Animation Techniques - Ink, Pixels, and Everything In Between

Animation has vert few limits. It can tell nearly any kind of story and depict nearly any kind of imagery. Similarly, almost any tool or medium that can be used to make a static work of art can also be used to create art that moves. There are many different kinds of animation techniques out there, some well known, some obscure. But to the average person, some of the terminology and concepts mentioned when talking about animation can get confusing. Which kinds of animation use computers? How can you animated with paint? What the heck is "Flash animation" anyway? In this article, we're going to be taking a closer look at some of the different kinds of animation. Some you may know well already. Other you may have never seen before. All have their particular strengths and weaknesses and the potential to become amazing animation in the hands of talented artists.

Hand-drawn animation

Hand-drawn animation, also called 2D animation, cel animation, or traditional animation, is one of the older animation techniques. A series of drawings, each one slightly different from the preceding drawing, are photographed one at a time onto film to create the illusion of movement. The name “cel animation” comes from the clear sheets of celluloid called “cels” that the final images of characters and other moving elements in a scene would be traced onto from the original drawings on paper for more studio productions. (Independent animators sometimes film their original pencil drawings rather than tracing them onto cels.) Because they were clear, cels could be laid over a background and other cels, preventing the artists from having to redraw the static parts of a scene, such as the background, over and over again. Later productions used sheets of acetate in place of celluloid, which was highly flammable and quick to decompose, but the term “cels” stuck. Most modern day productions of hand-drawn animation scan the artists’ drawings into computers, where they are colored and then composited together with the other elements in the scene.

Hand-drawn animation has been used in everything from features films to television show to advertising and beyond. Most Disney feature films are hand-drawn animation, including their upcoming feature The Princess and the Frog, seen above.

So is most anime, like Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away.







The majority of studio made shorts from the 20th century are hand-drawn, including the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes shorts:

Puppet Animation

Puppet Animation, also called stop-motion animation, is a very old technique. In puppet animation, the sets are sculpted or fabricated models, while the characters are articulated figures. Each puppet has an armature – a kind of metal skeleton which helps the puppet to keep its shape and the joints to both move easily and hold a position. Movement is created by shooting a frame of film, manipulating the puppet slightly, and shooting another frame. Puppet animation can be a very unforgiving technique, since it does not allow the animator to go back and correct mistakes. If a puppet falls over, or a light is in the wrong place, or the animation simply doesn’t look right, the whole shot has to be animated all over again from the beginning. One of the big benefits of puppet animation is that all the characters and sets are existing three dimensional objects. In hand-drawn animation, changing the camera angle during a scene requires making new drawings and usually background artwork. With puppet animation, changing the camera angle is often as simple as moving the camera. Animators don’t have to worry about characters looking consistent from scene to scene since they are filming the exact same puppets, or identical copies of one puppet made to allow multiple scenes to be shot at once or to ensure that if a puppet is damaged, a replacement is available.

Puppet animation used to be pretty common, especially on television. But when computer animation arrived on the scene and provided a way to get a similar dimensional look without some of the drawbacks of either puppet of clay animation, puppet animation wasn't used as much. But the medium still has its fans and proponents and puppet animated feature films continue to be released, like Fantastic Mr. Fox (shown above), due out in wide release this Wednesday.

The Nightmare Before Christmas helped to reinvigorate puppet animation and define it as the animation style for strange and quirky films:







Speaking of Christmas, most of the famous Rankin-Bass holiday specials are puppet animation:

Clay Animation

Clay Animation is a close relative of puppet animation, so much so that sometimes both are referred to as different forms of stop-motion animation. The technique is pretty much the same as puppet animation except that the figures are made of clay or a substance similar to clay. This makes the figures more malleable than those used in puppet animation. While puppet animation figures can generally only move where joints have been constructed into their armatures, every part of a clay animation model can theoretically be moved, squashed, stretched, or manipulated in any way imaginable.

Some of the best known clay animation comes from British studio Aardman Animations, home of Wallace and Gromit, seen above in a trailer for their 2005 movie Wallace and Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit.

The long running television series Gumby, created by Art Clokey, used clay animation.







Like puppet animation, clay animation used to be a lot more common before computer animation came along. This advertisement by WIll Vinton Studios for the California Raisin Advisory board became immensely popular and lead to additional commercials, specials, a cel-animated TV series, and tons of merchandising.

The California Raisins | SpikeTV | SPIKE.com

Computer Animation

Computer Animation, sometimes called 3D animation or CGI – “computer generated imagery” animation, is a relatively new technique that has only become commercially viable in the past few decades. It’s sort of a digital version of puppet animation. Instead of existing in the real world, all of the characters, sets, and props are built inside of the computer by combining and manipulating simple polygons. The animators can then move various parts of the models to create the motions and expressions they want. In some cases, the animator can pick the start and end point for a movement and the computer can help to fill in the in-between frames. But it’s still up to the animator to decide on the speed of the movement, whether it becomes slower or faster or stays at the same rate, how long a pose or expression gets held, and numerous other decisions that can make the difference between mediocre animation and great animation. Computer animation may seem superior to either puppet or clay animation in that an animator can go back and correct one small mistake without having to re-animated the entire shot. But computers have their weak points. Certain textures and objects – like skin, hair, and clothing – have proven difficult for computers to replicate convincingly, though new technologies have helped to overcome many of these problems.. Computer can also produce bizarre mistakes or even crash, causing an animator to lose unsaved work.

Computer animation is very popular right now and can be seen all over the place. Above is a scene from Pixar's Toy Story, the first fully computer animated feature film. All of Pixar's movies are computer animated, including the upcoming third Toy Story film. DreamWorks Animation started off producing hand-drawn animated films, but now focuses exclusively on computer animation, like their next movie How To Train Your Dragon.

As computer animation has become less expensive to make, it's shown up more and more on television. The first fully computer animated TV series was Mainframe Entertainment's ReBoot. Shown here is the intro to a third season episode called "Firewall," parodying the openings of the James Bond films.

Flash Animation

Flash Animation is another one of the newer ways to animate and another technique that utilizes the computer. Flash animation is animation created using Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) or a similar animation program. Basically, Flash allows animators to break down characters and other elements into numerous pieces. The face of a character animated in Flash may consist of the head, two separate eyes, a mouth, and maybe even separate hair. It’s sort of like hand-drawn animation with an infinite number of cels. Flash also lets the animator take these individual pieces and tilt them, flip them, deform them, change their size, or swap them out for different pieces. If the animator wants to tilt the character’s head to the side, he or she could group all of the pieces of the face together and rotate all of them to the desired angle. The program fills in the in-between steps based on where in the timeline the animator sets the start and end of the movement. Additionally, to make the character blink, the animator can swap the eyes out for a drawing or series of drawings of the characters eyes closing. These drawings can be saved to a library of different pieces that the animator can use again and again. So if the character blinks again, the animator can reuse the same drawing or drawings of the blink.

Flash was originally designed to create simple animations that could be viewed on the internet over the slow connections that were common at the time. Some of the earliest Flash animations used very simple limited animation, which kept the file size down. Since then, bandwidth has increased, allowing for longer and more complicated animations. The time saving features of Flash have also made it attractive for television animation production.

Above is the opening of the TV series ¡Mucha Lucha!, which was mong the first television show to be animated in Flash.

Flash is still used for web animations, which can be found all over the place. A couple of examples are the Homestar Runner cartoons, the extremely violent Happy Tree Friends, and the absurdist parody (of sorts) "Baman Piderman," seen below:

Cutout Animation

Cutout animation, also called cut-paper animation, is a technique in which the characters, props, and backgrounds are flat cutouts. They are usually made from paper, though some animations use cloth or photographs. By moving the cutouts a little at a time and shooting frames of film for each small movement, animation is created. Getting complicated movements requires many individual pieces. For a character to lift his or her arm, the arm needs to be at least one cutout piece separate from the body. If an object turns around, several different cutouts will be needed to show the object from different angles. Like puppet and clay animation, cutout animation does not allow the animator to go back and correct mistakes without re-animating the whole shot.

Computer programs like Flash have allowed animators to simulate the look of cutout animation while enjoying the benefits of animating on a computer, such as not having to keep track of potentially tiny pieces of paper and being able to alter a single frame of animation. The TV series South Park, for example, used actual cutout animation for its original shorts and pilot episodes, but then began using computer programs to achieve the same effect. Currently, the show is animated using Maya, a computer program generally used to create 3D computer animation. Though many animators like the advantages of using a computer to create animation which looks like cutouts, some still prefer the hands-on approach.

The example above is a Terry Gilliam animation from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Below is short clip from a much older example of cutout animation and the oldest known surviving surviving animated feature film: Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed.

Paint-on-Glass Animation

Watch Korova / The Cow by Alexander Petrov in Animation  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

A less common animation technique, paint-on-glass animation involves the animator painting a scene on a piece of glass, shooting a frame of film, and then reworking the image slightly. Oil paints are most commonly used since they dry very slowly, though other types of paint can be mixed with different agents to give them this quality. This method requires the animator to erase and repaint parts of the image. For this reason, working with paint on glass can be very difficult. If the animator makes a mistake, not only is there no way to go back and fix the mistake, but much of the original image may be gone. With no clay, puppets, or cutout pieces to reposition, the animator must either start over completely or live with the mistake. But paint-on-glass can also be very beautiful, giving the look of a painting come to life like no other animation technique can.

Because of it's difficult and time consuming nature, paint-on-glass animation comes mostly from independent animators. The short above is called Korova - "The Cow" - by Alesandr Petrov, one of the masters of paint-on-glass. Caroline Leaf's film The Street uses the same technique, but a very different style:

Sand Animation

Another less common technique, sand animation is created by the animator making images with – you guessed it – sand. Like paint on glass, sand is not a forgiving medium in that once the sand is moved, it can never be put back exactly the way it was.

Some people will remember the animation above from Sesame Street. The short below is Atormenta by CESARLINGA Animations.







Sand animation has been getting some attention recently due to the sand artist who recently won the television talent competition Ukraine's Got Talent. While this technique is sometimes also called "sand animation," it is not really animation, since there is no illusion of movement created. The artist uses the sand to create images which are projected onto a large screen for the live audience. Despite not being animation, it is fascinating to watch and should give you some idea of the work that goes into making art with sand, whether static or animated.

This is by no means a complete list of every method of animation out there. There are many others, both old and new. Animators are always trying out new techniques or using old ones in ways never thought of before. Rhe medium of animation is always growing and changing.

If you have any questions, comments, or other animation techniques you would like to discuss, please share them in the comments section.


All videos are copyright their respective owners.

Breaking the Rules at Acme Looniversity

You’ve just seen an animated movie that absolutely amazed you. It’s not just good; it’s groundbreaking. It takes animation in directions you never even thought possible. You talk excitedly with your friends as you all leave the theater and one of them remarks “They really broke all the rules in that movie.”

It seems like a simple enough statement and you agree. But later on, you start thinking about what your friend said. What are “the rules”? Why do we even have rules for animation if breaking them can result in amazing films like the one you just saw? Are the rules just about keeping the status quo, or is there more to it than that?

There are rules, and there are rules. The first set could well be considered unnecessary and can be broken at will, but the second has far more substance and exists for a definite reason.

The “rules” in the first set aren’t really rules at all. They are a collection of assumptions that, for various reasons, have come to be accepted as fact. You’re probably familiar with some of them. “Animation is only suitable for kids.” “The only successful animated feature films are fairy tale musicals.” “Computer animation is a replacement for hand drawn animation.” And so on. Call them tropes, clichés, conventions, stereotypes, or whatever you want. But they aren’t rules. They have very little to do with the medium of animation and much more to do with cultural perceptions of animation. Not surprisingly, they don’t travel well. Mainstream America may still regard animation as primarily for children and families, but hop over to Japan and it’s a very different story. Further explanation of these so-called rules reveals that there is little real reason behind them. “That’s the way things have always been,” their defenders cry. And they have box office records to prove it.

Since these “rules” are based in the soft foundation of an ever-changing culture, filmmakers can feel free to break them. They are not defying the laws of animation, just the public’s perception of animation. That doesn’t mean it is any less of a revelation when talented artists show us that we thought were solid walls marking the boundaries of the medium actually have doors. Think of Walt Disney defying the pundits who were convinced that there was no audience for a feature-length animated film, or UPA turning away from the pursuit of naturalism in favor of a graphic style. Choosing to defy the conventional wisdom about what animation can and cannot be is not a guaranteed path to success, but neither is following the formula for what has worked before. The films that stretch the audience’s ideas about animation are the ones that set the standard and write the new definition of success that others will try to emulate.

So what are rules? Rules are ideas that describe the mechanics of animation. It doesn’t matter what country the animation is made in or what kind of story is being told; these rules hold true regardless. There is solid reasoning behind these rules, why they should be followed, and what happens if they are not. One such rule states that if a character is squashed, stretched, or otherwise distorted, it must always return to its original shape. This rule has its basis in observation of real life and how various objects and materials behave and react to different actions. Press your finger against a tabletop will spread out and flatten against the hard surface, an effect that is referred to as “squash” in animation. Remove your finger from the table and it quickly regains its original shape. Different materials will behave differently under the same circumstances. Soft objects deform more while harder ones deform less, if at all. Similarly, the style of animation and nature of the characters or objects will determine how much they squash and stretch. A cartoony character in a humorous story will probably squash and stretch a lot more than a realistic human character in a dramatic tale. Following this rule keeps a character consistent in size and mass, making him or her more believable. Though a character may stretch out long and thin while leaping into the air and squash down short and squat upon reconnecting with the ground, the audience still sees the character as solid, dimensional, and “real,” so long as he or she keeps returning to his or her original shape. If this rule is not followed, the illusion of believable form and movement can be lost. The audience no longer feels like the character has a defined weight and shape. At worst, suspension of disbelief may be lost entirely and the audience may start to see the character as nothing more than a series of drawings because the lack of consistency of form is so distracting. Holding a single distortion for too long is like keeping a joke going after the punchline and the laugh. Wile E. Coyote will sometimes get crushed by one of his own Acme devices and walk offscreen, still looking like a contracted accordion. The audience laughs, but if the Coyote looked that way through the rest of the cartoon, the connection between the action and the result would fade and the joke would be lost.

So does this mean that a true rule can never be broken? No. It is possible to break these rules, but not without an understanding of why they exist in the first place. Rules cannot be broken arbitrarily. An animator who animates a standard cartoon walk cycle where the character squashes and stretches without returning to his or her original shape for no reason will get nowhere. The result will look like nothing more than sloppy animation. The trick is to understand both the effect that the rule has and potential reasons for breaking it. An animator could decide to break this rule when animating a character that is made of something formless, such as smoke or water. In that case, it could be perfectly acceptable for the character to change shape constantly and never return to one original form. The nature of a story could also be a reason for breaking this particular rule. A story set in a dream world would be enhanced by characters whose bodies distort without returning to a fixed shape. This could either suggest a peaceful fantasy where characters slowly slip from one shape to another like clouds moving in the wind, or a nightmare world where nothing moves as you would expect, heightening the sense of disorientation. Or perhaps the story plays with the nature of cartoons themselves, as is the case with “Wild Takes Class.”

“Wild Takes Class” is a short cartoon in the Tiny Toon Adventures episode “Inside Plucky Duck.” While it is neither the mostly beautifully animated cartoon in the series nor the funniest, it does perfectly illustrate a good reason to break this particular rule.

Part of the premise of the series is that the classic Looney Toons characters act as teachers to the next generation of toons, instructing them in the fine art of animated comedy. As the title suggests, this cartoon begins with Bugs Bunny teaching the young toons how to perform wild takes. A wild take is an exaggeration that is meant to show an extreme of emotion rather than action. Fans of the classic Warner Brothers shorts will want to take note of the names of the takes Bugs demonstrates: the “Avery Aoogah” – an extreme eye-pop typical of wolves noticing attractive women, the “Friz Frizzle” – a spasmodic reaction to being zapped with electricity that results in a blackened bunny, and the “Chuck Outta Luck Pathetic-Eyes Routine” – a wide-eyed take commonly seen on a certain coyote about to be flattened by a boulder, accompanied by a tiny umbrella.



Young Buster Bunny watches attentively, but his pal Plucky Duck is less than impressed. He would rather be learning from his hero, Daffy Duck. But, as Buster points out, Daffy teaches the advanced class and the student toons need to study the basics before moving on to the wildest of wild takes. Plucky doesn’t care. He has been working on some of Daffy’s lessons on his own and demonstrates his new skills to Buster, culminating in the “Clampett Corneal Catastrophe” – a take in which Plucky’s bulging eyes fuse into a single giant eyeball that replaces his whole body except for his legs. Buster is impressed, until it becomes clear that Plucky can’t get out of the take and is stuck as a giant eyeball, as he will be for most of the cartoon.




“Wild Takes Class” has an excellent rationale for breaking the rules. Wild takes, the story suggests, are a technique requiring practice to master. Plucky is a novice, so when he tries to distort his body into an extreme take, he can’t return to his normal shape the way cartoon characters normally do. Interestingly, this is also a case where breaking the rule actually proves why the rule works in the first place. When it’s held for just a second, Plucky’s take has the intended effect of conveying shock or terror. But as he walks and bounces around as an oversized eyeball for the remainder of the cartoon, the effect is lost. In a regular cartoon, a take ceasing to suggest a high level of emotion could be disastrous, but in a short about cartoon characters in training, it works.



Rule breaking is not something that should be avoided at all costs. If the “rule” in question isn’t related to the medium itself, then breaking it can erase outmoded thinking about what animation is capable of. If the rule is truly related to the fundamentals of the medium, then an animator must tread carefully when deciding whether or not to break it. These are the rules that really are meant to be followed. Breaking them for the wrong reasons can cause all manner of problems. But an animator who understands the rules and chooses to break them only when the project will be stronger for it can help to elevate the art form and take it to uncharted new heights.

All images from this article are copyright Warner Bros. Home Video.