Moving Image Education

also known as 2D, classical and cartoon

Drawn animation is perhaps the best known form of animation, having been championed by Disney since the 1930's. It is a sequence of drawings that, when filmed, give the impression of movement.

Although drawn animation is perhaps the trickiest to master, there are many benefits in the classroom or group situation. Because much of the work takes place away from the camera, a lot of people can be working simultaneously, and their work can be brought, in turn, to the rostrum for testing & filming.

You will require lightboxes for this, but these are comparatively easy to make.

the basics

Your lightbox helps you 'trace' successive drawings from previous ones. Each drawing will differ slightly (and occasionally significantly) from the previous drawing, and, when filmed in order, the differences show up as movement.

• If the differences between the drawings are small, the movement will be slow
• If the differences are large, the pace will be quicker
• If the differences get progressively bigger, the pace will accelerate
• If the differences get progressively smaller, the pace will slow down
• Something you trace precisely on every drawing (a tree or a house) will stay still

More about timing

Try to produce lots of drawings, concentrating more on movement and important action to tell the story, rather than finely detailed artwork. This doesn't mean produce sketchy rubbish! Rather:

• Keep to a minimum overly detailed backgrounds
• Avoid long shots and shots where lots is going on simultaneously (eg, while the main character is pole vaulting out of the prison courtyard, the sun comes up, clouds float by, and a bird zips across the sky)

inbetweens

Between the 'key' drawings - which show a character's key poses - are the 'inbetweens', which show the intermediate positions. The use of these inbetweens produce a smoother movement or help slow a sequence down.

Young people often create their drawings in chronological order; and for beginners this is the easiest way to see how progressive small changes show up as animated movement. However, with older children, encourage them to grasp how 'key' frames can be drawn first, and then inbetweens added later to flesh-out the sequence.

numbering

Insist each drawing is numbered as it is created, to keep things in the right order. This helps if you test a sequence a number of times, and it also helps to reorder drawings, and put things back together if sheets get dropped.

To make it easy to generate inbetweens it's good to number all drawings with odd numbers 1,3,5,7 etc. Then if you need to slow the sequence down you can start by creating the even numbers. If you need more inbetweens add 'a's and 'b's - or some children prefer to create 1.5 and a 2.5 and a 3.5 etc.

If a shot needs a little bit more at its start, then you can make a few drawings backward from the first drawing. -1, -3, -5, etc.