“Good examples” of animation -Focus on the practice of animation not the film/story. For example, does the character move incorrectly or unappealingly. Is the design aesthetic and performance of the character ‘odd/strange’ –

Walt Disney “Fantasia” (1940)

“Dance of the Hours“, showing the dance of the Hippos and the Alligators”

The characters seem weightless, the animators adjusted the physics of their action to their need: the hippos had to be elegant and classy as if they were real-life ballerinas. Their movement is harmonious and appealing, there is no dialogue but the personality and emotions of the dancers are clear to the audience.

“The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”

These two extracts from this classic masterpiece effectively depicts the use of visuals and music merged together to create a unique experience, where the storytelling “speaks” its emotions by itself addressing directly to the audience building a dialogue with them as well.

“The cooking scene” from “Ratatouille” (2007)

This particular action of the film is the first where we actually see Remi, the main character, cooking. The secondary actions in this scene, and throughout the whole movie, for ears and tale are the fine touch to make the character coherent. Moreover, the audience can also perceive the effort of how he manages to cook in a non-animal cooking environment where everything is bigger and different to reach and the. The body weight seems to increasingly loose its realistic effects with the crescendo of the intensity of the scene when he is inspired to cook something, for example when he jumps over the saucepan to put the ingredients inside. Moreover also in this extract music and action are perfectly merged and create a totally immersive atmosphere.

Merida archery scene – Brave

The realism obtained for the hair movements of this character throughout the whole movie (following the secondary action principle) constitutes a perfect example of seamless accuracy applied to animation. Also the cinematic effects when the young princess throws the bow are highly realistic and freeze the movement of the arrow yet maintaining a complete feeling of dynamism.

“Bad examples” of animation

Reference footage is usually filmed for most animated movies to give the animators a sense of what the characters should look/move like in general and for anatomy and positioning purposes but directly tracing over footage for most people in the industry would not be the right choice.

“Anastasia” (1997) the “real princess” scene

Most animation of this movie was rotoscoped (live action reference footage was filmed and the animators just directly traced over the person and their movement) which can look a little disturbing compared to what people are usually familiar: it generally doesn’t have the stylised, squash and stretch style of animation that everyone is used to and tends to be more fluid.

“Pinocchio” (1940) scene “Am I a real boy?”

If we compare the Blue Fairy (who was rotoscoped) to Pinocchio (who wasn’t), there’s a huge difference in the way they both were animated: If you look at the Fairy’s wings they move and bend like the plastic ones: in the reference footage the actress must have been wearing stiff rather than something more fitting and cartoonish.