Monday, January 30, 2017

OUAN405: Update on character design


A finalisation of the concept works for my animation. After some clarification from Matt, my fly swatting topic was given the thumbs up for the "first contact"  theme. As I found this to be way more interesting than Starwars, I decided to ran with it , with the target audience aiming at teenager and young adult, specifically anime fan, as the joke itself and many of the quirks would be very familiar to them, hence would be very effective at producing humour.

For the main girl , I decided to go with a more different body type as opposed to the more typical body type you see in anime that was going to be my choice. A major influence for this was "Powerpuff girls" and "Panty and Stocking", where the limbs of the character are simplified down to rounded shapes, making it much much easier to visualize and animate ( you're basically animating a blog. The other noticeable trait is the large head and small body relative to the limbs. They boy would follow this style closely ,but would have more realistic proportion and body as to contrast the sister.

As for the expression , I played around alot with angry emotions for the girl , as she would be irritated by the fly most of the time in the animation. the large eyes is classically anime and really helps at portraying emotion. I also did some sketches of the room which is the environment the character going to be in , as it would help identifying the position of each object if a background composition is needed, it would also help with camera positioning.



OUAN405: `Target audience and Age range

To extend further on the topic of types of humour , I would be taking a look identifying what the target audience are , and what is considered appropriate for each groups, plus also the the pros and cons of it. Its important to get this done first before going into making a proper story as it would effect the way I tell it drastically , but my general goal right now, IS to create humour that can reach out to a WIDE range of audience instead of just one specific group, since that would be the most profitable and effective  hence the most logical way to go.

What is target audience really ? Well it can be identified as the group that you would want to cater the most to for your animation/films in terms of style , plots, design,...etc - things that they would find appealing.  Target audience is critical to acquiring a successful product and a loyal customer base by creating a long-term relation to the audience even after the acquisition of the initial product, i.e creating a fanbase for a particular animated series that will return seasons after seasons. And of course, loyal customers means a reliable source of profit. However, in my case, who is producing animation not for revenue but solely for entertainment , target audience ensures that my animation would be efficient understood and appreciated by the audience in question, hence would be more memorable and more spreadable.

So with that said, age plays a vital role in identifying the target audience, as it dictates the level of humor that can be considered appropriate for each group, meaning they are UNDERSTANDABLE and FUNNY. You wouldn't necessary produce vulgar humour or any kind of sexual/ violence related jokes to young children, not only because that is inappropriate but for the simple reason that they would necessarily understand it , the same way you wouldn't do fart jokes and slapstick humour for an older more knowledgable audience. However, considering how much internet is exposed to young kids to day , the age is becoming ever closer.

Now , The British Board of Film Classification split the age group according to the level of content that can be shown , into the large groups of:

Universal (U) : Suitable for all age groups , which would include young children. Now for pre-school to primary level children are developing there understanding of language, hence, their newy gained knowledge of puns, and play on word is a fascinated topic for them , therefore jokes in this realm would fit in this age group perfectly. Also , slapstick humour like wobbly eyes, and nonsensical situations are adored by kids, hence the popularity of shows like Road Runner and Tom n' Jerry among this target audience. As they get older , they began to feel more anxiety in social situation and in turn would react by considering it as funny , such as laughing at a friend who has fallen down or are being yelled at by the teacher.

12A and 15 : I group this 2 groups together as mentioned above , the age gap is ever closing in this internet age. Generally this would be tweens to teenager group, who is starting to become more matured and is very knowledgable about current pop cultured, as they would generally be born after the internet blew up in the early 2000s.  This would be the target audience for many Disney and Dreamworks animated features, with witty humor , fun character design but having a sense of maturity to it ( darker , more realistic) . They're also the age groups , especially 15 years old, who are bridging the gap of more matured humour, so more complex puns, pop culture reference , a certain amount of violence, sexual humour ( hormones-driven ). The slapstick humour of Road runner would fell out of favour pretty quickly.

  

18 and R18 : The young adults and adults, who makes up for most of the traffic and revenue for movies. They're knowledgable about society and culture, and hence more demanding in terms of humour. But in some case, slapsticks  comedy can be effective, but again , not for very long as in the case with Adam Sandler. Humours that reflects current social events can be very effective, as well as more violence and sexual-related topic. Pop- culture would be very effective as again , they're the group with the most knowledge.


Panty and Stocking is an perfect of example of adult-oriented animation 

It also important however, not only to understand the specifics of each groups but to consider facts like , parents would watch kids movie with their children, or how children would eventually grow up and can stick to what they like as kids, and of course, how children is getting more matured faster. That is why , even though animation in the West are very much stereotypically categorised as "for children" , it is appreciate by adults alike , such as in the case of Frozen and the popularity of Japanese anime, the latter especially thanks to their specific aims at a more matured audience. With that said however, animation that tries too hard to be matured can inadvertently led to it be considered childish and cringy, much like seeing a kid in your class trying to be cool by saying swear words. Good humour is those that just slides into the audience mind, not the one that is forceful and in-your-face, like Shark Tales and its attempts at punch-line and celebrity reference.

  

Wednesday, January 25, 2017

OUAN405 : Make em' laugh - Initial ideas

After some consideration about group age , I decided that I would go for the teenage-young adult groups, as they are the most exposed about current pop culture which would provide more opportunities and ways to incite humour. With that said , I currently have 2 competing ideas at the moment:

First, its a Star Wars parody involving a stormtrooper and Darth Vader on a "blind date".

Some sketches here:

 

Explaining the story here: Its gonna be the stormtrooper waiting for his blind date that he met online in a restaurant, and he starts fantasising and getting all excited but it turns out at the end , it was Darth Vader himself, which would except his flower with joy and usher the line from the movie :" Most impressive. The benefit of this script is , theres not alot of complex movement to be animated , which is always good, and no dialog required for the characters, except that last phrase. On top of that , its a spoof of pop culture which in Star Wars case, a very BIG one, hence , it would be easier to get people to get the joke and laugh about it ! However , a down side I can see its that the character design would be limited to the original character, which would require a more realistic look => Harder to animate .

Second idea is an anime-style short animation of a girl squatting a fly : 

This would fit the word "First contact" as in the story , she hit the guy's face in the process. However , I don't know if that will stick , so I'll probably need to bring that up with the tutors 



 I definitely find this idea more exciting to do , as I'm much more interested in doing thi anime style and want to experiment some of the anime techniques I've learned. I also have some ideas on doing backgrounds, especially doing a spinning background type of animation. However , I'm afraid I might go overboard with it and end up not having enough time. Although , truth be told , if it is what Im interested in, Im quite confident that I would get it done. But first thing is to get this to the tutors to see if it is in line with the topic of the brief.




Tuesday, January 17, 2017

History of animation #5 : functions of animation

Throughout its existence, animation ,like many other media, serves multiple purpose. What comes to mind first is entertainment, obviously, as that is the form that most of us relate to the most . It is true that entertain could be consider the main pillar of animation, with other roots branching from it, but that is not to say it is the only one. Much like the radio, animation is communication , more importantly ,it is visual communication , which is the most powerful type, and hence it can serves and it can change the way we think in the world.

Breaking it down , one can view the purposes of animation like this :

  • sell – increase sales, readership, membership or number of page hits
  • persuade – get viewers to take action e.g. donate money, vote, join a protest (like the 'call to action' implicit in every advert)
  • inform - tell visitors about an event, news item, new product, service or campaign
  • educate – explain something complex e.g. a scientific, geological or technical process
  • entertain – amuse or tell a story
  • create a brand image – give the product or service a positive commercial identity
  • raise awareness – publicise a charity campaign, political or ecological issue
  • illustrate or decorate – provide 'eye-candy' for a page
  • attract attention - to get the product or service noticed and talked about
  • impress – to give the product a cutting- edge image as the latest must-have fashion or technology
This is what I've found to be a very appropriate and relatively sufficient list that you can equate the purposes of animation to. Within those, in my opinion , the most prominent are : to sell, to entertain , to inform and impress.

To sell should be an easy thing to imagine, as nothing in this current economy is not for sell, since we wouldn't have an industry if there is. However, one do have to look back to the past, were the first animations tools of profit? To that extent , I would say no , profit was like a bonus that came with the invention of animating tools, and if you were an inventor of said tools at that time, you obviously wouldn't just sell it off, the main objective was to attract attention and create fame for the inventor mostly. And how would you do that ? . You entertain them.

Moving on to the silent era, we began to see the rise of animation entertainment, most if not all forms of development to the art of animation were in one way or another to create a method to entertain the public, who if probably attracted would continue to donate and fund the development of more techniques and research. Animation started to diverged from just being a rotating wheel of images, to having music, a proper plot and characters, then drama, comedy ,horror etc. The target of entertainment has also diversified. Gone is the age of mass animation, you now have to think about specific age groups ( from kids to teens ) , Genre , culture and location ( Say anime and western cartoons is very different in the setting that they are played in ) to properly entertain audience form each area, even considering the quirky market like sex. We see this diversification of animation very clearly through out the decades, from the era of Disney Snow white and Aladdin musicals that tells a a happy-ending story and teaching kids morality to the dark themes of violence of anime to the meaningful anti-war and nature-loving characteristic of Miyazakis, animation as a tool of entertainment has reach a new level of complexity. Of course taking advantage of this popularity, advertising would take advantage of it as thing to sell their product, and so we have TV ads,  moving signs, billboards, all born from animation's ability to communicate and entertain visually. 

That is to say, advertisement is not the only thing that notice it. Political ideas can also be communicate through the form, such as propaganda or controversial matters. Take the work of Disney during WWII for example, using the beloved and popularized characters like Donald Duck to perform a satire comedy about the Nazi way of life, or just straight out criticised through exaggerated plots all serves to diminished the public's view of the Nazis and support the war. 

 

Shows like the Boondocks use satire comedy to criticise social issues which are deem controversial like racism, terrorism. Even looking back to the past , old animation are brought up as topics of political correctness as, at the time of its creation , society was vastly different , and not for the better and it reflects in the animation produced at the time : black being described as jet black short people with big lips , or women being over sexualised and always in position of distress , waiting to be rescue. The current animation industries certainly have taken not of this, seeing how we beginning to see more strong heroine characters starring in the currents big title animations.

  

And finally , to impress, which I think is the very definition CGI animation , particularly in video games. When you have a wide audience with vastly different taste in artistic aesthetic, you rely on what generally everyone enjoys in seeing CGI : realism. Game designers , Artist and Programs in the gaming industries, pushes to create the best graphics possible in order the current hard-pressed audience- the more they see , the harder to impress them and the harder the artists has to push. Animation coming from big studio , now not only relies on there stories, but their visual quality, either that is the impressive CGI of Pixar, or the beautiful spaces and colour of Your Name or Spirited Away, Impression matters, else you're not gonna attract audience no more. It is dangerous however, because some individual would take this into consideration too much that the core of the animation : ie the storytelling and the pot lacks behind, or animation and effects takes to much importance in a production , such as the hotly debated CGI vs Practical effects of the movie industries and movie like Transformer being destroyed by critics and fans, even though the animation is very impressive. So it is up to the animator to find the delicate balance between them,as well as the rest of the different purposes of animation , in order to create an animation that is effective. With that said, it is only getting harder to be an animator...



History of animation #4: CGI

As technologies advance , so will the process of producing animation. The begin of the digital age start with the invention of the computer and then the commercialisation of it paved way for many experiments to be carried with 3D graphics. The result of that process was CGI : Computer generated Images. Pioneered by John Whitley with motion control photography , CGI research spread out into multiple labs and universities. By the 1970s, the emphasis was to create a more realistic 3D image base for PCs and the interest rose even more in the 80s, when realistic 3D rendering began appearing in cinemas and by the mid 90s , CGI animation has developed to a point of being ready for a full-featured film.


A computer animated hand - 1972 : one of the earliest examples of CGI in mainstream media, used in the 1976 movie ,Futureworld 

One of the biggest names in CGI animated films are Pixar - an award-winning animation studio. began in 1979 as the Graphics Group, part of the Lucasfilm computer division, before its spin-out as a corporation in 1986, with funding by Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who became the majority shareholder.[1] Disney purchased Pixar in 2006 at a valuation of $7.4 billion, a transaction that resulted in Jobs becoming Disney's largest single shareholder at the time. Pixar is best known for CGI-animated feature films created with RenderMan, Pixar's own implementation of the industry-standard RenderMan image- rendering application program interface, used to generate high-quality images. Pixar has produced 17 feature films, beginning with Toy Story (1995)—which was the first-ever computer-animated feature film. Other giants would be , Disney and Dreamworks, both of whom has a substantial portfolio in 3D animated films, with Disney's Frozen being one of the highest grossing animation ever.

Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques used in traditional animation with 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations. Computer-generated animations are more controllable than other more physically based processes, constructing miniatures for effects shots or hiring extras for crowd scenes, and because it allows the creation of images that would not be feasible using any other technology. It can also allow a single graphic artist to produce such content without the use of actors, expensive set pieces, or props. Also, with the demand in realism , particularly in the gaming industry, CGI development had grown significantly in that feel, hence, the most complexed and impressive CGI examples nowadays are often display within video games, rather than animation.

 
CGI can be simplified down as the digitized version of stop motion 


Saya- a 3D CGI model highlight the technological power of modern day graphics

In most 3D computer animation systems, an animator creates a simplified representation of a character's anatomy, which is analogous to a skeleton or stick figure. The position of each segment of the skeletal model is defined by animation variables, or Avars for short. In human and animal characters, many parts of the skeletal model correspond to the actual bones, but skeletal animation is also used to animate other things, with facial features.

3D animation can diverge in many ways, some taking inspiration in Traditional form of animation from before, using keyframes, and then letting the computer do the motion in between. Some however , take advantage of new techniques like motion capture to use movement by real actors and then transfer it into a skeleton which the character be placed one. Both results in very smooth action, with the former being able to perform more exaggerated actions, and the latter portray more subtle movements to create a sense of realism.

  

With that said of course, CGI isnt fully limited to being realistic , as many of the current animation studios like Pixar, Disney and dreams takes advantage of that realism to put in to use in a very cartoonised world. Aspects like realistic lighting , physics, and dynamic background serves to build the world and enhance the aesthetic value of it : 





Zootopia 

It has to be said however this only clear after several failed attempts of studios trying to create realistic portrayal for animated features in the mid 2000s like The Polar express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol, with most of them being criticized as being creepy as they were trying to make characters look realistic, yet reached only around 2/3 of the way.

 

CGI of course isnt only refering to the 3D animation alone but can applied to the whole digitization process of traditional animations. Papers, pegs and brushes are now replaced with wacom tablets and animation software that enhance the animator's ability drastically , thanks to its edit ability and accurate measurement. Also , VFX can now be applied freely to enhance the animation to a different level, which is very prominent now in modern anime 

particles effects added post animation production


blurring function creating depth to the scenes

Overall the invention of CGI has drastically enhanced the process of animation , both technically and visually , creating a faster more efficient way to animate all the while producing better results. But one can argue that much like with any other form of technologies, the process has made animation lose some of it artistic, hand-made aspects. However, hidden gems like studio Ghibli still persists and proves to us that while CGI will probably dominate everything , animation at is core still lies in the creative mind of the animator and the tip of the pencil. With that said. you do have to appreciate it,  and Ghibli of course has dip their feet in a little 

 In princess Mononoke , the monster is CGI while the background is hand-painted 
 


History of animation #3: The Golden age and the Television era

In 1923, Studio Laugh-O-Grams , went bankrupt, which forces its owner , Walter E. Disney to open up a new studio in Los Angeles , starting what is to become a multi-billion corporation that has pretty much monopoly on the world animated scenes. But before it was the stereotypical , greedy corporation it is today, Disney animation studio started out as Disney Brother's Cartoon studios which exclusively produced short films. Prior to that , Disney created an animated film titled Alice's Wonderland, which is later on followed by Alice comedies. After its demise, Disney went to to work on a series featuring his own original character , Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. It is within this character , that we will see the resemblance in design choices later on for Mickey Mouse

  
In 1928, The short steamboat Willie was created . Regard one of the most important animation to date, it not only introduced the world to one of the most popular character ever but also is considered a technical innovation of cartoon ingenuity , being the first of Disney's cartoons to have a full post-produced synchronised soundtrack and voice acting (albeit it is not actual dialog ) using Pat Power's cinephone system, which set it apart from earlier attempts like Song Car-tunes. Walt Disney has long considered synchronised sounds to be the future of animation , and is this pioneering mentality of him that eventually bleed into the studio and in turn make it one of the most creative studio at the time in terms of innovation. One example of this was the utilisation of storyboarding as we know it today. Although credited to George Melies, it the Disney studio who fully developed the method and spread its popularity, spreading not only into other animation studio but into the film industries as well, becoming a norm in relatively most visual media nowadays. It was also Disney who maintained the idea of having a separate department for story which handles the storyboard, hence creating the storyboard artist , a whole different from the animators themselves. One can said that Disney was in a very industrialisation mindset when he pioneer this idea, and it was like the Industrial revolution for animation .

  



One advantage of using storyboards is that it allows (in film and business) the user to experiment with changes in the storyline to evoke stronger reaction or interest. Flashbacks, for instance, are often the result of sorting storyboards out of chronological order to help build suspense and interest.
Another benefit of storyboarding is that the production can plan the movie in advance. In this step, things like type of camera shot, angle, and blocking of characters are decided.
The process of visual thinking and planning allows a group of people to brainstorm together, placing their ideas on storyboards and then arranging the storyboards on the wall. This fosters more ideas and generates consensus inside the group.
After the success of Mickey Mouse, and the signing with Technicolour to produce the first 3-strip technicolor film : Flowers and trees , Disney went on to work on Snow White and the seven dwarf. Also within that period , focuses was place on attracting season and experienced artists as well as newly graduate to come to the studio to join the production and create a learning environment, in which , it is within this time , that senior animators at Disney began compiling and formatting the important techniques of traditional animation , which would form the tenets and principles for all form of traditional animation to come, culminating in the 1981 book Illusion of life, and the 12 principles of animation. During the process , Disney animators also began experimenting with animating realistic movement and human figures, and also use multiplane camera , in which the artwork is separated into layers to create different plain hence create depth of field . This can be considered an early form of implementing 3D elements into tradition animation. Snow white was a unprecedented success that began what is the Golden age of animation and set to the be the beginning of Disney power over the industry and culture.
The Disney animation training program started at the studio before the development of Snow White in 1932 eventually led to Walt Disney helping found the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts). This university, formed via the merger of Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, included a Disney-developed animation program of study among its degree offerings. CalArts became the alma mater of many of the animators who would work at Disney and other animation studios from the 1970s to the present.
From then on, Disney has experience a rise and fall in popularity , but still play its part in improving the quality of traditional animation , ( although , it has lost considered popularity to the current anime scenes ) , and more importantly serves as the place of learning and a stepping stone for new animators today. 
However, new players were coming into the scenes, and with the advent of the color Television , Warner Brothers and Hanna Barbera were beginning to dominate the small-screens numbers with Show like the Flint Stones, Looney toons, and Tom and Jerry, which forces Disney to look to the future : CGI .

History of animation production #2: The Silent era

With the advent of the film, animation became more complex and detailed , and gave rise to the form that considered nowadays as the traditional animation - animation created by hand-drawn images. One of  earliest example was the first entirely animated film, the 1906 Humorous Phases of Funny Faces by J. Stuart Blackton—who is, for this reason, considered the father of American animation.


Around that time in Japan, the oldest example of "anime" was created in somewhere around 1907-1911 : "Katsudo Shansin" depicting a boy wearing a sailor suit. 

Over in Europe, the French artist, Émile Cohl, created the first animated film using what came to be known as traditional animation creation methods—the 1908 Fantasmagorie.The film largely consisted of a stick figure moving about and encountering all manner of morphing objects, such as a wine bottle that transforms into a flower. There were also sections of live action where the animator’s hands would enter the scene. The film was created by drawing each frame on paper and then shooting each frame onto negative film, which gave the picture a blackboard look- techniques that is very prevalent in modern day short animation, usually for aesthetic appeal.




The foundation laid, we then see more development on the process of creating a traditional animation. On the technical sides, it was during this period that Cel animation was pioneered as a method to reduce labour in animating, using cut-outs as earliest forms. Pre-cel animations often requires the artist to hand-draw every element of a scene and then photograph it to put into the film, hence making him do it for every frame of the movie, which cause inconsistency in quality , often create shaky lines ( that nowadays would be considered very appealing in some cases). As a method to counter this, Raoul Barre , an American cartoonists, decided to punch holes in the paper and stick 2 pegs on to the table to steady the frames, and so , the peg system was invented and has endured over the century to this day. 

Along that line, as the animation boom started to grow, we see a more industrialized process of creating animation , requiring a large team of animators as opposed to one , giving rise to animation studios. Within them , teams started to became more complex, as the audience was already starting to get familiar with animation already , and so the reliance on shock and curiosity in new technology alone is not gonna help to keep it afloat, so animation needed characters, and stories, and with that the animation groups started splitting into multiple departments : the writers, storyboard artist and the animator,and as we know, it would continue to diverge more as the decade past , with key frame and tweens animators , VFX artists,...

Perhaps one of the most important achievements in the creative process of producing an animation is characterisation , in which the artist create a fully-fledge character with emotions and personality. In 1914, American cartoonist Winsor McCay released Gertie the Dinosaur  an early example of character development in drawn animation. The film was made for McCay's vaudeville act and as it played McCay would speak to Gertie who would respond with a series of gestures. There was a scene at the end of the film where McCay walked behind the projection screen and a view of him appears on the screen showing him getting on the cartoon dinosaur's back and riding out of frame. This scene made Gertie the Dinosaur the first film to combine live action footage with hand drawn animation. McCay hand-drew almost every one of the 10,000 drawings he used for the movie. However as the big studios became more common, artists like McCay started to drop off the public's radar


Following this came a long lines of iconic animation being born. Dave and Max Fleischer , along with inventing the process of rotoscoping, ( a method used very much in the modern Japan horror animated series , Yamashibai and also as the predecessor to motion captures), adopted it into series like Betty Boop and Popeyes. 

 
 

In 1920, Otto Messmer of Pat Sullivan Studios created Felix the CatPat Sullivan, the studio head took all of the credit for Felix, a common practice in the early days of studio animation. Felix the Cat was distributed by Paramount Studios, and it attracted a large audience.Felix was the first cartoon to be merchandised. He soon became a household name

It has to be mentioned however, it is not only the period for development in traditional animation alone, but also the period for other forms of animating, as well, the advancement in other aspect of an animated movie, like film and soundtrack. Stop-motion is technique that draws its history back to the trick films of earlier periods. It is however credited to Albert E. Smith and J.Stuart as the first one to utilised it in a full motion picture. Following that was the puppet animation of Ladilas Starevich , hailed for being the pioneer in not only depicting complex movement in puppet but creating a story that has drama and character filled with motivation, desire and personality , as displayed in his work : "The camera man's revenge".



Soundtrack began to to take roots in animation, as the live artists began to be replaced with synchronised sounds specifically to that animation, all the way to Disney's Steamboat Willie.

So in conclusion , The silent era are credited as the Pioneering Age of animation, and serve as a example as the transition point of animation from a individual art to an industry 


 

History of animation production #1: Origin and early animation

One can argue that after drawing, animation is considered one of the oldest form of art in the history of mankind. After all , the concept of moving objects had had to be ingrained in or mind from an early age , as it is what we observes every single moment of our lives. With that said however , it is still amazing to see how early animation had caught on in human culture, that you would think it is thanks to its simplicity in concept. What is an animation ? It is a set of sequential images depicting an object flowing through space, and then compiled together in a way that display said movements to the audience. Of course , that latter part would come.... well later , when technology came into play , but the first part has been around for ages :


 

The example above (which dated back over 5200 years ago !) depicts a goat leaping up a tree was found on pot in Iran 

Comic can be considered an early stage of animation, after all thats basically what a storyboard is right ? A very detailed comic. And whoever was better at it than the ancient Egyptian :

  
Famous drawings within burial tombs, suggest a scenery and moving people in it 

This example here would probably fit in more the concept of animation : a not-necessarily-sequential but-more-or-less-is images that depict wrestlers.

    Leonardo Davinci's Anatomical Studies of the Muscles of the Neck, Shoulder, Chest, and Arm, have detailed renderings of the upper body and less-detailed facial features. The sequence shows multiple angles of the figure as it rotates and the arm extends. Because the drawings show only small changes from one image to the next, together they imply the movement of a single figure


Although some of these early examples may seem similar to a series of animation drawings, the lack of any means to show them in motion and their extremely low frame rate causes them to fall short of being true animation. Nonetheless, the practice of illustrating movement over time by creating a series of images provided a foundation for the development of the art.






And then, came machines and contraption that would turn them into true animation. Come forward the Magic lantern , Phenakistoscope, flipbooks and the Zoetrope. Apart from having creative names, these devices paved the way for early animation till the advent of the film and projection and are still in used today in some part as a teaching tool for beginner animators.

The magic lantern was the predecessor to the projector. Invented in the 1600s ,It consisted of a translucent oil painting,a simple lens and a candle or oil lamp. In a darkened room, the image would appear projected onto an adjacent flat surface. One way of creating animation with this was depict in the picture below , by having a row of different paintings in front of the projection and slide them across, at least , that is the way that is thought to be :


  
Moreover , during the showing, smoke would be produced to create a sense of mystery and dread for horror images, which is considered one the earliest use of visual effects .

The Phenakistoscope and the Zoetrope works in a very similar fashion as the the latter took inspiration from the former. Both use fast spinning motion to play their animation , the Phenakistoscope using a disk and the Zoetrope using a cylindrical device. Viewers of both would view the animation through the smart use of optical illusion. Which would be very hard to describe in my own word so I would just let Wikipedia do the talking : 

"The Phenakisticope used a spinning cardboard disc attached vertically to a handle. Arrayed around the disc's center was a series of pictures showing phases of the animation, and cut through it was a series of equally spaced radial slits. The user would spin the disc and look through the moving slits at the disc's reflection in a mirror. The scanning of the slits across the reflected images kept them from simply blurring together, so that the user would see a rapid succession of images that appeared to be a single moving picture.
When there is the same number of images as slots, the images will animate in a fixed position, but will not drift across the disc. Fewer images than slots, and the images will drift in the opposite direction to that of the spinning disc. More images than slots, and the images will drift in the same direction as the spinning disc." 
 
"The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion. From the late 19th century, devices working on similar principles have been developed, named analogously as linear zoetropes and 3D zoetropes, with traditional zoetropes referred to as "cylindrical zoetropes" if distinction is needed."
 

So basically , if we have a film reel , the images are each frame the slots serves as the black bar that seperate each frame of animation that create an end to the prior movement before showing the other, other wise , they will start piling up on each other and create a blurred mess.
Both of these techniques of animation were the first examples of a widely-received forms of animation , especially in the zoetrope. However they both lack one thing , the number of frames they can play. With that came the first flipbook ever : the kineograph. Although having a limits of its own , the flip book still can do more than a dozen of frames, and unlike the two methods above , it doesnt require a large contraption to produce the movement. Many of the the early animators takes inspiration more from flipbooks then they would the other two.
And that basically covers the era before the film.