انیمیشن

CHAPTER EIGHT

Animation

Mickey Mouse, Tom and Jerry, Popeye, Rugs Bunny. All these famous cartoon characters began their lives as simple pictures on paper.

Cartoon characters are painted on to sheets of clear film, called ‘cels’, so that the painted ‘background’ can be seen through the unpainted parts of the cel. Then they are photographed.

Each cel will have one picture, and each picture will be a little different, to make the characters appear to move when they are projected at twenty-four pictures every second.

The characters must look and sound the same in every film.

Everybody recognizes the voice of Bugs Bunny ‘Eeh, what’s up, Doc?’, spoken by Mel Blanc, Blanc also gave the character the name ‘Bugs’.

The most famous producer of animated films was Walt Disney. He introduced Mickey Mouse to audiences in 1928 in a black-and- white cartoon, Plane Crazy. At first the mouse was called Mortimer, but then the name was changed to Mickey.

Disney also produced the first Walt Disney colour cartoon, Flowers and Trees (1932), and the first animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. More followed: Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella, The Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Walt Disney studied at the Kansas City Art Institute. He made animated cartoons for the Kansas City Film Ad Company before going off to Hollywood and starting a company with his brother Roy in 1923.

In the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (1988), cartoon characters and real actors appear together.

Today, more and more animators are using computers, instead of employing people to do all the painting.

Some animators use marquettes (models) instead of pictures, and bend the model’s arms and legs, or change its face, to make the character ‘move’. Creature Comforts, produced by Aardman Animations, who use models in all their films, won an Oscar for best animation.