NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Limited animation

Limited animation is a process of making animated cartoons that does not follow a "realistic" approach. The short cartoons and feature films of Walt Disney from the 1930s and 1940s are widely acclaimed for depicting animated simulations of reality, with exquisite detail in every frame. However, this style of animation is very time-consuming and expensive. "Limited" animation creates an image that uses abstract art, symbolism, and limited movement to create the same effect, but at a much lower production cost. This style of animation depends more upon suspension of disbelief to tell a story; the story exists more in the viewer's imagination. It also encourages the animators to indulge in artistic styles that are not necessarily bound to the limits of the real world. The result is a new artistic style that could not have developed if animation was solely devoted to producing simulations of reality. Without limited animation, such ground-breaking films as Yellow Submarine, Chuck Jones' The Dot and the Line, and many others could never have been produced. An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn (or made with computers to look similar to something hand-drawn) film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot (even if it is a very short one). ... Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 â€“ December 15, 1966), was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, visionary, and philanthropist. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The 1940s decade ran from 1940 to 1949. ... Suspension of disbelief refers to the willingness of a reader or viewer to accept the premises of a work of fiction, even if they are fantastic or impossible. ... Yellow Submarine is a 1968 animated film based on the music of The Beatles. ... Charles Martin Chuck Jones (September 21, 1912â€“February 22, 2002) was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Brothers cartoon studio. ... The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics (ISBN 1587170663) is a book by Norton Juster. ...

The process of limited animation mainly aims at reducing the overall number of drawings. Film is projected at 24 frames per second (fps), but no animation studio would ever produce that many drawings. For movements in normal speed, most animation in general is done "on twos", meaning 12 drawings per second are recorded in a way that each drawing is on two frames of film. Faster movements may demand animation "on ones", while characters which do not move may be done with a single drawing (a "hold") for a certain amount of time. It is said that the Disney average was about 18 drawings per second, pretending that all characters of a scene share the same sheet of paper. Limited animation mainly reduces the number of inbetweens, the drawings between the keyframes which define a movement, thus reducing the smoothness of a movement. Frame rate, or frame frequency, is the measurement of how quickly an imaging device produces unique consecutive images called frames. ... Inbetweening refers to the art of creating intermediate cartoon cels between the more major ones created by a more senior cartoonist, such as the artistic director. ... In animation, a key frame is a frame in an animated sequence of frames that was drawn or otherwise constructed directly by the user. ...

Limited animation was originally founded as an artistic device, though it was soon used widely as a cost-cutting measure rather than an aesthetic method. The UPA studio made the first serious effort to abandon the ultra-realistic approach perfected by Disney. Their first effort at non-realistic animation, Gerald McBoing-Boing, won an Oscar, and it provided the impetus for limited animation to be accepted at the major Hollywood cartoon studios, including Warner Brothers and MGM. However, the real attraction of limited animation was the reduction in costs: because limited animation does not place a great emphasis on detail, it is much less expensive to produce. The 1950s saw all of the major cartoon studios change their style to limited animation, to the point where painstaking detail in animation occurred only rarely. The UPA opening title card from How Now Boing Boing (1954) The legacy of the United Productions of America animation studio, better known as UPA, has largely been forgotten in the wake of the animation renaissance of the 1990s; it has been overshadowed by the commercialization of Warner Bros. ... A scene from UPA/Columbias Gerald McBoing-Boing. ... The references in this article would be clearer with a different and/or consistent style of citation, footnoting or external linking. ... Warner Bros. ... MGM logo Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or MGM, is a large media company, involved primarily in the production and distribution of cinema and television programs. ... The 1950s was the decade spanning from the 1st of January, 1950 to the 31st December, 1959. ...

Limited animation techniques were used during the 1960s and 1970s to produce a great number of inexpensive, poor quality TV cartoons, "Saturday morning cartoons". Such TV series as Clutch Cargo are infamous for being produced on ultra low budgets, with camera tricks used in place of actual animation. Despite the poor quality of the animation, the TV cartoon studios Hanna-Barbera and Filmation thrived during this period. Limited animation is common in Japanese animated cartoons (anime), especially in TV series. The 1960s decade refers to the years from January 1, 1960 to December 31, 1969, inclusive. ... The 1970s decade refers to the years from 1970 to 1979, inclusive. ... Saturday morning cartoon is the colloquial term for the animated television programming which was typically scheduled on Saturday mornings on the major American television networks from the 1960s to the 1990s. ... Clutch Cargo was an animated television series produced by Cambria Productions and syndicated beginning in March 1959. ... Cartoon Network Studios, formerly known as Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. ... The first Filmation logo. ... The main cast of the anime Cowboy Bebop (1998) (L to R: Spike Spiegel, Jet Black, Ed Tivrusky, Faye Valentine, and Ein the dog) Anime ) (IPA pronunciation: in Japanese, but typically or in English) is an abbreviation of the word animation. Outside Japan, the term most popularly refers to animation...

The cost-cutting techniques used to mass-produce cartoons on a low budget included:

cels and sequences of cels were re-used over and over again -- animators only had to draw a character walking one time.
characters are split up into different levels: only portions of a character, such as the mouth or an arm, would be animated on top of a static cel.
clever choice of camera angles and editing
use of camera techniques such as panning to suggest movement
cell reversal (simply using a mirror image of the cell to represent the opposite angle). Many cartoon characters are drawn symmetrically to expedite this technique.
the visual elements were made subsidiary to audio elements, so that verbal humor and voice talent became more important factors for success ("talking heads")

Animated cartoons which made good use of limited animation included Gerald McBoing-Boing, Mister Magoo, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, The Pink Panther, and The Flintstones. Mr. ... Bullwinkle (left) and Rocky (right), the stars of Rocky and His Friends and The Bullwinkle Show. ... The Pink Panther cartoon character is the protagonist and main character in a series of animated short films. ... The Flintstones, an American animated television series produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, is one of the most successful animated television series of all time. ...

In recent years, nostalgia for the 1970s, combined with technologies such as Adobe Flash, have led to a revival of the genre of limited animation, as well as some modern graphic styles naturally translate into limited animation ("My Life as a Teenage Robot", "Powerpuff Girls", "Danny Phantom", "Dexter's Laboratory", "Samurai Jack"). Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and before that FutureSplash Animator), or simply Flash, refers to both the Adobe Flash Player and to a multimedia authoring program used to create content for the Adobe Engagement Platform (such as web applications, games and movies). ... My Life as a Teenage Robot is an American animated television series, produced by Frederator Studios for the Nickelodeon cable channel. ... The Powerpuff Girls is an animated series starring three little girls with superpowers who have dedicated their lives to fight crime and the forces of evil, though there are criticisms about their actions. ... Danny Phantom is an American animated television series created by Butch Hartman for Nickelodeon, produced by Billionfold Studios. ... Dexters Laboratory (Dexters Lab for short) was an American animated television series created by Genndy Tartakovsky. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...