·The Quay brothers are two of the world's most original film-makers
·Identical twins who were born in
Pennsylvania in 1947, Stephen and Timothy Quay originally studied illustration
and later on started to make animated short films in the 1970s.
·Influenced by a tradition of Eastern
European animation, the Quays display a passion for detail, a breath taking
command of colour and texture, and an uncanny use of focus and camera movement
that make their films unique and instantly recognisable.
·Best known for their classic 1986
film ‘Street Of
Crocodiles’
·They are masters of miniaturisation
and on their tiny sets have created an unforgettable world. Feel free to watch a few minutes of their work, 'Street of Crocodiles', to get a basic idea and understanding of what their work consisted of:
-
Peter Lord and David Sproxton began their animating partnership at
school and then they registered the name of Aardman Animation in 1972.
-
They were always interested in developing an adult audience so
created Conversation pieces which was televised in 1982 by channel 4
-
Peter and David met Nick park at the nation film and television
school and then Nick joined Aardman full time in 1986
-
1989 They created Lip synch, which one the 1990 academy award for
best-animated short film.
-
1993 Aardman won an Oscar for ‘The wrong Trousers’, which was 30
minutes long, won over 30 awards and became the one of the most successful
animated films ever.
-
Chicken run was the first full-length theatrical feature film
which was funded by DreamWorks, and released in June 2000. It was grossed over
$220M at the worldwide box office
-
2002 released cracking contraptions series of Wallace and Gromit films. Which was then later shown on BBC1
-
Then created the first feature film of Wallace and Gromit ‘The
curse of the were-rabbit’ in 2005
-
Top of the charts in us and UK and earned awards just as Academy
Award for the Best animated feature film and BAFTA for Best British film
-
Flushed away the studio’s first Computer Generated film released in Nov 2006
-
Shaun the Sheep was created in 2007.
Aardmans characters all have a
distinct look and most share certain features that are similar as well.
In this animation experimentation we practised on how to make an animated character look realistic when talking and moving their mouth. We used different cut out mouth shapes and just swapped them when they matched the words spoken.
I found this quite difficult because i was hard to know which mouth to use as we had to pronounce everything phonetically letter by letter in order to make it look realistic.
When we recorded the sound for the animated character we tried to go for quite a comical persona with the character, Tyrone. This is because from first sight you see very small and cute character which you expect the voice to be very high pitched and sweet, so what we decided to do was to portray completely the opposite persona which came across as very humorous.
However, the thing which I found most difficult to do was to match the voice recording with the mouth movements of the character. To overcome this difficulty I had to convert the timings for every individual shot to have a more realistic appeal, which showed me to animate even the smallest and simplest animation it consists of having a lot of patience and care. I was pleased with the overall outcome.
Creature Comforts was originally a 1989 British humorous animated short film about how animals felt about living in a zoo, featuring the voices of the British public which were spoken by animated animals in the short films.
It was created by Nick Park and Aardman animations. They chose the animals being animated based on the character's voice and the theme of the conversation.
Beforehand, to achieve a sense of realism they would act out the scenes in real life to see how the characters are portrayed compared to what they would look like being animated.
Here is a short montage which really captivated what Creature Comforts is about and how it relates to real life interviewes.
They mainly use eyes/eyebrows to captivate and convey their emotions across to the public. Initially, when constructing these animation the crew and animators found it hard to and long to make the character's mouth move in every scene so what they decided to do instead is take the mouths on and off, each with a different expression which saved a lot of time.
They also recorded the sound using phonetics, which is very unique as other animations don't do so. in order to do this they would break down each individual word and letter to match it with the movement of the mouth.
It takes a whole day's worth of filming and animating in order to shoot 4 seconds of the animation, which really emphasise how much patience and skills is used to create one single episode.
The animators have decided to use plasticine in order to create their animated characters. They use plasticine because they believe that it is the best and easiest way to really get emotions out of the characters created. They use a mixture of tragic and comic themes in order to get a real reflection of human emotions through animation.
Overall, they turned an interview which could be very mundane and boring into something very interesting and humorous to watch.
Joseph was a Belgian physicist whom was also the first person to demonstrate moving images.
He created the Phenakistoscope which proved the theory of persistence of vision.
Here is a video below showing an example of a Phenakistoscope and what it does.
William Horner (1783-1836)
William Horner created the zoetrope.
A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapic continuous of still pictures.
There are implication that William stole the idea from someone else but this had not been proven.
Charles-Emile Reynaud (1844-1918)
Charles Reynaud was a French physics teacher
He first projected animated cartoon in 1892
Charles also created the praxinoscope. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder.
The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more of less stationary in position as the wheel turned.
Lumiere Brothers
The Lumiere Brothers mainly worked with stuff in every day llife
They used moving images
Known as the 'Fathers of Film-making'
Earliest film-makers in history
George Pal (1908-1980)
Hungarian-born, American animator
Graduated in 1928
worked for Paramount Pictures
Made puppetoons
awarded Oscar - mainly for special effects
George Pal created 'The time Machine'
Puppetoons were a series of animated puppet films made in Europe in the 1930s and in the U.S in the 1940s.
Here is one of his many short animations work.
Willis O'Brien (1886-1962)
Willis O'Brien was an American motion picture special effects and stop motion animator pioneers..
Willis was the animator of the original 'King Kong' (1933)
He sculptured and illustrated King Kong.
He was a pioneer whom inspired generations of 'effects artists'
Responsible for some of the best images in cinema.
Ray Harryhausen (1920-2013)
Ray was an American visual effects creator, writer and producer who created a form of stop-motion animation known as 'Dynamation'
Ray made his name by developing fantastic stories and creatures based on legends and mythology and creating a unique genre of fantasy films.
Here is a drawing of an example of Dynamation.
Jan Svankmajer (1934)
Jan was originally a Czech film-maker
Specialised in Theatre of mask
Jan had an impact on films such as 'saw'
Self-labelled surrealist known for his unreal animation and features.
Here is one of his most famous piece of work called 'Meat Love' which conveys his surrealism and creative imagination with everyday life.
*All information received from class-mates presentation ins class*
