Character animation

	Email		Print
	Bookmark		Link

Character animation

Character animation is a specialized area of the animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of Motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways....
process concerning the animation of one or more characters featured in an animated work. It is usually as one aspect of a larger production and often made to complement voice acting

Voice acting

Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animation characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, doing voice-overs in radio and television Television advertisements, radio drama, dubbing foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides....
. Character animation is artistically unique from other animation in that it involves the creation of apparent thought and emotion in addition to physical action.

Historically, Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay was an American cartoonist and animator.A prolific artist, McCay's pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades....
's Gertie the Dinosaur

Gertie the Dinosaur

Gertie the Dinosaur is a 1914 in film short animation by Winsor McCay.Although not the first animated film, as is sometimes thought, it was the first cartoon to feature a character with an appealing personality....
(1914) is often considered the very first example of true character animation.

Discussion

Ask a question about 'Character animation'

Start a new discussion about 'Character animation'

Answer questions from other users

Full Discussion Forum

Encyclopedia

Character animation is a specialized area of the animation

Animation

Voice acting

Winsor McCay

Gertie the Dinosaur

Otto Messmer

Otto Messmer was an United States animator, best known for his work on the Felix the Cat cartoons and comic strip produced by the Pat Sullivan studio....
imbued his Felix the Cat

Felix the Cat

File:Felix for Judy.pngFelix the Cat is a animated cartoon fictional character created in the silent film era. His black body, white eyes, and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons place him, combined to make Felix one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world....
with an instantly recognizable personality during the 1920s. The following decade, Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Walter Elias Disney was a multiple Academy Award-winning American film producer, film director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur and philanthropist....
made character animation a particular focus of his animation studio, best showcased in productions such as Three Little Pigs
Three Little Pigs

Three Little Pigs is a fairy tale featuring talking animals. Printed versions date back to the 1840s, but the story itself is thought to be much older....
, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937 film)

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American film based on the Snow White by the Brothers Grimm. It was the first full length animation feature film to be produced by Walt Disney, and the first American animated feature film in movie history....
, Pinocchio, and Dumbo
Dumbo

Dumbo is a 1941 animated feature film produced by Walt Disney and first released on October 23, 1941 by RKO Radio Pictures. The fourth film in the Disney animated features canon, Dumbo is based upon a child's book of the same name by Helen Aberson and illustrated by Harold Perl....
. Disney animation artists such as Bill Tytla

Bill Tytla

Vladimir Peter Tytla was one of the original Walt Disney Pictures animators and is considered by many to be the best character animator working during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation....
, Ub Iwerks

Ub Iwerks

Ub Iwerks, A.S.C. was a two-time Academy Awards winning United States animator, cartoonist and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney....
, Grim Natwick

Grim Natwick

Myron "Grim" Natwick was an United States animator and film director.Born in Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin, Natwick studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago....
, Fred Moore, Ward Kimball

Ward Kimball

Ward Walrath Kimball was an Academy Awards-winning animator for the The Walt Disney Company#Studio Entertainment. He was one of Walt Disney team of animators known as Disney's Nine Old Men....
, Les Clark

Les Clark

Les Clark was the first of Disney's Nine Old Men. Joining Disney in 1927, he was the only one to work on the origins of Mickey Mouse with Ub Iwerks....
, John Sibley, Marc Davis

Marc Davis

Marc Fraser Davis was a prominent United States artist and animator for The Walt Disney Company#Studio Entertainment. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, the famed core animators of Disney animated films....
, Wolfgang Reitherman

Wolfgang Reitherman

Wolfgang Reitherman , also known and sometimes credited as Woolie Reitherman, was a famed The Walt Disney Company animator and one of Disney's Nine Old Men....
, Hal King

Hal King

Harold King , is a retired Major League Baseball player who played catcher from -. He played for the Houston Astros, Texas Rangers , Atlanta Braves, and Cincinnati Reds....
, Hamilton Luske, Norm Ferguson

Norm Ferguson

Norman Gerard Ferguson was a center andright wing in the National Hockey League with the California Golden Seals. Ferguson holds the Seals single-season record for goals; he scored 34 during the 1968?69 NHL season....
, Eric Larson

Eric Larson

Eric Larson was an animator for the The Walt Disney Company#Studio Entertainment starting in 1933 and was one of the "Disney's Nine Old Men."...
, Johnny Lounsbery, Milt Kahl

Milt Kahl

Milton Erwin Kahl was an animator for the The Walt Disney Company, and one of Disney's Disney's Nine Old Men.Kahl is often considered the finest drawing of the Disney animators....
, Frank Thomas

Frank Thomas (animator)

Franklin "Frank" Thomas was an United States animator. He was one of Walt Disney's team of animators known as the Disney's Nine Old Men.Born in Fresno, California, California, Frank Thomas attended Stanford University, where he worked on campus humor magazine The Stanford Chaparral with Ollie Johnston....
and Ollie Johnston

Ollie Johnston

Oliver Martin Johnston, Jr. was an United States motion picture animation. He was one of Disney's Nine Old Men, and the last to pass away. His work was recognized with the National Medal of Arts in 2005....
all became masters of the technique.

Other notable figures in character animation include the Schlesinger/Warner Bros.

Warner Bros. Cartoons

Warner Bros. Cartoons, Inc. was the animation division of Warner Bros. Pictures during the The Golden Age of American animation. One of the most successful animation studios in United States media history, Warner Bros....
directors (Tex Avery

Tex Avery

Frederick Bean "Fred/Tex" Avery was an United States animator, cartoonist, voice Actor and film director, famous for producing animated cartoons during The Golden Age of Hollywood animation....
, Don Bluth

Don Bluth

Donald Virgil Bluth is an United States animator and independent studio owner....
, Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, film producer, and film director of animation films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros....
, Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera

Hanna-Barbera Productions, Inc. , was an American List of animation studios that dominated North American television animation during the second half of the 20th century....
, Bob Clampett

Bob Clampett

Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an United States animator, film producer, film director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
, Max Fleischer

Max Fleischer

File:MaxFleischerPDUS.JPGMax Fleischer was an important Jewish-American pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon who served as the head of Fleischer Studios....
, Walter Lantz

Walter Lantz

Walter Benjamin Lantz was an United States cartoonist and animator, best known for founding Walter Lantz Productions and creating Woody Woodpecker....
, Frank Tashlin

Frank Tashlin

Frank Tashlin was an American animator, screenwriter, and film director....
, Robert McKimson

Robert McKimson

Robert "Bob" McKimson, Sr. was an USA animator, illustrator, and film director best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
, and Friz Freleng

Friz Freleng

Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, Film director, and Film producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....
), independent animator Richard Williams, John Lasseter

John Lasseter

John Alan Lasseter is an Academy Award-winning United States animator and the chief creative officer at Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios....
at Pixar

Pixar

Pixar Animation Studios is a CGI animation production company based in Emeryville, California, United States. To date, the studio has earned twenty-two Academy Awards, four Golden Globes, and three Grammy, among many other awards, acknowledgments and achievements....
, and latter-day Disney animators Andreas Deja

Andreas Deja

Andreas Deja , is a animator for The Walt Disney Company most noted for creating feature film characters such as Roger Rabbit from Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Gaston from Beauty and the Beast ....
and Glen Keane

Glen Keane

Glen Keane is an United States animator, author, illustrator and director. Keane is best known for his character animation at The Walt Disney Company#Studio Entertainment for feature films including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Beauty and the Beast and Tarzan....
. Character animation is not limited to Hollywood studios, however. Some of the finest examples of character animation can be found in the work of Nick Park

Nick Park

Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, Order of the British Empire is a four-time Academy Awards-winning England filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit....
of Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations

Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, is an Academy Awards-winning United Kingdom animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom....
and Russian independent animator Yuri Norstein.

Character animation is augmented by special effects animation, which creates anything that is not a character; most commonly vehicle

Vehicle

Vehicles, derived from the Latin word, vehiculum, are non-living means of transport. Most often they are manufactured , although some other means of transport which are not made by humans also may be called vehicles; examples include icebergs and floating tree trunks....
s, machinery, and natural phenomena such as rain

Rain

Rain is liquid precipitation . On Earth, it is the condensation of atmospheric water vapor into droplet heavy enough to fall, often making it to the surface....
, snow

Snow

Snow is a type of precipitation in the form of crystalline water ice, consisting of a multitude of snowflakes that fall from clouds. The process of this precipitation is called snowfall....
, and water

Water

Water is a common chemical substance that is essential for the survival of all known forms of life. In typical usage, water refers only to its liquid form or States of matter, but the substance also has a solid state, ice, and a gaseous state, water vapor or steam....
.

On-going computer science

Computer science

Computer science is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation, and of practical techniques for their implementation and application in computer systems....
research on character animation deals with the question of generating multi-layer level of detail at run-time to allow large crowd rendering in real time applications.