so that the background can remain the same.
1937 / Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Walt Disney)
I watched an extract of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs online (https://www.vulture.com/article/disney-animation-history-crash-course.html) and was amazed at the quality of the animation, especially when taking into account that the film was created in 1937.
1969 / Pink Panther (Mirisch Company)
I remember watching Pink Panther cartoons as a child. It was very interesting to watch some extracts again (e.g. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpuBihMkASE) and pay attention to the structure of the animations (backgrounds and characters).
In both Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pink Panther cartoons, the lines are quite simple. Details are carefully selected to bring life to the animations without making the illustrations too crowded and too difficult to draw again and again.
Many more cel animations were created in the 20th century until computer animated films took over.
Stop motion animations
In a sense, the principle of stop motion animations is similar to cel animations. In that case, objects are used and the camera is stopped while the objects are moved slightly every time but it is based on the same optical illusion.
Wallace and Gromit (Nick Park of Aardman Animations)
In a short film from the National Trust, the team who created Wallace and Gromit explains how the films were created (www.youtube.com/watch?v=i3CEE9xKKZc). It is really interesting to see the set and to understand how the team worked and how time consuming it was to set up everything. All the scenes had to be drawn in every detail in advance and the sketches were then roughly animated to make sure that the end result would work before sculpting the puppets and creating the sets.
Computer animated films
2001 / Shrek (Dreamworks)
According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shrek), Steven Spielberg wanted to used traditional techniques to create the film but in the end, Dreamworks took over and first tried motion capture (where live actors are used to create the movements of the characters). However, after disappointing results, Pacific Data Images completed the projects using their own software.
2007 / Ratatouille (Pixar Animation Studios)
I visited the website of Pixar Animation Studios (https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/ratatouille#:~:text=Having%20broken%20new%20ground%20with,unfamiliar%20sound%20of%20rustling%20paper). I enjoyed looking at initial sketches created by illustrators to understand better how the sketches were then developed to create full animated characters.
2009 / Up (Pixar Animation Studios)
Again, there is a lot of information on Pixar website (https://www.pixar.com/feature-films/up) about the film: the characters are based on simple shapes. Carl is based on the shape of a brick as he is “resistant to change”, Russell has the shape of an upside-down egg to show his naivety,…
The information on the web page also gives an idea about the level of research that took place to create every detail from the creation of the house to the travel destination.
The colorscript is consistent throughout so that when Carl’s wife is alive, the colours are saturated, otherwise the colours are unsaturated. Some scenes are in black and white to evoke a threatening situation.
Animations are created with more and more complex techniques and software that studios sometimes prefer to keep secret. However, at the origin, we can see that they still rely on high quality illustrations and stories that move the public.
Catherine Roux Degree in Illustration 