Aniamtion Application

     There are plenty of animation application in the market that is easy for unspecialists to make their own animations.
     For 3D animations, Maya, LightWave, 3D Studio Mix are good examples, and Flash is for 2D animation. The principle is no difference from the earlist idea of showing a series of pictures quickly but computer provides a much better way to carry it out. Other than drawing every pictures by hands, you can just draw key frames are set the time, position, and route than an easy animation can be done.
     Computer-Generated Image(CGI) is a technology helps a lot providing a series of function such as generating cloth and skin images, interactive simulation and visualization, and computer animation, which plays an  important role in animation application.
     For specific introduction of each application, read more in my blog later!

reference:http://tds.ic.polyu.edu.hk/vc/t3_computer_graphics/animation_application.htm
              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer-generated_imagery
There is a list of application you can use:
Macromedia Flash
Adobe Imageready
Adobe Premiere
3DX-MAX
MAYA
Lightwave

The history of animation

     I will use simple words and examples to illustrate the history of animation in theis blog.

Precursors of animation
     The idea of animation can date back to 2.6 million years ago when people at the 'stone age' leave their distinguished cave painting where animals are depicted with multiple sets of legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the perception of motion. Other examples include a 5,200-year old earthen bowl found in Iran in Shahr-e Sukhteh and an ancient Egyptian mural. Although these picture series cannot be called as animation in modern concept, they are the precursors of animation.
Early divices
     The first device to show a moving picture is called zoetrope created in China in around 180 AD by the prolific inventor Ting Huan.  The principle is to show the pictures in a fast speed by rotating the zoetrope where a series of pictures are painted.
     Similar idear was developed in the 19th centery when Thaumatrope(1824), Phenakistoscope (1831), and Flip book (1868) were invented.
Praxinoscope
     The next great progress was the Praxinoscope (1877) invented by Charles-Émile Reynaud, an animation system using loops of 12 pictures which is the base of modern animation. And the first animation film came out the following year using the Praxinoscope by the same person. Since then, animation film began to develope.
CGI
     However, in nowadays, nearly all the animation film are using the CGI(Computer-generated imagery). The first animation film using CGI is Toy Story produced by pixar in 1995, which means that it was not until 1995 when animations are accoumplished on computers.

referrence: http://www.myholler.com/155online/lectures/history.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_animation
you can read more:Animation History Timeline
Animation History

Animation studios

     In this blog, I'm going to introduce you some of the most famous and capable animation studios in the world. After searching for some ranking of those studios, I decided to talk about the Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Aardman Studios, and the Dreamworks animation.

Walt Disney Animation Studios:

     Walt Disney Animation Studios is an American animation studio and the subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company responsible for creating the company's well-known animated films. Compared with the Pixar, the Walt Disney Animation Studio has really a long history and much more productions. The Walt Disney Studios released its first fully animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, in 1937,  which was an unprecedented success at that time. The movie also pioneered a new form of family entertainment which becomes quite popular and has plunged into the depth of the audiences' heart in nowadays.  

     This Animation studio is noted for creating a great number of now-standard innovations in the animation industry, including The multiplane camera, The realistic animation of special effects and human characters, Advanced composition processes to combine live-action and animated elements using color film, The use of xerography in animation to transfer drawings to cels as opposed to ink-tracing, The use of all-digital methods for painting, compositing, and recording animated features CAPS (Computer Animation Production System), and The technique for rendering animations in a painterly style. The Lion King(1994), etc. The following picture is from its offical website.

     Besides, its features are deeply planted into people's heart than any other animation features ever in the world. The most famous should be the Micky Mouse which the Disney company put it along with their sign. There prosuction of cartoon series and films are over 50 famous ones include the Pinocchio(1940), Alice in Wonderland(1951), The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh(1977),

Pixar Animation Studios:

      Pixar is an American CGI animation film studio began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, was part of the Computer Division of Lucasfilm before it was acquired by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs in 1986. The company made a lots of short animation films as long as 11 long movies. Their long movies are mostly in corperation with the Walt Disney Company. However, Pixar became a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company in 2006.

     To most people, Pixal was brought to fame by the Toy Story in 1995. But in the early years of the Pixar, they experienced a really tough time but all the staff are ambitious to search for new things for animations. Within 20 yeas, Pixar has become a well-known studio and influenced the development of animation movies geatly which have closely realationship with its hard work in the early years.

     Nowadays, almost everybody known Pixar, and many people rank it the first of the animation studios in the world. Pixar has created so many features that deeply impressed us. The followings are some of the features.

Aardman Studios

     Aardman Studios is an Academy Award-winning British animation studio which is the best stop-motion clay animation film maker in the world. Founded in 1976, the two founders, Peter Lord and David Sproxton, just wanted to realise their dream of producing an animated motion picture. However, it successfully entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away (2006).

     While making many short series for BBC, Aardman Studios also made some feature moves, including five cooperated with the Dreamwork. The most famous one is the Chicken Run which I have introduced in older blogs. Wallace and Gromit may be their most well-known animation characters and they shooted four in total.  

     Making this kind of animation is really a time consuming thing, since you have to take every single picture as the frames. There are not many people are willing to devote to stop-motion film making. So I consider Aardman really precious and I own much respect to them.

Dreamworks animation:

     DreamWorks began in 1994 as an ambitious attempt by media moguls Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen to create a new Hollywood studio. In December 2005, the founders agreed to sell the studio to Viacom, parent of Paramount Pictures. In 2008, DreamWorks announced its intention to end its partnership with Paramount and signed a US$1.5 billion deal to produce films with India's Reliance ADA Group. Reliance provided $325M of equity to fund recreating Steven Spielberg's DreamWorks studio as an independent entity.

     Although its quite young but in the recent decade, they really made several big production in the market of animation, such as Shrek(2001), Madagascar(2005), Flushed away(2006),etc.

Other great animation studios include the Blue Sky Studios, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, Toei Animation, Gainax, ProductionIG,ect. I will introduce them one by one later!
Reference: http://www.disneyanimation.com/

                    http://www.pixar.com/

                    http://www.aardman.com/

                    http://www.dreamworksanimation.com/ 

Animation and Animation films

     Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is due to a phenomenon called persistence of vision which is an optical illusion of motion. Animation films can be date back to the early 20^th century and are well developed and fairly popular in nowadays.

     Here I will introduce three animation movies which I consider most outstanding in the world and attracted billions of people as well as billions of box-office income.

     The first one I would like to show is of course the landmark Toy Story, which was the first completely computer-generated animated feature film, achieved though the collaboration between Pixar Studios and Disney in 1995.

     The story is about an adventure of several toys that somehow come to life. It begins with a conflict between a cowboy toy named Woody and a new comer Buzz to fight for their owner’s favor. After the great success of the first movie, a series of three in total came out later and won a grand reputation. It was ranked best in some cartoon movie ranking websites.

 

     WALL-E is another very successful cartoon movie won by its moving and educational story. This film is also produced by Pixar Studios and Disney and was a quite new one that came out in 2008.

     WALL-E (meaning Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) is the name of a waste-removal robot in the year2700 who discovered a valuable plant on the rubbish-covered earth and tried to tell human beings to go back to earth. At that time, human beings are living in a highly intelligent place but people are getting much fatter and lazier than we are now. In the story, WALL-E fell in love with another robot, EVE, and their love also moved many people.

     Then I will introduce another kind of animation, clay animation, which is one of many forms of stop animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable" — made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay.  One of the representative film is Chicken Run made by the Aardman Animation studios in 2000. 

     The story is again simple but very interesting. It happened in a chicken farm where  Rocky the rooster and Ginger the chicken was raised. However, they decide to rebel against the evil Mr. and Mrs. Tweedy, the farm's owners. Rocky and Ginger lead their fellow chickens in a great escape from the murderous farmers and their farm of doom. The success due to the funny feature and the good story.

     Other great movies include UP(2009), Finding Nemo(2003), Spirited Away(2001), My Neighbour Totoro(1988), etc. All the animation mivies are eye feast, and inspired us when we laugh.
     
     In later blogs I will introduce MORE GREAT CARTOON to u! Don't miss it!

reference: http://www.filmsite.org/animatedfilms.html
                 http://blog.moviefone.com/2008/06/02/feature-page-5-1_m_f/
                 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animation