Animation Styles

This Squidoo lens was written by Aldric Chang (Follow Me on Twitter!) - best described as a creative entrepreneur with business interests in internet marketing, virtual worlds, animation, cartoons, interactive digital media, web 2.0 and music.

His 3d animation studio - Mediafreaks - is focused on producing high-end animation work for documentary producers, advertising houses and cartoon animated series - with projects ranging from the animation of dinosaurs to the visualization of natural disasters and something as chic as 3d jewelry animations. He runs a popular animation blog where he frequently posts informative articles on the animation industry and shares useful advice on the business of animation.

He is currently working on a series of free online virtual worlds for kids besides other creative endeavors.

There is a style in animation which may not get enough attention from people who are new to animation - limited animation. Although its name may imply a style of animation which is a cut below a quality animation, limited animation is certainly not a mediocre style.



Limited animation refers to a technique which illustrates cartoons in a less realistic manner. Thus its major motifs are stylized drawings taking advantage of various styles and shapes. It may not seem like it now but this style of animation back in the day was referred to as modern design. In today's setting, modern design would be equated with 3D animation.

During the early years of animation, the works of Walt Disney were seen as the benchmark for the highest standards of animation. This is rightfully called so but this manner of drawing is very expensive, takes a lot of time and requires a huge stable of skilled and talented artists. Whatever will happen to the everyday people who would want to create their own animations? Limited animation is for people like them.

Limited animation will not result to mediocrity. It uses abstract art, symbolism, and limited movement to create the same effect of high-end animation and yet have lower production operation costs. Normally, animators who employ this brand of animation are ones which are experimental - those which have a social contract with the audience about suspension of disbelief in order to tell a story.

Limited animation can be compared to paintings compared to photography, which are often times associated with simulations of reality. Limited animation has more interest in artistic renditions than inside-the-box, realistic drawings. Classic examples of this brand of animation are Yellow Submarine and The Dot and the Line.

Technically, limited animation aims to reduce the number of drawings per second. Film has a rate of 24 frames per second. Reduction of frames would result in 12 frames per second. This technique reduces the smoothness of perceived movement in the screen. But it does not sacrifice overall quality because it helps save production costs.

Over time, animation studios realized the immense savings afforded by limited animation. This animation style became more of a cost-cutting procedure than a means of artistic expression. The UPA Studio was the first studio to thoroughly implement limited animation to save on money. While this would have proven to be a recipe for disaster and mediocrity, UPA Studios' first output using non-realistic animation resulted - Gerald McBoing-Boing - won an Oscar award.

The award won by a movie powered by limited animation gave legitimacy to the technique in Hollywood circles. It proved that this style of animation is not a hindrance to a quality film, rather content is always king. Eventually, established Hollywood studios such as Warner Brothers and MGM implemented this style in their work.



Japanese animation was a better beneficiary of limited animation because manga illustrations adopt a more abstract style. This is why Japanese animated movies normally cost less compared to movies produced in America. A good example would be the most expensive anime feature film produced Katsuhiro Otomo's Steamboy only amounted to a total budget of $26,600,000. This may seem like a lot of money but this pales less in comparison to the budgets for American movies.

The success of limited animation is proof yet again that the message is more important than the medium.

Computer graphics from 3D animation have been such a breakthrough that it was able to create its own set of nuances and techniques. One of which is skeletal animation, one of the most used animation style in CGI-powered sequences.



Well, this technique does not involve actual bones although it is highly dependent on a solid reference point to realistically create animation models. Skeletal animation works through two parts: the skeleton which is a set of guide bones for the animation subject and the skin which is the surface representation used for the illustration of the character.

These bones are what's behind the popular term "rigging" in animation professional circles. A series of bones is initially constructed as a guide for the animation subject. All bones have a three dimensional feature namely position, scale and orientation. These bones form a hierarchy similar to a skeleton. Thus, the term for the technique.

What's good for this animation technique is because it follows the logic of a skeleton, when a part moves, its nearby and auxillary parts also move as well, when controlled by an animation controller. So when this logic is applied in animation, each bone in the skeleton will be associated to a portion of a character's visual representation. This is the nutshell of the skeletal animation technique - because it can get a little tricky with all the jargon surrounding it which will remind you of math classes in college.

Some of the terms a beginner would likely encounter in skeletal animation are positions of vertices, corresponding weight scales, and the algorithm called matrix palette skinning.

What are the advantages of skeleton animation? Well, for those inclined with web design, it sort of acts like a cascading style sheet wherein one can concentrate on the larger picture for the look of the web site (well, jumping from metaphors involving animation to web design may not simplify things). In short, there are fewer aspects in the animation model which has to be controlled thus the animator can focus on large scale motions. However, a possible downside to this is that muscle movement and skin motion may not seem that much realistic.

Normally, animators consult with physiology experts to have more realistic movements for the animation subject. For those much more technically inclined, special muscle controllers can be put in place.

Basically, skeletal animation can save a lot of time. In the industry of animation where the technique moves in, time is a premium especially in the field of video games and movies. This is why this is a favorite animation style of developers behind these forms of media. Skeletal animation is a sustainable form of production because it can animate characters and mechanical objects over a long period of time. As long as there are joints or rigid elements in an animation subject, skeletal animation can be effectively applied.

Throughout the years, many advancements have been researched further to achieve a more realistic look with skeletal animation. The introduction of motion capture or mocap has been a turning point in the animation industry - because not only it made life easier for skeletal animators, it also introduced a new procedure for animators.

Skeletal animation should not conjure images of pirates and boned-filled treasures. It is a very reliable technique for 3D animation which has been further developed by new technologies for more efficiency. This technique makes life easier for animators because it arranges an animation's subject elements in a very organized way.

Here are sample videos of skeletal animation to give you a preview of its intricacies:

Stop motion is a well-known technique in animation which has been closely associated with clay and the latter half of the 20th century. This technique enables static images to appear to move on its own through physical manipulation. It follows the same logic of hand-drawn animation which illustrates many images moving in a fast tempo to show movement. In stop-motion animation, live-action materials are photographed in many successions while showing gradual movements.



Because having to shoot photographs and trying to make them move when done in a flash require flexibility, clay has become a favorite medium for stop motion animation figures and sets. This is because clay has a malleable nature which makes repositioning and adjusting an easier task to do (not that it is easy, by the way). The use of clay has given birth to the portmanteau term claymation.

Stop motion animation has often been associated with vintage films - because the technique is really that old and reliable. This technique of animation has long been used in films, ever since the early beginnings of the medium in the early going of Western cinema. The first use of stop motion animation has been traced back to 1898 for the film The Humpty Dumpty Circus by filmmakers Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton. In the mise-en-scene of this film, a toy circus made up of acrobats and wild animals were set to motion in the film.

On the other hand, the use of clay for stop motion animation was first registered three years later in the 1902 film Fun in a Bakery Shop. However, the first application of clay was just used for the title cards but not for the actual content of the film. History books point to Georges Melies who used clay to create moving title cards for the audience.

From here on out, there were many stop motion animation films which gradually made its presence felt in Hollywood. Five years after the first use of clay in stop motion animation, J. Stuart Blackton returned to use Melies' techniques and the film became a huge commercial success.

In 1912, the movie viewing audience got a treat when the first clay stop motion animation was released: Modelling Extraordinary. On December 1916, film history books chronicle the first woman animator Helena Smith Dayton who experimented on clay stop motion animation in the 1917 film Romeo and Juliet.

Thus, stop motion animation is really a vintage animation technique. But the fact that the technique is still being used today with films such as Coraline, this only goes to show that it is an effective one.

The period 1960s-1970s would act as a sort of golden age for clay-based stop motion animation. Indie clay animator Eliot Noyes, Jr. polished the "free-form" clay animation with the award-winning films Clay or the Origin of Species (1965) and He Man and She Bar (1972). Noyes also used stop motion to animate sand on glass for the musical animated film Sandman (1975).



Going into the 1980s, clay stop motion animation had a feature role in science fiction movies. The most memorable sci-fi films which employed this animation was the Star Wars franchise from George Lucas, Robocop and then Terminator. Seeing how the early days of clay stop motion animation has lots of accomplishments, this animation style is only old and not outdated.

Drawing by hand will always be regarded as the beginning of animation. This is why even with advanced technologies now in the art of making things move from static images, computer graphics can still return to the look of hand-drawn animation. One key animation style to get that look is cel-shaded animation.



By the name of the animation style itself, it is clear how it is rooted in hand drawings. Cels are the clear sheets of acetates wherein the classic 2D animation style of Disney films of the past were drawn. In a nutshell, cel-shaded animation aims to make computer graphics appear as though they were hand-drawn. This is accomplished through non-photorealistic lighting.

The results may look simple but the actual process is quite complex. Beginning with a 3D model, cel-shaded animation proceeds to create discrete shades which would give a flat look typical of 2D animation. Similar to comic books, emphasis can be given to drawings highlighting black ink outlines and contour lines.

Cel-shaded animation, curiously, is more popularly associated with video games. Whenever a new game will come up, many gamer geeks and aficionados would often ask about the quality of the cel-shade. To recap, the first successful application of cel-shaded animation in video games is with the Sega Dreamcast game Jet Set Radio. Not to be outdone, Sony PlayStation released Fear Effect. Good times for sure.

However, the first criticisms then involved the quality of the appearances of the characters. Although dramatic textures were achieved with these early games, it lacked dynamic light-sourcing and outlines.

Even with the technological limits of the first batches of cel-animated video games, a small trend began to brew among game developers. Cel-shaded games started to appear like mushrooms: Sly Cooper, Thievius Raccoonus, Dark Chronicle, Cel Damage, Klonoa 2: Lunatea's Veil, Viewtiful Joe and of course Jet Set Radio Future. What stood out among the pack, at least commercially, were The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, Tales of Symphonia and Sly 2: Band of Thieves.

One game which tried to capitalize on the popularity of cel-shaded animation unfortunately experienced adverse results. The House of the Dead III, designed for the Microsoft Xbox, started production of the game with cel-shaded graphics - yes, an anime-like look for a zombie-based gunner game. So with disaster brewing for this awkward recipe, SEGA decided to scrap the cel-shaded look and go for conventional animation styles. Maybe the negative response was so overwhelming to ignore.

Although cel-shaded animation has not taken the video game industry by storm, it is still an effective motif to used when implemented properly. Dragon Quest VIII, Rogue Galaxy, Killer 7, No More Heroes, Metal Gear Acid 2, Okami and the most recent incarnation of Prince of Persia all feature 3D animation which appear anime-like or hand-drawn. Moreover, when handhelds were not as powerful as today, most games were in cel-shading animation. Examples would be the Tony Hawk series and The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass on the Nintendo DS.



Cel-shaded animation can somehow be compared with abstract painting. It does not have to exactly represent reality but when used with skill and adequately, it can create stunning treatments for multimedia entertainment such as video games and even animated movies.