Suspended animation

“ It is not only the early fancy of the ballad-mongers and fairy tale-tellers that has dwelt longingly on the idea of suspended animation. All the mystics, who all follow the same dim track that leads to nothing, have believed in various forms of the imaginary Australian experiment. ”

“ The facility of suspending animation, by carbonic acid gas, and other means, without permanent injury to the subject, having been long known, it appears to me rather singular that no experiments have hitherto been made with the object of ascertaining whether operations could be successfully performed upon animals whilst in a torpid state; and whether wounds inflicted upon them in such a state would be found to heal with greater or less facility than similar wounds inflicted on the same animals p. 8whilst in possession of all their powers of feeling and suffering. ”

“ Hanging the body up by the heels to drain out the water which is supposed to have been swallowed, is not one of the least injurious of the popular expedients in cases of suspended animation, and it is, in itself, sufficient to keep up the engorgement of the brain, which is one of the chief dangers to be apprehended. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With the inability of the eye to tell that the screen is merely exhibiting separate photographs, the appearance is of motion. In most persons this visual persistence is only about one twenty-fourth of a second, but that is long enough to allow animated photography to be a pleasing illusion to them, for it gives the shutter of the projector time to hide one picture while the mechanism moves the film down to the next picture, bring the film to a dead stop, and let the shutter open again to reveal the next stage 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. ”

“ There are speeds in which the footprints coincide. In a more rapid pace than a walk, the imprint of the hind foot is farther forward than that of the forefoot. As the speed increases the stride lengthens and the footprints are much farther in advance.
In a certain type of humorous animation—the panorama—to be explained in a succeeding chapter, the artist is quite satisfied with his animation of a quadruped if a lively bewildering effect of agitated limbs is produced on the screen. This bewildering blur has after all a resemblance to that which the eye sees in rapidly running animals ”

“ Foreground details of a pictorial composition help the animator in several ways. Their inertness, for one thing, affords a contrast to the moving figure.
This feature of a picture is drawn on celluloid that is placed on top of the rest of the set having to do with the particular animation. It is possible, though, for an artist, if he is dexterous, to fasten this inert foreground to the under-side of the glass in the frame which is pressed down over the drawings during the photography. The foreground feature, of course, is cut out in silhouette and fastened with an adhesive like rubber cement. ”

“ They break the continuity of the animation, for one thing. Although it is true that balloons with their wording make an easy way for the animator to have the automatic counter register “footage” (a consideration appealing to the business sense of the artist) , it is only when there is a good jest brought out that lettering on the drawings themselves can be forgiven.
THE PLAINT OF INANIMATE THINGS CAN BE RENDERED EFFECTIVELY ON THE SCREEN.
In the early period of the development of animated comic drawings, not even subtitles were interspersed throughout a film. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But they have succeeded in obliterating the faintest trace of character, and in suppressing the slightest approach to animation. They have all got just the same opinions on the same topics—that is to say, they have none at all; the idea of a laugh has departed. There is a dead line of uniformity. ”

“ Yet when those arts, that skill, of which even the success teaches not the principle, even the process discovers not the secret resources, draw back, by means intelligible and visible, but through causes indefinable, the fleeting breath to its corporeal habitation; animation instantly returns, and the soul, with all its powers, revives! ”

“ A good rider foresees the necessity for an animation, before the horse actually abates his speed, or loses the ensemble of his action, and the grace and spirit of his deportment.
It is much easier to maintain, than to restore a horse’s animation; therefore, the whip, the hand, the leg, or the voice, should do its office a few moments before, rather than at a time, when doing so has become indispensable. A slight motion of the fingers of the bridle hand, serves as an excellent animation ”

“ 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 replied with a little annoyance.
"Words, nothing but smoke screens to conceal a bankruptcy of the thought process. How on earth do you propose I make love to every woman alive, explore every crevice of this earth? Surely, you aren't serious with this mumble about animating characters. I propose to let the characters speak of real ingredients through the force of actual events."
"Animation is for cartoons, not serious playwrights. I'm surprised at you," he went on. "What you are advocating is a bilateral pool of shared traits. ”

“ The body, during this temporary suspension of animation, resembles a clock, upon its pendulum being accidently stopped, its works are not mutilated nor shaken out of their proper places, but are competent to renew their functions the moment the former is touched by some friendly hand. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In projection the speed can be adjusted. The ten thousand pictures per second may be decelerated to sixteen per second to allow the movement to be followed, and although the rifle bullet may appear to crawl through the air, the movement is perfectly correct. Similarly the very slow motions must be accelerated to sixteen pictures per second to obtain evident animation. ”

“ In order to satisfy one’s self that the semblance of animation is an illusion, one has only to compare the projection of a moving object upon the screen, and its appearance in the camera obscura. In the latter case absolute continuous motion is shown. It may be said that complete animation by photography is quite out of the question with the single camera and projector. How it can be avoided and a more perfect camera obscura effect produced upon the screen is described later. Mechanical ingenuity has not succeeded yet in achieving such a result by means of a single lens. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ The idea of producing apparent animation by means of pictures is by no means new. The origin of the most primitive form of moving picture device is lost in the mists of antiquity; but it is certain that long before photography was conceived animated pictures were in vogue, and constituted a source of infinite amusement among children. The illusion was secured by a simple device known as the Zoetrope or the “Wheel of Life.” It consists of a small cylinder, mounted on a vertical spindle in such a way that it is free to revolve horizontally. ”

“ If college education were made compulsory by the State, and one-half of the curriculum consisted of actual, useful manual labor, most of our social ills would be solved, and we would be well out on the highway towards the Ideal City.
Without animation, man is naught—nothing is accomplished, nothing done. People who inspire other people have animation plus.
And animation plus is ecstasy. In ecstasy the spirit rushes out, runs over and saturates all. Oratory is an ecstasy that inundates the hearer and makes him ride upon the crest of another's ideas. ”

“ In the same manner a person can be brought suddenly on the scene, appearing to spring from the air. Trick effects may also be secured by running the film through the camera backward, and reversing the actions of the players, that is, making them “do things backward.” When the film is run through the projection-machine correctly, and shown on the screen, you see the player perform such miraculous feats as jumping from the middle of a river clear up a steep bank, when in reality to take the picture he leaped backward from the bank to the river—but the film was reversed. ”

“ In producing this latter illusion the likely expedient that the skilled animator would use is that of having a set of celluloids with drawings—three or five—showing the kink represented in a number of progressive positions. The plan would be to have the details in a cycle, so that when the last detail of the cycle is photographed, the first one exactly follows in a proper order. The artist can put these rope drawings on the same sheets of paper that hold the arm movements—we have in mind the picture of the man tugging at the rope, of course. ”

“ The general practice relative to taking motion-pictures is to have one-half foot of film move along for each turn of the camera handle. Eight separate pictures are made on this one-half foot of film. But in a camera that the animated cartoon artist uses, but one turn of the handle for each picture is the method. In most cameras the gearing can be changed to operate either way. To photograph drawings in making animated films a good reliable instrument is necessary, and requirements to the purpose should be thought of in selecting one. ”

“ 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. ”

“ This idea of a cumulative chain of actions, increasing in force and resultant misfortune, is peculiarly adapted to animated drawings.
The animator, if he is a good draftsman, can manage his little picture people much easier than the theatrical manager does the members of his company. A great danger, nevertheless, is that the animator, with this facility of doing whatever he pleases with his characters, may overdo the matter. He must be careful that he does not create too much business for his actors, and so retard the sequence of those episodes proper to the plot. ”

“ After the “stop” call is given and while the lens is closed by the shutter the hag leaves the scene, a young actress, suitably attired, assumes her position, the actor retaining his position while the change is effected. As the new actress assumes the exact pose of the witch when the camera starts again, there is a complete continuity of action recorded, and the audience cannot detect that a pause and change has taken place between the two consecutive pictures.
The “stop” movement is, as a rule, the secret to all instantaneous disappearances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ We come to the consequences. What is then the difference between seeing motion in the photoplay and seeing it on the real stage? There on the stage where the actors move the eye really receives a continuous series. Each position goes over into the next without any interruption. The spectator receives everything from without and the whole movement which he sees is actually going on in the world of space without and accordingly in his eye. But if he faces the film world, the motion which he sees appears to be a true motion, and yet is created by his own mind. ”