Traditional animation

Limited animation 

Definition : "Is a process of making animated cartoons that does not redraw entire frames but variably reuses common parts between frames."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_animation 

Technique : "These techniques used to produce cartoons on a reduced budget included:

• Cels and sequences of cels were used repeatedly — animators only had to draw a character walking once.
• Characters are split up into different levels: only portions of a character, such as the mouth or an arm, would be animated on top of a static cel.
• Clever choice of camera angles and editing.
• Use of camera techniques such as panning to suggest movement. A famous implementation of this is the "crash" technique, which involves the camera shaking rapidly back and forth or up and down to simulate a shock wave.
• "Smear animation:" movement is rapid and portrayed in only three frames: the beginning state, the ending state, and a "blur" frame similar to that of a picture taken with a camera that had a low shutter speed.
• Cel reversal (simply using a mirror image of the cell to represent the opposite angle). Many cartoon characters are drawn symmetrically to expedite this technique.
• The visual elements were made subsidiary to audio elements, so that verbal humor and voice talent became more important factors for success ("talking heads").
• Silhouette helped avoid having to keep track of shading on an animated character or object.
• Sliding a cel across a background to suggest movement.
• Stock footage: sequences that are reused frequently. This is the case of the character transformations in the Magical girls subgenre of Japanese anime series. Filmation used this strategy for much of its productions, and Hanna-Barbera often used it when necessary (most notably on Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?.)
• Extensive recaps of previous episodes or segments, to cut down on the amount of new material necessary (used often in serial shows like Rocky and Bullwinkle or Underdog).
• The most egregious case of limited animation, known as Syncro-Vox, involved pasting a film of the moving lips of a real-life person over a still frame of an "animated" character to give the appearance that the character is doing the talking. Cambria Studios held a patent on the technology, and as such, it was primarily used on their productions, such as Clutch Cargo; it still has limited use today, the most widely known example being the online series The Annoying Orange.
• Chuckimation, another notoriously low-budget process, simply moves various "animated" figures by hand or by throwing them across a space. Most commonly used with stop-motion animation, it usually does not allow for characters' mouths to move."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limited_animation

Image : 

Flints Stones - Flintstones+Pg+2.jpg

Vidéo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB3yQUWL5RU

 Rotoscoping
 

Definition : "Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over live-action film movement, frame by frame, for use in animated films. Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device has been replaced by computers in recent years. In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.
Another Rotoscope was invented by LeRoy Wottring for orthoptic training. See patent 2316139. The device was manufactured by the Wottring Instrument Company of Columbus, Ohio. In 1950, American Optical purchased the assets of Wottring Instruments and continued to build and market the product. Orthoptic training was used for a variety of eye conditions including amblyopia."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping

Technique : "Rotoscope output can have slight deviations from the true line that differs from frame to frame, which when animated cause the animated line to shake unnaturally, or "boil". Avoiding boiling requires considerable skill in the person performing the tracing, though causing the "boil" intentionally is a stylistic technique sometimes used to emphasize the surreal quality of rotoscoping, as in the music video "Take on Me" and animated TV series Delta State.
Rotoscoping (often abbreviated as "roto") has often been used as a tool for visual effects in live-action movies. By tracing an object, a silhouette (called a matte) is created that can be used to extract that object from a scene for use on a different background. While blue and green screen techniques have made the process of layering subjects in scenes easier, rotoscoping still plays a large role in the production of visual effects imagery. Rotoscoping in the digital domain is often aided by motion tracking and onion-skinning software. Rotoscoping is often used in the preparation of garbage mattes for other matte-pulling processes.
Rotoscoping has also been used to allow a special visual effect (such as a glow, for example) to be guided by the matte or rotoscoped line. One classic use of traditional rotoscoping was in the original three Star Wars films, where it was used to create the glowing lightsaber effect, by creating a matte based on sticks held by the actors. To achieve this, editors traced a line over each frame with the prop, then enlarged each line and added the glow."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotoscoping

Image :  

Snow White - snowwhitehuntsman.png

Vidéo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Gf7QQOvFNM

 

Live-action/animation

Definition :  "A live-action/animated film is a motion picture that features a combination of real actors or elements: live-action and animated elements, typically interacting."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Films_with_live_action_and_animation

Technique : "Originally, animation was combined with live action in several ways, sometimes as simply as double-printing two negatives onto the same release print. More sophisticated techniques used optical printers or aerial image animation cameras, which enabled more exact positioning, and better interaction of actors and animated characters. Often, every frame of the live action film was traced by rotoscoping, so that the animator could add his drawing in the exact position.
In the penguin sequence in Mary Poppins, they filmed the live action part first, having the actors sitting in front of a painted background. Then the penguins were added, probably by using cel overlay.
With the rise of digital special effects, combining live- action and animation has become more common. The Star Wars saga and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, for example, include substantial amounts of animation, though it may not be recognized as such because of the animation's realistic, non-cartoony appearance. However, critics like Roger Ebert don’t consider this to be animation, saying, “in my mind, it isn't animation, unless it looks like animation.”
 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Films_with_live_action_and_animation


Image :

Roger Rabbit - 500full-who-framed-roger-rabbit-screenshot.jpg

Vidéo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZtjAFKNx38

Inbetweening


Définition : "Inbetweening or tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image. Inbetweens are the drawings between the key frames which help to create the illusion of motion. Inbetweening is a key process in all types of animation, including computer animation."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbetweening

Technique : "Traditional inbetweening involves the use of light tables to draw a set of pencil-on-paper pictures.

In the inbetweening workflow of traditional hand-drawn animation, the senior or key artist would draw the

keyframes which define the movement, then, after testing and approval of the rough animation, would hand over the scene to his or her assistant.
The assistant does the clean-up and the necessary inbetweens, or, in large studios, only some breakdowns which define the movement in more detail, then handing down the scene to his assistant, the inbetweener who does the rest."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inbetweening

Image :

Flight reference drawings by Jennifer Hager - flight_hager02.jpg

Vidéo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOeOFjViEFE

Flip Book

Definition :"A flip book or flick book is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change.
Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners.
Software packages and websites are also available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip books."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_book

Technique :"Flip books are essentially a primitive form of animation. Like motion pictures, they rely on persistence of vision to create the illusion that continuous motion is being seen rather than a series of discontinuous images being exchanged in succession.
Rather than "reading" left to right, a viewer simply stares at the same location of the pictures in the flip book as the pages turn. The book must also be flipped with enough speed for the illusion to work, so the standard way to "read" a flip book is to hold the book with one hand and flip through its pages with the thumb of the other hand. The German word for flip book—Daumenkino, literally "thumb cinema"—reflects this process."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flip_book

Image : 

Flip Book - 33793.jpg

  Vidéo : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRnyAClVy2Y&feature=fvst



 Sources : Wikipédia