Cracking Animation

Cracking Animation, by Peter Lord and Brian Sibley, is like an animator’s bible.  The first chapter goes through a brief but thorough history of animation.  It begins with things like the Phenakistiscope and the Praxinoscope, which are machines that were built mainly as children’s toys.  They take a dozen or so images and by spinning them around an axis, create the illusion of movement.  In 1895, two French brothers, Auguste and Louis Lumiere, created the first animation to be viewed in a cinema.  Audiences were stunned, but quickly expected more.  Around the same time, George Melies began to experiment with what he called “stop action.”  He would take several pictures over a period of time and then play them back faster.  He would take pictures to morph men into women and girls into butterflies.  In 1914, Windsor McCay made revolutionary breakthroughs with his animation Gertie the Trained Dinosaur.  3D animation grew out of several different mediums, mainly puppets and clay.  Puppets became very popular and were even used in live action movies for certain shots.  In 1939, Hungarian George Pal set up a studio in Hollywood and began producing theatrical shorts called “Puppetoons.”  He did fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm and also some original stories.  By the 1950’s puppet television shows were quite popular among children.  Cosgrove Hall, however, was not satisfied with the puppets’ range of emotions, so he began to use clay for the heads and eyes, providing more subtle movements.  With this break through, puppet animation took off in the United States.  Some notable films are Rudolf the Red Nosed Reindeer, Mad Monster Party, and Noah’s Ark.  in 1982, Tim Burton, at the time a novice animator at Disney, had the idea to make a short puppet horror film for children.  This film, called Vincent, was not received very well and it was not exactly a Disney style film.  However, for Burton, the seed was planted and he never gave up his dream to make a feature length claymation.  After making several live action films he finally had enough clout to make A Nightmare Before Christmas.  This was the first feature length animation to be distributed world wide.  It used 227 puppets that were brought to life by the world’s most talented animators. 
The next chapters go into great detail about what equipment to use for animation and what the best methods are.  They discuss how to make characters and move them without messing up the rest of the scene.  They describe studio set ups, lighting techniques, and developing settings.  All in all the book was a very interesting and informative read that gave me a lot of good ideas.