Techniques of Traditional Animation

Techniques Of Traditional Animation

  In very early cartoons made before the use of the cel, such as Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), the entire frame, including the background and all characters and items, were drawn on a single sheet of paper, then photographed. Everything had to be redrawn for each frame containing movements.  Thus, the cel was an important innovation to traditional animation, as it allows some parts of each frame to be repeated from frame to frame, thus saving labor.  If one character in a scene was not moving, while another character was. You could reuse the static character image for another scene and simply change the background.


Another technique called Shooting On Twos is when one drawing is shown for every two frames of film.  So a traditional animation usually runs at 24 frames per second meaning that you would only need 12 drawings per second instead of 24.  This satisfies most objects and movements, unless the object needs to make a quick movement then you need to shoot "On Ones".  

In 1915 Max Fleischer invented rotoscoping.  It is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action.  This is often used for visual effects in live action movies.

Implemented in the late 1950's at Walt Disney Studios Xerography was an electrostatic copying technique that allowed drawings to be directly copied onto cels.  This eliminated the inking portion of the process and saved time and money.  It also allowed for more details to be added to the characters.


In modern animation computers and traditional animation techniques are used in unison to make the best animations.  For example, drawings can be done one of two ways on the computer.  First, the artists can draw them by hand and then digitally scan them into the computer and fill them with digital paint.  Instead of being colored by hand.  Or, the artists can draw them directly on the computer using a graphics tablet.