Animation

“ As the piece proceeded, and her interest in the play increased, a slightly heightened color and an expression of half eagerness gave her beauty all that it had wanted before of animation, and there was now an expression of such captivation on her face that, carried away by that mysterious sentiment which sways masses, sending its secret spell from heart to heart, the whole audience turned from the scene to watch its varying effects upon that beautiful countenance. ”

“ This seems to be [188] a lot of trouble for so little, but, judged by the result on the screen, has been shown to be worth while.
At this point we can touch upon the question of what is meant by “animation.” An artist with little experience may make a series of movement phases for an action, but when the drawings are tested it is found that they do not animate; that is, give in synthesis the illusion of easy motion. ”

“ The shouts of the fellows as they galloped up and down in the animating exercise—their loud bursts of laughter when any of their number caught a fall—and still louder acclamations when any of the party made a capital stroke with his lance—gave so much animation to the whole scene, that I caught the enthusiasm of the sport, and ventured forward a considerable space on the sands. ”

“ Now, do you not see how this applies to a picture? The artist invites a number of different textures to his party or composition. Surely the party will be lacking in animation if he does not bring out the special character of each. The lady’s face and hands will not contribute their full share to the animation of the whole composition, unless the character of their texture is expressed. It will not be enough to represent only the coloring of the flesh, for its beauty depends also upon its firmness and softness. ”

“ Some of the heaviest heads began to nod in time, and a degree of animation looked from some of the palest eyes. Humanly speaking, it is a more important matter to play the fiddle, even badly, than to write huge works upon recondite subjects. ”

“ Not a trace of the fire, the animation, which were so striking in the physiognomy of the youth of twenty, is discoverable in the calm, sedate, stately, yet somewhat stern expression, which seems immovably spread over the paler hue and the more prominent features of the man of about four or five and thirty. ”

“ Every savage observes not only that he casts a shadow, but that shadows attend all inanimate objects that stand so as to intercept the light, and as shadows move as do objects that gives rise to the idea of animation. Hence we have genii, dryads, naiads, ghosts, angels, demons, etc. To fortify this belief we have echoes, which give voice to animate and inanimate objects. Movement and voice are the universal accompaniment of animation. ”

“ The eye catching the two black spots as they alternately go back and forth is deluded with respect to the forcibleness of the animation even if the walking action is not as correctly drawn as it should be. ”

“ Then by means of the zoopraxoscope, a form of the wheel of life, whereby pictures in action could be thrown upon the screen, they were displayed in animation, thereby conclusively demonstrating the fact that what appeared so incredibly singular an attitude in a painting or an individual photograph was in reality part of a graceful harmonious natural movement. ”

“ The same minute acquaintance with a peculiar department of life, from which the great mass of mankind is by various circumstances entirely excluded, and we had almost said the same graphic power in giving animation to scenes apparently indifferent in themselves, are, we think, visible in the two productions.”—Monthly Review. ”

“ If the spirit of animation was always necessarily penetrable, it could not influence or be influenced by the solidity of common matter; they would exist together, but could not detrude each other from the part of space, where they exist ”

“ nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter. ”

“ Animism in the narrower sense is the theory of psychic concepts and in the wider sense, of spiritual beings in general. Animatism, the animation theory of seemingly inanimate nature, is a further subdivision which also includes animatism and animism. ”

“ For with an increase of specific detail in the action we have placed before us the more concrete animation, which expands in contradiction, reactions, and thereby, too, in the presence of several figures essentially related and intertwined with each other. ”

“ And you will notice that fashionable functions are dull, essentially dull; that the animation is artificial, is supplied from without by an orchestra or entertainers, and fails to infect the company. It was long before I discovered the explanation for this. ”

“ He gives to the two last acts of the play the greatest animation and effect. He fills every part of the stage; and makes up for the deficiency of his person by what has been sometimes objected to as an excess of action. ”

“ The want of inanimate forms to such words as happy, sorrowful, brave, sick &c. creates no confusion, as inanimate nouns cannot, strictly speaking, take upon themselves such qualities, and when they do—as they sometimes do, by one of those extravagant figures of speech, which are used in their tales of transformations, the animate forms answer all purposes. For in these tales the whole material creation may be clothed with animation. The rule, as exhibited in practice, is limited, with sufficient accuracy, to the boundaries prescribed by nature. ”

“ A certain state of mind will produce Animation of Voice, therefore I work to induce in the pupils the right state of mind, which is as sure to manifest itself in Animation of Voice as a sufficient amount of excellent gunpowder set on fire in a good cannon is to discharge its contents. ”

“ Its advantage is that the members of the company, not knowing what is coming next, are kept acutely expectant in order to fall naturally into the spirit of the parts and plot; they work themselves to a high pitch of intensity; and this gives the play the vim and animation which are peculiarly requisite for a picture-play. ”

“ The succeeding up-rushing column of water, after the splash, is made in the form of a huge mushroom—rather conventional but extremely comical.
In such a particular as a jet of water, a cycle of drawings is also used. In planning such drawings for animation care must be taken that they give in the combined screen illusion a proper one of falling water. The slightest misplacing of succeeding details representing the jet may give an [159] effect of the water going backward. A funny touch is what is wanted in a humorous picture, but, generally, not of this sort. ”

“ THE ANIMATION OF ART.—Art raises its head where creeds relax. ”

“ Animations should be used in all cases, when the horse, contrary to the rider’s inclination, either decreases his speed, droops his head, bears heavily and languidly upon the bit, or begins to be lazy and slovenly in the performance of his pace. ”

“ ON MOVEMENT IN THE HUMAN FIGURE Having now chronicled in a brief way the development of the cinematographic art, particularly in its relation to animated screen drawings, and having tried to give some notion of the fundamentals in their making with an account of their exhibition on the screen, it is in order now that we consider the matter of movement and its depiction by drawings that will give the visional synthesis of life. ”

“ In the case of animated cartoons, the frames on the film also contain photographs, but these photographs are made from sets of progressive drawings depicting the action of the characters of the animated cartoon.
In concluding this brief account of the modern motion-picture, the attention is directed, as the subject is studied, to a few details of the mechanism and to the general procedure that are found to be [15] elementary features in nearly all apparatus used during the round of years that the art was developing. ”

“ The animated cartoon artist, instead of using real people, objects, or views to take on his film, must make a number of related drawings, on every one of which there must be a change in a proper, [58] progressive, and graduated order. These drawings are placed under a camera and photographed in their sequence, the film developed and the resultant negative used to make a positive film. This is used, as we know, for screen projection. ”

“ The most frequent application that an animated cartoon artist makes of a vignetter is making cross dissolves, or causing one picture to blend into another. Imagine now that the idea to be expressed, through the medium of one of these cross dissolves, is that of a character standing in an attitude of reflection and supposed to be thinking of how he would look in a complete suit of armor. There will be two drawings: one with the figure in ordinary dress, and the other with him clad in the armor. ”

“ So far as the motions in a picture present the actions and reactions of the dramatic characters clearly and emphatically, they do faithful work; but this work becomes play when it is relieved of its hardness and dullness, and is animated with a spontaneity and variety that catches up the spectator into a swinging movement of attention. And those motions which are both work and play are basic in the beauty of cinematic art. ”

“ Dancing suggests sculpture, and sculpture suggests painting, arts which would have little beauty without the quality of rhythm. Even architecture must have it. From art we turn to nature, and we see the poignant beauty of rhythm in cloud and wave, in tree and flower, in brook and mountain, in bird and beast. The motion picture, which is the mirror of nature, and at the same time the tablet upon which all of the elder arts may write their laws, must bring to us the inheritance and reflection of rhythm. ”

“ THAT beneath all great art there has been a definite animating purpose, a single and profound desire to reach a specific goal, has been but vaguely sensed by the general public and by the great majority of critics. And there are, I believe, but very few persons not directly and seriously concerned with the production of pictures, who realise that this animating purpose has for its aim the solution of the profoundest problems of the creative will, that it is rooted deeply in the æsthetic consciousness, and that its evolution marks one of the most complex phases of human psychology. ”

“ A true artist delights in encountering new problems in connection with his particular branch of work. The very fact that he selects as his vocation some art activity, rather than employment that is mechanical, evinces this.
In making drawings for animated films and in following the whole process of their making, the artist will find plenty of scope for his ingenuity in the devising of expedients to advance and finish the work.
The first animated screen drawings were made without the labor and time-saving resources of the celluloid sheet. ”

“ PICTORIAL MOTIONS AT WORK All the movement which you see on the screen may be enjoyed, we have said, as something which appears beautiful to your eye, regardless of its meaning to your mind. But if that movement, beautiful in itself, also carries to your mind some significance, if it serves the dramatic plot in some positive way, then the picture will be so much the richer. Acting, of course, is visible movement that delineates character and advances plot. It is pictorial motion at work. And acting, curiously enough, is not limited to people and animals. ”

“ And this development, this evolution, has to do not merely with the perfecting of the art itself, but with the enjoyment that is derivable and derived from the art. Our eyes are becoming keener in the detection of gestures and mimicry; our imaginations are growing sharper, even clairvoyant; they are rapidly becoming able to read the language of pictures and movement. When the motion picture was still in its infancy, its actors assumed and employed the shrill and tinny pathos of the pantomime. ”

“ The cartoon, which, as usual in modern German art, is superior to the ultimate picture, was executed in the artist’s prime at the age of thirty. At this period, as here seen, the knowledge was little short of absolute; subtle is the sense of beauty; playful, delicate, firm the touch; the whole treatment artistic. ”

“ They gratify a proper human longing and they strike a responsive chord in the consciousness. Now there is another kind of appeal, in the matter of satisfying a human need, to which animated screen drawings can be put. ”

“ Artists when they begin to make drawings for screen pictures find a new interest in studying movement. In the study of art the student gives some attention, of course, to this question of movement. Usually, though, the study is not discriminating, nor thorough. But to become skilled in animating involves a thoughtful and analytic inquiry into the subject. If the artist is a real student of the subject its consideration will be more engrossing than the more or less slight study given to the planning of the single isolated phases, or attitudes, of action in ordinary pictorial work. ”

“ MOTIONS IN A PICTURE Pictorial motion is thousands of years older than the motion picture. It is as old as the oldest art of all, the dance. Before man had learned how to weave his own fancies into plots, or how to make drawings of things that he saw, he had doubtless often feasted his eyes upon the rhythmic beauty created by dancers. Their art was the composition of motions. ”

“ In other words, if you give the beholder’s imagination a chance to function, it will indulge in rhythmic play. We believe that if a cinema composer could thus produce rhythm by illusion, as well as by actual presentation, his achievement would be epoch-making in the movies.
Movement, movement through rich variety, movement accomplished with the utmost ease—that is the essence of what we have chosen to call the play of pictorial motions. That play, as we have seen in the illustrations given, involves every kind of pictorial motion, whether of spot, or line, or pattern, or texture, or tone ”