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IV. ANIMATION

Animation is the art of making inanimate objects appear to move. Animation is an artistic impulse that long predates the movies. History's first recorded animator is Pygmalion of Greek and Roman mythology, a sculptor who created a figure of a woman so perfect that he fell in love with her and begged Venus to bring her to life. Some of the same sense of magic and mystery still adheres to contemporary film animation.

Animation is motion pictures created by recording a series of still images such as drawings, objects, or people in various positions of incremental movement. When it is played back it produces the illusion of unbroken motion. The term animation applies to creations on film, video, or computers, and even to motion toys, which usually consist of a series of drawings or photographs on paper that are viewed with a mechanical device or by flipping through a hand-held sequence of images. The term cartoon is sometimes used to describe short animated works (under ten minutes) that are humorous in nature.

HISTORY

The theory of the animated cartoon preceded the invention of the cinema by half a century. Precursors of animation include optical toys or devices that involve incremental movement and the appearance of motion. One such device is the thaumatrope, a disk with complementary images (a bird and a cage, for example) printed on each side and two strings that serve as handles; when the disk is spun by twirling the strings, the images converge (the bird would appear to be inside the cage). The thaumatrope, which was developed by English physician John A. Paris in 1825, demonstrates the concept of persistence of vision: Images remain implanted on the eye for a split second after they have moved and, if continuous images appear rapidly enough, they will seem to be connected. Belgian scientist Joseph Plateau developed another early animation device, the phenakistiscope, in 1832. This rotating disk contains successive images that, when viewed properly, give the appearance of motion. In 1877 French inventor Émile Reynaud patented the praxinoscope, a cylinder containing a strip of paper with animated images that can be seen through the use of a mirror. Reynaud became not only animation's first entrepreneur but, with his gorgeously hand-painted ribbons of celluloid conveyed

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by a system of mirrors to a theatre screen, the first artist to give personality and warmth to his animated characters.

Animation has been a part of cinema history from the time the first motion pictures were made in the late 1800s. Some early live-action films, known as trick films, used the animation technique of stop action, in which the camera is stopped and an object is removed or added to a shot before filming is resumed. Some of the pioneers of drawn animation films were well-known newspaper cartoonists, such as French artist Émile Cohl, often considered to have been the first true animator, and American artist Winsor McCay. McCay created a hand-coloured short film of «Little Nemo» for use during his vaudeville act in 1911, but it was «Gertie the Dinosuar», created for McCay's 1914 tour, that transformed the art. McCay's superb draftsmanship, fluid sense of movement, and great feeling for character gave viewers an animated creature who seemed to have a personality, a presence, and a life of her own. The first cartoon star had been born.

Notes:

1.to precede the invention – предшествовать изобретению;

2.to resume filming – продолжать съемку (после перерыва).

ANIMATION IN EUROPE

In Europe filmmakers experimented with widely different techniques: in Russia and later in France, Wladyslaw Starewicz (also billed as Ladislas Starevitch), a Polish art student and amateur entomologist, created stopmotion animation with bugs and dolls, and the feature-length «The Tale of the Fox» (1930), based on German folktales. A Russian working in France, Alexandre Alexeïeff, developed the pinscreen, a board perforated by some 500, 000 pins that could be raised or lowered, which created patterns of light and shadow that gave the effect of an animated steel engraving. It took Alexeïeff two years to create «A Night on Bald Mountain» (1933), which used the music of Modest Mussorgsky.

Inspired by the shadow puppet theatre of Thailand, Germany's Lotte Reinoger employed animated silhouettes to create elaborately detailed scenes derived from folktales and children's books. Her «The Adventures of Prince Achmed» (1926) may have been the first animated feature; it required more than two years of patient work and earned her the nickname «The Mistress of

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Shadows». In the 1950s Reiniger moved to England, where she continued to produce films until her retirement in the '70s.

Another German-born animator, Oskar Fischinger, took his work in a radically different direction. Abandoning the fairy tales and comic strips that had inspired most of his predecessors, Fischinger took his inspiration from the abstract art that dominated the 1920s. At first he worked with wax figures animated by stop motion, but his most significant films are the symphonies of shapes and sounds he called «coloured rhythms, «created from shifting colour fields and patterns matched to music by classical composers. He became fascinated by colour photography and collaborated on a process called Gasparcolor, which, as utilized in his 1935 film «Composition in Blue», won a prize at that year's Venice Film Festival. Through the 1940s and '50s he balanced his work between experimental films such as «Motion Painting No. 1» (1947) and commercials, and he retired from animation in 1961 to devote himself to painting.

Fischinger's films made a deep impression on the Scottish design student Norman McLaren, who began experimenting with cameraless films – with designs drawn directly on celluloid – as early as 1933 («Seven Till Five»). A restless and brilliant researcher, supported by government grants, he was able to play out his most radical creative impulses, using watercolours, crayons, and paper cutouts to bring abstract designs to flowing life. Attracted by the possibilities of stop-motion animation, he was able to turn inanimate objects into actors («A Chairy Tale», 1957) and actors into inanimate objects («Neighbours», 1952), a technique he called «pixellation». McLaren won an Oscar for «Neighbours». The international success of McLaren's work opened the possibilities for more personal forms of animation.

Notes:

1.first animated feature – первый мультипликационный полнометражный фильм;

2.two years of patient work – два года терпеливой работы;

3.shifting colour field – меняя цветовой фон;

4.to devote himself to… – посвятить себя… ;

5.to turn inanimate objects into actors – превратить неживые предметы в актеров.

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CONTEMPORARY DEVELOPMENTS

A century after its birth, animation continues to evolve. The most exciting developments are found on two distinct fronts: the anime («animation») of Japan and the prime-time television cartoons of the United States.

Japanese animation, known as anime, blossomed after World War II (1939–1945) and today is immensely popular both within Japan and worldwide. Some of the first animation produced in Japan includes the short film «The Hare Gets Revenge Over the Raccoon» (1939) and the puppet film «The Girl at Dojo's Temple» (1946), both directed by Kon Ichikawa, who later also made live-action films. The most important historical figure in Japanese animation, Osamu Tezuka, created the first animated television series in Japan, «Astro Boy» in 1963. Tezuka also made a number of shorts, among them «Broken Down Film» (1985), which parodies American silent motion pictures. More recently, the success of such animated feature films as «Akira» (1988), directed by Katsuhiro Ōtomo, has earned Japanese anime an international following. One of the most famous Japanese animators is Hayao Miyazaki, whose acclaimed films include «Castle in the Sky» (1986), «Princess Mononoke» (1997), and «Spirited Away» (2001), which won an Academy Award for best animated feature. The Japanese animated television series «Cowboy Bebop» (1998), by director Shinichirō Watanabe, is another landmark of the genre.

Notes:

1.anime – «аниме» (японская анимация, ее сюжеты обычно заимствуются из популярных в Японии комиксов manga); «aниме» отличаются от американских мультфильмов разработанностью характеров и сюжета;

2.manga – «манга» (японские комиксы; часто лежат в основе мультфильмов в жанре «аниме»).

THE PRODUCTION PROCESS

There are many ways to create animation, depending on whether the materials used are two-dimensional (flat, such as drawings, paintings, or cutout pieces of paper) or three-dimensional (having volume, such as clay, puppets, household objects, or even people). In each case, an animator must keep in mind the basic principle of frames per second (the number of images

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needed to produce one second of film). Because sound film runs at 24 frames per second, a film animator must make 24 images for each second of animation that he or she wishes to create. A common timesaving practice is to film animation on twos or on threes, meaning that the animator actually uses one image for two or three frames of film in a row, rather than using each image only once.

After choosing an idea for a film, an animator must think about a concept in terms of individual actions. For instance, if the animator decides on an action that will take 3 seconds of animation to complete, he or she will have to create images to fill 72 frames of film (3 seconds of movement multiplied by a running speed of 24 frames per second). Filmed on twos, 36 drawings showing progressive changes in the movement will be needed to create the 3- second action. Different media use different frame rates. No matter what standard is used, the ability to think in terms of incremental movement is essential to the animation process.

An animator must do a lot of planning, or preproduction work, before an animation is recorded. Whereas live-action filmmakers might improvise on the set, most animators have everything precisely timed prior to filming. Before any animation of images can be done, many details must be completed, such as developing the concept; storyboarding the concept (sketching the major events in a story with panel-like drawings, much like a comic strip); developing and recording a dialogue track, if used, and other sound elements; timing the dialogue or other sounds and recording this information on a time sheet (which shows, in seconds, the length of each bit of sound); and timing the action to fit the sound. In some cases, dialogue is recorded after animation is complete; this has been a common practice in the Japanese animation industry.

Depending on the size and budget of the production, the animator may work with a team of character designers, model builders, background artists, inspirational sketch artists, colorists, and other professionals who influence the look of the work. An individual, or independent, animator can take on all these roles.

Notes:

1.preproduction work – подготовительная работа;

2.timing the dialogue – синхронизация диалога;

3.can take on all these roles – может выполнить всю работу.

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TYPES OF ANIMATION

If an animator is basing the animation project on drawings, one of the most common animation techniques, he or she will first create a series of rough sketches that often will be filmed in a pencil test (simple line drawings of the animated images done in pencil) to determine whether the desired motion has been achieved. If the pencil test is satisfactory, images are refined («cleaned up») by removing excess lines. Beginning in the mid-1910s, animation was often completed using acetate cels (sheets of celluloid), although this technique of cel animation is now being overtaken by computerized methods. Using the traditional cel process, cleaned-up drawn images are traced onto a cel by a person known as an inker, using special acetate-adhering inks. Multiple cel animation – the superimposition of several cel layers, each carrying different figures or parts of figures requiring special care in animation – allowed increased complexity in the image with minimum work load for the art- ist-animators. With the more modern forms of colour film introduced in the early 1930s, opaque paints and coloured inks could be used on the cels. Starting in the 1960s, to save time and money many large studios used a photocopy process, rather than hand inking, to transfer lines from the drawn original to the acetate cel.

Puppet animation uses solid three-dimensional figures in miniature sets that are moved incrementally for each frame of film. The puppets are often made of a stable material so that the carefully phased movements may be adjusted between the exposures of successive frames. Well-known puppet animation directors include Hungarian artist George Pal, Czech artist Jiří Trnka, and Russian artist Ladislas Starewicz. Animation using wooden puppets has been associated principally with Eastern Europe, which has a strong tradition of toy making. Since the 1980s latex figures – rubber-like puppets usually supported by a flexible internal skeleton called an armature – have become popular in animation. This type of puppet was used in the animated film «The Nightmare Before Christmas» (1993).

Clay animation employs figures made of Plasticine, a material that has an oil base to keep it flexible. Like latex puppets, clay figures are typically supported by some kind of armature, ranging from a complex «ball-and- socket» skeleton to simple twisted wire.

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The animation technique known as pixilation uses humans or other live subjects filmed incrementally in various fixed poses; when the movements are played back, the subjects move in an unnatural or somewhat surreal way. One famous example of this type of animation is the short film «Neighbors» (1952), in which human beings look like automatons. This film was made by the Scottish animator Norman McLaren.

Pinscreen animation, a relatively unusual method, was developed in France by Russian-born Alexandre Alexeieff and American Claire Parker. The pinscreen (also known as a pinboard) is composed of a large upright frame containing a white board that is perforated by millions of pins, or nails. Using rollers of different sizes, these pins are pushed inward or outward. Lit from the side with a single spotlight, the pattern of pins creates shadows. Dark shadows appear black, light shadows appear in variations of gray, and brightly lit areas appear to be white.

Computers can be used to automate many animation processes, such as shading and coloring. Efforts to lessen the extraordinary labour and costs of animation have taken two basic directions: simplification and computerization. Inexpensive cartoons made for television have often resorted to «limited animation, «in which each drawing is repeated anywhere from two to five times. The resultant movements are jerky, rather than smoothly gradated. Often only part of the body is animated, and the background and the remaining parts of the figure do not change at all. Another shortcut is «cycling,» whereby only a limited number of phases of body movement are drawn and then repeated to create more complicated movements such as walking or talking.

Although computers can be used to create the limited animation, they can also be used in virtually every step of sophisticated animation. If a threedimensional figure is translated into computer terms (i. e., digitized), the computer can move or rotate the object convincingly through space. Hence, computer animation can demonstrate highly complex movements for medical or other scientific researchers. Animators who work with computers usually distinguish between computer-assisted animation, which uses computers to facilitate some stages of the laborious production process, and computer-generated animation, which creates imagery through mathematical or computer language rather than through photography or drawing. Finally, computers may be used to modify or enhance a drawing that has been initiated in the traditional manner. Computers demonstrate that new technologies have gained greater accep-

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tance in the industry. Computer animators are generally expected to have the same drawing skills and understanding of incremental movement and timing that are necessary to create more traditional techniques. Many computer animators work on projects intended for video games and the Internet, and they also find employment creating special effects for feature films. Computeranimated special effects and techniques to enhance live-action images have become a dominant characteristic of contemporary motion pictures, especially in the action, science fiction, and horror genres.

Computer-generated animation has made a significant impact on the animation industry. In recent years, computer-generated animation has focused a great deal of attention on creating realistic-looking human figures, as well as fire, water, fur, natural environments, and other challenges. It is unlikely, however, that other animation techniques will fade completely. As in the past, independent animators will continue to create innovative personal expressions using a variety of approaches, developing new methods and expanding the definition of animation as an art form. Today, computers are used extensively throughout all aspects of the animation industry.

Notes:

1.cel – (от celluloid) – кель, буфер перемещаемого (движущегося) изображения в анимации; кадр или слой анимации/изображения; ранее – рисунок, перенесенный на целлулоидные листы, которые объединяются для создания эффекта движения.

WALT DISNEY’S EARLY LIFE BEFORE HIS GREAT SUCCESS

Walt Disney was born on the 5th of December in 1901, in Chicago, Illinois, U. S and died on the 15th of December in 1966, Los Angeles, California.

American motion-picture and television producer and showman, he is famous as a pioneer of animated cartoon films and as the creator of such cartoon characters as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. He also planned and built Disneyland, a huge amusement park that opened near Los Angeles in 1955, and before his death he had begun building a second such park, Walt Disney World, near Orlando, Florida. The Disney Company he founded has become one of the world's largest entertainment conglomerates.

Walter Elias Disney was the fourth son of Elias Disney, a carpenter, farmer, and building contractor, and his wife, Flora Call, who had been a pub-

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lic school teacher. When Walt was little more than an infant, the family moved to a farm near Marceline, Missouri, a typical small Midwestern town. There Walt began his schooling and first showed a taste and aptitude for drawing and painting with crayons and watercolours.

His restless father soon abandoned his efforts at farming and moved the family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he bought a morning newspaper route and compelled his young sons to assist him in delivering papers. Walt later said that many of the habits and compulsions of his adult life stemmed from the disciplines and discomforts of helping his father with the paper route. In Kansas City the young Walt began to study cartooning with a correspondence school and later took classes at the Kansas City Art Institute and School of Design.

In 1917 the Disneys moved back to Chicago, and Walt entered McKinley High School, where he took photographs, made drawings for the school paper, and studied cartooning on the side, for he was hopeful of eventually achieving a job as a newspaper cartoonist. His progress was interrupted by World War I, in which he participated as an ambulance driver for the American Red Cross in France and Germany.

Returning to Kansas City in 1919, he found occasional employment as a draftsman and inker in commercial art studios, where he met Ub Iwerks, a young artist whose talents contributed greatly to Walt's early success.

Notes:

1.a pioneer of animated cartoon films – основоположник анимацион-

ных фильмов;

2.Mickey Mouse – Микки Маус – знаменитый мышонок, персонаж мультфильмов У. Диснея; впервые появился в немом мультфильме с участием актеров «Безумный аэроплан» (1928), однако полностью его образ сложился в звуковом фильме «Пароход Вилли», озвученном самим Диснеем. По воспоминаниям Диснея, создать Микки его вдохновил живой мышонок, появлявшийся в 1924 у него в студии в Канзас-Сити. В 1932 за создание Микки Мауса Дисней получил премию «Оскар». Вместе со своими друзьями мышкой Минни Маус, псами Плуто и Гуфи и утенком Дональдом он вошел в золотой фонд американской и мировой мультипликации. В каком-то смысле Микки Маус – это символ Америки, одно из самых оригинальных творений американской культуры. Образ

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мышонка Микки использован компанией Диснея в оформлении более 5 тыс. изделий ширпотреба;

3.Donald Duck – Дональд Дак (Утенок Дональд), вечно недовольный раздражительный утенок в матросском костюмчике, один из наиболее популярных мультипликационных персонажей, созданных на студии У. Диснея. Дональд Дак вскоре перекочевал в комиксы, в кино и на телевидение. Известны также приключения его шаловливых племянников – утят Хьюи, Дьюи и Луи и дядюшки – скупого миллионера Скруджа Макдака;

4.a huge amusement park – огромный парк развлечений.

THE WALT DISNEY COMPANY

The Walt Disney Company founded by the artist and cartoonist Walt Disney in the early 1920s is an American corporation that was the best-known family entertainment in the 20th century.

Disney's imagination and energy, his whimsical humour, and his gift for being attuned to the vagaries of popular taste inspired him to develop wellloved amusements for «children of all ages» throughout the world. His achievement as a creator of entertainment for an almost unlimited public and as a highly ingenious merchandiser of his wares can rightly be compared to the most successful industrialists in history. His films are still shown regularly, and because of their timeless quality, will continue to be shown for years to come.

Walt Disney began his career in animation with the Kansas City Film Ad Company in Missouri in 1920. In 1922 Disney and his friend Ub Iwerks, a gifted animator, founded the Laugh-O-gram Films studio in Kansas City They acquired a secondhand movie camera with which they made one and twominute animated advertising films for distribution to local movie theatres. They also began producing a series of cartoons based on fables and fairy tales. In 1923 Disney produced the short subject «Alice in Cartoonland», a film combining both live action and animation that was intended to be the pilot film in a series. Within weeks of its completion, Disney filed for bankruptcy and left Kansas City to establish himself in Hollywood as a cinematographer. «Alice in Cartoonland» turned out to be a surprise hit, and orders from distributors for more Alice films compelled Disney and his brother Roy – a life-

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