Infuential Animators

Influential Animators

Walt Disney

Walter E Disney was an American Entrepreneur in animation and film. Disney was an Animator, Cartoonist, Director, Producer, Screenwriter and Voice Actor.

Undoubtedly Walt Disney was the most famous and successful animator from the golden age of American animation 1937-41, Walt Disney Animation Studios. Walt Disney started his animated career animating adverts before creating his own business with his brother Roy. Walt Disney Studios, their first major feat in animation was Steamboat Willie, this film was the first animated feature film with synchronised sound; this meant the movement and talking of characters was linked with the sound.  He then further went onto creating a film series in the name of Silly Symphonies; this was a short animated series, which he created himself with some well-known characters such as Mickey Mouse etc.

He then went onto create another called The Old Mill 1937, this was another Silly Symphonies cartoon animation. This animation was then further a testing ground for the animation technique once they had established the multiplane camera. The multiplane camera is used for a traditional animation process, which moves a number of pieces of artwork past the camera at various distances and various speeds.

 After he created this he went onto creating the first ever full-length animated coloured feature film, which was Snow White; this then made the film successful due to the animation and the colour within one whole film. They used a process called rotoscoping in order for the characters look much more realistic. Rotoscoping consists of monitoring human movements then tracing them into their animation, this then gives the impression of realism. Pinocchio and Fantasia shortly followed in the theatres in 1940. Fantasia was the first film to used stereophonic sound; this creates the illusion of sound then being heard from different directions not just one.

Aside from Disney producing films, they also created amusement parks in the name of Disneyland. Which then further went to various ones being created within different places of the World such as Paris, America etc. Princess and The Frog was then the last Disney drawn performance before CGI was used for almost every animated film. After the release of this in 2009 everything else was then computerized. There was then much more films further then created by Disney to make his name much more recognized such as Finding Nemo.

Hanna Barbera

Hanna Barbera was an American Animator Company, it was also known as H-B enterprises and also H-B Production Company. This animation studio dominated America Television animation for nearly 4 decades in the mid-to-late 20^th century. Two men formed this production company who were also former MGM creators. The former animation directors, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, creators of Tom and Jerry formed this in 1957. By creating this is earned them 7 Oscars between the time period of 1943-1953 but the producer Fred Quimby got all the statuettes despite not having a creative input in the show.

They started out on their own after MGM closed its cartoon studio in 1957, from the time period of 1957-1955 Hanna Barbera became the most high profile name within the TV field and produced prime time week day and Saturday Morning for 3 major established TV Networks in the USA. Over the years Hanna Barbera produced many successful shows including The Flintstones, Yogi Bear, Scooby-Doo and The Smurfs amongst others. They earned 8 Emmy’s, a Golden Globe and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

The company had to bring in smaller TV Budgets which meant the quality of the animation suffered due to the budgets being cut to a cerain amount compared to other productions. The usual flicker fusion threshold people use 12fps and dil
ms  runs at 24 frames per second  but Dinsey prided them on at 18fps which provided a smooth animation style. When they were at MGM the pair were funded $35,000 for 7 minutes of Tom and Jerry but the TV networks were only paying $3,000 for 5 minutes of the cartoon. This is then a tenth of the budget they were funded at the beginning, this then forced their quality down and they then had to adapt to a limited animation style with just a simple plain frame, this then led them to re-using backgrounds across all the episodes.

As they had smaller TV budgets the characters were then often broke up into a handful of levels so that only a few parts of the body would be animated. Mainly the ones in which they needed such as their eyes, mouths and arms. The remaining of the figure would stay on a held animation cel. This then further allowed a typical 10 minute short to be done with only 1,200 drawings instead of the usual 26,000 which is a large shortage.

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations, Ltd., Also known as Aardman Studios or simply as Aardman is a British animation studio based in Bristol. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques particularly those featuring Plasicine characters such as Wallace and Gromit. It entered the computer animation market with Flushed Away 2006.

Aardman was founded in 1972 as a low-budget project by Peter Lord and David Sproxton who wanted to realize their dream of producing animated motion pictures. Their partnership provided animation sequences for the BBC series for deaf children, which were called Vision on. After creating a segment called Greeblies 1975, which they used clay animation became what was the inspiration for creating Morph.

Aardman also created the title sequence for The Great Egg Race and then supplied animation for the multiple awards winning video of Peter Gabriel’s song “sledgehammer” they also produced the music video for the song “my baby just cares for me” by Nina Simone. They then later went onto produce a number of shorts for Channel 4 including the conversation pieces series, these five shorts worked in the same area as the animated conversation pieces but they were more sophisticated.

December 1997, Aardman and Dream Works announced that their companies were teaming up to co-finance and distribute chicken run. Before the release of Flushed Away Aardman announced his termination, as he would not be extending his contract, he felt that their productions being put together didn’t fit what he wanted. But he then later went onto sign a contract with Sony picture entertainment to co-produce and distribute feature films.

In 2009, Nintendo announced that Aardman would make twelve short films using only flipnote studio from Nintendo DSI. The first films were posted on flipnote’s hatena web service provider. The first film was called the sandwich Twins and was released on 16 september 2009. The remaining eleven films were released on a weekly basis until Christmas.