Portal:Animation

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Introduction

The bouncing ball animation above consists of these six frames repeated indefinitely.

Animation is a filmmaking technique by which still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets (cels) to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animation has been recognized as an artistic medium, specifically within the entertainment industry. Many animations are computer animations made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Stop motion animation, in particular claymation, has continued to exist alongside these other forms.

Animation is contrasted with live-action film, although the two do not exist in isolation. Many moviemakers have produced films that are a hybrid of the two. As CGI increasingly approximates photographic imagery, filmmakers can easily composite 3D animations into their film rather than using practical effects for showy visual effects (VFX). (Full article...)

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Homer Simpson is a fictional main character in the animated television series The Simpsons. Homer is the boorish father of the Simpson family and as the family's provider, he works at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. With his wife, Marge, he has three children: Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Homer embodies several American working class stereotypes: he is crude, overweight, incompetent, clumsy, lazy and ignorant; however, he is also fiercely devoted to his family. Homer was created and designed by cartoonist Matt Groening. He is voiced by Dan Castellaneta and first appeared on television, along with the rest of his family, in The Tracey Ullman Show short "Good Night" on April 19, 1987. After appearing on The Tracey Ullman Show for three years, the Simpson family got their own series on Fox, which debuted December 17, 1989. Homer is one of the most influential fictional characters on television and has inspired an entire line of merchandise. His catchphrase, the annoyed grunt "d'oh!", has been included in several dictionaries. Castellaneta has won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance and a special achievement Annie Award for voicing Homer.

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Randy Cartwright

Credit: Janke

Randy Cartwright at the Disney Studio in 1991.

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... that the live-action comedy series Community had a stop motion animated Christmas special?
... that Raoul Servais invented a new technique for combining animation and live action for his short film Harpya?
... that "Arnold's Christmas", now considered one of the most memorable episodes from the animated series Hey Arnold!, was almost rejected by network executives because it depicted the Vietnam War?
... that, for the animated film Us Again, director and writer Zach Parrish considered a video of an elderly couple dancing to be visceral and ideal inspiration?
... that Bruce Timm created most of the character designs for Batman: The Animated Series?
... that the French animated film The Summit of the Gods is based on a Japanese manga series?

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If it is a dying craft we can't do anything about it. Civilization moves on. Where are all the fresco painters now? Where are the landscape artists? What are they doing now? The world is changing. I have been very fortunate to be able to do the same job for 40 years. That's rare in any era. Actually I think CGI has the potential to equal or even surpass what the human hand can do.

— Hayao Miyazaki, on the topic of hand-drawn animation (2005)

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Daniel Louis "Dan" Castellaneta (born October 29, 1957) is an American film, theatre and television actor, comedian, voice artist, singer and television writer. Noted for his long-running role as Homer Simpson on the animated television series The Simpsons, he also voices many other characters on The Simpsons, including Abraham "Grampa" Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby and Hans Moleman. Born in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, Illinois, Castellaneta started taking acting classes at a young age. He would listen to his father's comedy records and do impressions of the artists. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Castellaneta to voice Homer. His voice for the character started out as a loose impression of Walter Matthau, but later evolved into a more robust voice. The shorts would eventually be spun off into The Simpsons. Castellaneta has won four Primetime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Voice-Over Performance for his work on the show as well as an Annie Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in the Field of Animation in 1993.

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Season two (Book 2: Earth) of Avatar: The Last Airbender, an American animated television series on Nickelodeon, first aired its 20 episodes from March 17, 2006 to December 1, 2006. The season was created and produced by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko and starred Zach Tyler Eisen, Mae Whitman, Jack DeSena, Jessie Flower, Dante Basco, Dee Bradley Baker, Mako and Grey DeLisle as the main character voices. In this season, the protagonist Aang and his friends Katara and Sokka are on a quest to find an Earthbending teacher which finishes when they recruit Toph Beifong. After finding important information concerning the war with the Fire Nation, Appa ends up kidnapped. Throughout the season's airing, the show received much critical acclaim, with praises such as, "As a flat concept, Avatar: The Last Airbender is nothing special, but in execution, it is head and shoulders above other children's entertainment", and that "as a whole, the look of Avatar is consistently excellent. Between January 23, 2007 and September 11, 2007, Nickelodeon released five DVD sets for the season: four sets containing five episodes each, and a fifth DVD collection of all twenty episodes.

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More did you know...

...that Ancient Qumran: A Virtual Reality Tour is a computer-generated film that presents in 3-D a theoretical reconstruction of the ancient Khirbet Qumran site? (pictured)
...that Handling Ships, the first animated British Technicolor feature film, was never meant to be released to theatres but was an "Official Selection" at Cannes in 1946?
...that filmmaker Daniel St. Pierre led the team that developed the Deep Canvas system for the animated film Tarzan for enhancing the apparent depth of backgrounds?