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Absolut Panushka, Jan-Apr 1997.
Traditional Animation
From the beginning of this art form, animators have drawn or painted thousands of images on paper, acetate cels or other drawing mediums. These drawings are then shot in sequential or carefully planned order, frame by frame, to create an animated film.
It takes 24 frames to make one second of moving film. Often animators shoot thier films on "2's," meaning that they shoot two frames of one piece of artwork as opposed to a single frame, thus requiring only 12 pieces of artwork to make one second of moving film. It makes quite a difference when one realizes that it takes 1,440 drawings to make one minute of film on "1's," and only 720 drawings on "2's"!
Acetate cels are painted on and used in conjunction with painted or drawn backgrounds. This process, used primarily in studio cartoon productions, was developed to save time. The moving elements in a scene are placed over a fixed background, with just these elements having to be re-drawn for each frame. The background only has to be created once and doesn't have any movement at all.
When any image is re-drawn, no matter how carefully, it has a "breathing" effect on film; it moves slightly with each small imperfection in the re-rendering. Some animators intentionally create this effect in the way they re-draw the artwork or by using paper with a texture. The textured paper will appear to move behind the illustration because each piece of paper has its own unique variation of the texture.
Moritz, William. "History of Experimental Animation." Website. Absolut Panushka, curated by Christine Panushka. (Jan-Apr 1997).
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