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Example research essay topic: Computer Animation George Lucas - 1,358 words

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... Cartoons now had to manufactured in quantity and cheaply. The same gags were worked and reworked. Audiences became apathetic as the novelty of seeing drawings come to life wore off. This caused a depression in the animation business that coincided with the depression in the economy of the United States.

Computer Animation Computer animation has revolutionized special effects in the film industry by introducing several important factors into animation. Innovative areas such as computer-animated characters have been developed due to the research and work of some of the most innovative engineers. As a result, the future of computer animation is left wide open for unimaginable discoveries and improvements to current animation techniques. Think of the swirls of the bullets that whiz past Neo's shoulder in the Matrix, or the slashing motion of Luke Skywalker's light saber in George Lucas's tar Wars, or the laser guns of the alien spaceships in the movie Independence Day. All of these scenes have a common ingredient in their recipe for success: all of them look realistic. This is all thanks to computer animation.

The world of cinema has evolved over time in able to produce extremely realistic special effects. The quantity and quality of the graphical elements promised by the movie-makers have become more advanced, and as a result have attracted a larger audience. The catalyst behind all of these transformations has been the steady evolution of computer animation technology -- blurring the boundaries between art and technology, and resulting in more realistic representations. Behind this advancement are computer animators and engineers. Every time you watch a movie that uses remarkable computer generated graphics, you probably don't consider the amount of time and effort put into the movie by engineers and scientists. To meet the needs of a particular animated movie scene, engineers sometimes have to create a new chapter of technology by innovating new computer graphic tools.

For instance, in creating movies such as Jurassic Park, Antz, and A Bugs Life, engineers had to develop new cinema graphics FX (effects) software packages. Computer animation technology and the film industry are so intertwined that when a movie is being made, you can raise a question similar to the eternal dilemma of the chicken or the egg: 'which comes first, the animation technology that is going to be used in the movie or the story of the movie?' We all know this... but what about it? In order to render graphical objects into a dynamic interplay of events, one needs to follow the above principles that govern the science of make-believe motion. According to the dictionary, animation is 'the act, process, or result of imparting life, interest, spirit, motion, or activity' (dictionary. com).

Naturally, graphical forms that are generated by graphics designers are intended to animate life into colorful pictures. For a more technical definition, one from an engineer's perspective, we turn to Professor Will, one of the leading minds in the field of computer generated animation at the University of Calgary. He defines animation as the combination of three disciplines: modeling (creating the geometric structure of the picture), motion control (making the model move), and rendering (painting the model on a computer screen or film) (Computer animation, 1996). That's smart...

but what does it mean? First, the animators capture a still image (i. e. a frame) at a certain point in the time domain. Then, they start tampering with the contents of the frame by incorporating separately defined objects (like a person or a backdrop). The idea is to manage the motion activities of the objects across the time domain.

The animators start defining the complex paths of motion of these objects vis-'a-vis their range of movement and interaction with each other. They fill in the images of these objects along their paths, creating an illusion of the objects' motion. This, in a very broad sense, is the essence of modeling, motion control and rendering. Unfortunately for the graphics designers and engineers, the process is not as simple as it sounds.

So what's the problem... ? The problem lies in the fact that all of these complex interplays are to be coordinated over a large number of frames with meticulous precision -- each one graphically alike in its character disposition, yet depicting a movement that is infinitesimally different from the previous one. Moreover, the cinema world has started working with the complex embedding of animation (synthetically generated objects) within frames that constitute the shots of live-action scenes. Essentially, the concept of complex management of layers of data comes into the picture, with each layer remarkably different in its rendering mechanism. Consequently, as the number of layers increases, the complexity rises almost exponentially, presenting a difficult challenge to engineers. History of Evolution of Animation Although the theory of computer animation was not fully developed and used in the movies until the 1970 's, the idea of animation was first invented in the late 19 th century.

The first major discovery in computer graphics was the first computer drawing system, Design Augmented by Computers (DAC- 1) in 1959 by General Motors and IBM. It allowed users to input a 3 D description of an automobile and view it from different angles, as it was rotated by the computer (Morrison, 1995). Next in 1971, Henri Gouraud advanced 3 D computer graphics by inventing the 'Hidden Surface Algorithm. ' With this technique, he was able to create the appearance of a smooth, curved object by interpolating the color of the object's key points across the entire surface of the object (Finkelstein, 2000). The first use of computer graphics (CG) for motion pictures was in 1973, when Whitney and Demos, two computer graphics pioneers, made the movie Westworld. They used a technique called 'Pixellization, ' which creates a computerized mosaic of dots. This technique is created by separating the picture into large color blocks and then dividing each block into smaller square areas.

Then, all the colors are averaged into one color within the area, providing a better representation of the picture (Morrison, 1995). Computer graphics were used in films throughout the early 1970 's. For example, George Lucas created a sequence of graphics when he produced the scene with five X- Wing fighters flying in formation in The Empire Strikes Back. However, the technology was not effective enough to be called complete computer animation. In 1976, Systems Simulation Ltd. of London provided computer graphics for a landing sequence in the movie Alien.

This was the first example of pure computer animation in a movie (Finkelstein, 2000). Morphing A major breakthrough in computer animation for movies occurred in 1982 as Tom Brigham, a programmer and animator at NYIT, presented a video sequence showing a female character being distorted and then transformed into the shape of a lynx. Thus, a new technique called 'Morphing' was born. However, despite its impressive response by viewers, no one paid much attention to the technique until a number of years later in 1987, when Lucas Film used the technique for the movie Willow, in which a sorceress was transformed through a series of animals into her final shape as a human (Finkelstein, 2000). Today, morphing is one of the most powerful computer animation techniques used in the film industry.

Another major milestone in the movie industry was the use of computer-animated characters. Director Barry Levinson created the first animated character, 'Young Sherlock Holmes, ' in 1985. He featured a memorable sequence where a stained glass window comes to life and interacts with a scared priest (Finkelstein, 2000). Today, computer-animated characters are being used more and more in films. Final Fantasy: The Movie was the first completely 3 -D animated movie with an animated cast that looked and acted like real people. The movie used a motion capture technique, in which the actor's movements are recorded in a computer and then modified to create an apparently real motion.

In addition to capturing the actor's movements, 3 -D scanning of the actor's facial features is also captured and then applied to a computer model to create the 3 -D animated character. The Pixar Animation Group made history on March 29, 1989, by winning...


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