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Limited animation is a process in the overall technique of
traditional animation
Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation.
Proce ...
that reuses frames of character animation.
Early history
The use of budget-cutting and time-saving animation measures in animation dates back to the earliest commercial animation, including cycled animations, mirror-image and symmetrical drawings, still characters, and other labor-saving methods. In general, the progression was from early productions in which every frame was drawn by hand, independent of each other drawing, toward more limited animation that made use of the same drawings in different ways.
Winsor McCay
Zenas Winsor McCay ( – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator. He is best known for the comic strip ''Little Nemo'' (1905–14; 1924–26) and the animated film ''Gertie the Dinosaur'' (1914). For contractual reasons, he worke ...
, a man who put an unprecedented amount of detail into his animations, boasted that in his 1914 film, ''
Gertie the Dinosaur
''Gertie the Dinosaur'' is a 1914 animated short film by American cartoonist and animator Winsor McCay. It is the earliest animated film to feature a dinosaur. McCay first used the film before live audiences as an interactive part of his vaude ...
'', everything moved, including the rocks and blades of grass in the background. In contrast, his 1918 film ''
The Sinking of the Lusitania
''The Sinking of the Lusitania'' (1918) is an American silent animated short film by cartoonist Winsor McCay. It is a work of propaganda re-creating the never-photographed 1915 sinking of the British liner RMS ''Lusitania''. At twelve minu ...
'' progressed to using cels over still backgrounds, while still maintaining a level of detail comparable to that of ''Gertie''.
The 1942 ''
Merrie Melodies
''Merrie Melodies'' is an American animation, animated series of comedy short films produced by Warner Bros. starting in 1931, during the golden age of American animation, and ending in 1969. Then some new cartoons were produced from the late 197 ...
'' cartoon ''
The Dover Boys
''The Dover Boys at Pimento University; or, The Rivals of Roquefort Hall'' (also known as ''The Dover Boys'') is a 1942 Warner Bros. ''Merrie Melodies'' cartoon directed by Chuck Jones. The short was released on September 19, 1942. The cartoon i ...
'', directed by
Chuck Jones
Charles Martin Jones (September 21, 1912 – February 22, 2002) was an American animator, director, and painter, best known for his work with Warner Bros. Cartoons on the ''Looney Tunes'' and ''Merrie Melodies'' series of shorts. He wrote, produ ...
, is one of the earliest Warner Bros. cartoons to extensively employ some of the processes of what would become known as "limited animation," particularly its use of characters that either stand still or move so quickly that the actual motion appears to be a blur.
American television
Hanna-Barbera Productions
Hanna-Barbera Cartoons, Inc. ( ) was an American animation studio and production company which was active from 1957 to 2001. It was founded on July 7, 1957, by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera following the decision of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to c ...
used limited animation throughout its existence. When the company's namesakes,
William Hanna
William Denby Hanna (July 14, 1910 – March 22, 2001) was an American animator and cartoonist who was the creator of ''Tom and Jerry'' as well as the voice actor for the two title characters. Alongside Joseph Barbera, he also founded the ani ...
and
Joseph Barbera
Joseph Roland Barbera ( ; ; March 24, 1911 – December 18, 2006) was an American animator, director, producer, storyboard artist, and cartoon artist who co-founded the animation studio and production company Hanna-Barbera.
Born to Italian im ...
, separated from the
MGM studio in 1957, they opted to take a drastically different approach to animation than they had for their fully animated short films; as television screens were much smaller than theater screens at the time, limited animation, with its emphasis on character close-ups and dialogue-based humor, was a better fit for the more intimate home viewer experience. At the time, most feature films (along with animated shorts, including Hanna and Barbera's own work on ''
Tom and Jerry
''Tom and Jerry'' is an American Animated cartoon, animated media franchise and series of comedy short films created in 1940 by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Best known for its 161 theatrical short films by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, the series c ...
'') were transitioning to the widescreen
CinemaScope
CinemaScope is an anamorphic lens series used, from 1953 to 1967, and less often later, for shooting widescreen films that, crucially, could be screened in theatres using existing equipment, albeit with a lens adapter. Its creation in 1953 by ...
process, which made it more difficult to replicate intimacy;
The Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
, though they continued to use full animation, had also used character close-ups and personality-driven humor in their early films. When Disney produced ''
Lady and the Tramp
''Lady and the Tramp'' is a 1955 American animated musical romance film produced by Walt Disney and released by Buena Vista Film Distribution. The 15th Disney animated feature film, it was directed by Clyde Geronimi, Wilfred Jackson, and Hami ...
'' in CinemaScope, the process made it difficult to replicate that style,
a problem that Hanna-Barbera did not have with smaller, more square television screens.
The financial benefits of limited animation led to television animation companies relying on the process extensively in the television era.
Jay Ward Productions
Jay Ward Productions, Inc. (sometimes shortened to Ward Productions) is an American animation studio based in Costa Mesa, California. It was founded in 1948 by American animator Jay Ward.
The Jay Ward Productions library and rights were previou ...
relied on limited animation for those reasons,
compensating with its heavy
Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
satire and a style of
deadpan
Deadpan, dry humour, or dry-wit humour is the deliberate display of emotional neutrality or no emotion, commonly as a form of comedic delivery to contrast with the ridiculousness or absurdity of the subject matter. The delivery is meant to be blun ...
comedy that would become a trademark of the studio's style. One of the frequent users of limited animation was HB's Saturday-morning rival
Filmation
Filmation Associates was an American production company that produced animation and live-action programming for television from 1963 until 1989. Located in Reseda, California, the animation studio was founded in 1962. Filmation's founders and pr ...
(makers of ''
He-Man and the Masters of the Universe
''He-Man and the Masters of the Universe'' is an American animated television series produced by Filmation based on Mattel's toy line ''Masters of the Universe''. The show, often referred to as simply ''He-Man'', was one of the most popular anima ...
'' and ''
BraveStarr
''BraveStarr'' is an American space Western animated series that aired 65 episodes from September 1987 to February 1988 in syndication. The show was created a year after Mattel had released a line of action figures. ''BraveStarr'' was the last a ...
'') which gave their work a distinct look.
Bill Melendez
José Cuauhtémoc "Bill" Melendez (November 15, 1916 – September 2, 2008) was an American character animator, voice actor, film director and producer. Melendez is known for working on the Peanuts animated specials, ''Peanuts'' animated specials ...
used a form of limited animation to adapt the ''
Peanuts
''Peanuts'' is a print syndication, syndicated daily strip, daily and Sunday strip, Sunday American comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz. The strip's original run extended from 1950 to 2000, continuing in reruns afterward. ' ...
'' franchise to television and later film; in addition to the cost and time concerns (especially for his first special ''
A Charlie Brown Christmas
''A Charlie Brown Christmas'' is a 1965 animated television special. It is the first TV special based on the comic strip ''Peanuts'', by Charles M. Schulz. Produced by Lee Mendelson and directed by Bill Melendez, the program made its debut on C ...
'', which was given only a $76,000 budget and four months to produce 30 minutes of animation), Meléndez also noted that ''Peanuts'' creator
Charles M. Schulz
Charles Monroe "Sparky" Schulz (; November 26, 1922 – February 12, 2000) was an American cartoonist and the creator of the comic strip ''Peanuts'', featuring what are probably his two best-known characters, Charlie Brown and Snoopy. He is wi ...
had designed the characters with a flat style well-suited for limited animation. The short-lived
Cambria Studios turned out three
serials (including ''
Clutch Cargo
''Clutch Cargo'' is an American animated television series created by cartoonist Clark Haas and produced by Cambria Productions, and syndicated beginning on March 9, 1959. The series was notable for its limited animation yet imaginative stories ...
'') using one of the most inexpensive approaches to animation possible: known as
Syncro-Vox, it involved superimposing film of the voice actor's moving lips over a still frame of the character. Disney themselves resorted to some limited animation tricks in an effort to cut its budget during the 1960s, particularly with its usage of xerography in ''
One Hundred and One Dalmatians
''One Hundred and One Dalmatians'' (also simply known as ''101 Dalmatians'') is a 1961 American animated adventure comedy film produced by Walt Disney Productions and based on the 1956 novel ''The Hundred and One Dalmatians'' by Dodie Smith. The ...
'', which resulted in artwork with heavier, rougher outlines than had previously been seen in Disney films up to that point.
By the 1970s, the usage of limited animation in
Saturday morning cartoon
"Saturday-morning cartoon" is a colloquial term for the original animated series programming that was typically scheduled on Saturday and Sunday mornings in the United States on the "Big Three" television networks. The genre's popularity had a br ...
s had become an epidemic; Walter Williams, creator of ''
The Mr. Bill Show'', noted that cartoons in the 1970s were so static, he expected the artist's hands to enter the screen at any moment and physically start moving the drawings around. This inspired him to create the "Mr. Hands" character in ''The Mr. Bill Show'', who literally did just that.
Japanese television
Limited animation proved to be particularly popular in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
, such that the Japanese word for animation, ''
anime
is Traditional animation, hand-drawn and computer animation, computer-generated animation originating from Japan. Outside of Japan and in English, ''anime'' refers specifically to animation produced in Japan. However, in Japan and in Japane ...
'', entered the English lexicon as a
loanword
A loanword (also loan word or loan-word) is a word at least partly assimilated from one language (the donor language) into another language. This is in contrast to cognates, which are words in two or more languages that are similar because th ...
for the distinctive style of Japanese animation that took root there.
[Anime's Great Deception-The Difference Between Anime and Cartoons]
/ref> Anime features scenes of mouth moving with occasional eye blinks, rendered long shots of detailed backgrounds, a low frame rate
Frame rate (expressed in or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images (frames) are captured or displayed. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be ca ...
(especially in earlier productions) and rare use of 2D fluidity on motion-blur filled action alongside reused drawings, using style conventions from Japanese comic books (manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
). It also has the benefit of lower cost productions and stylized content as opposed to realistic animation.Animation Styles: What Make Anime Unique-Show Me The Animation.com
/ref> As was the case in the United States, television was a major impetus for the growth of anime in Japan; the country's recovery from World War II led to economic prosperity and a boom in Japanese television ownership, and the development of anime allowed Japan to compete in an animation field where they had previously lagged well behind the West.[
]
See also
* Cutout animation
Cutout animation is a form of stop-motion animation using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or photographs. The props would be cut out and used as puppets for stop motion. The world's ea ...
* Flash animation
Adobe Flash animation or Adobe Flash cartoon (formerly Macromedia Flash animation, Macromedia Flash cartoon, FutureSplash animation, and FutureSplash cartoon) is an animation that is created with the Adobe Animate (formerly Flash Professional) p ...
* Motion comic
A motion comic (or animated comic) is a form of animation combining elements of print comic books and animation. Individual panels are expanded into a full shot while sound effects, voice acting, and animation are added to the original artwork. Tex ...
* PowerPoint animation
PowerPoint animation is a form of animation which uses Microsoft PowerPoint and similar programs to create a game or movie. The artwork is generally created using PowerPoint's AutoShape features, and then animated slide-by-slide or by using Custom ...
* Squigglevision
Squigglevision is a method of computer animation in which the outlines of shapes are made to wiggle and undulate, emulating the effect of sketchily hand-drawn animation. Tom Snyder of Tom Snyder Productions invented the technique, which his ani ...
* Stock footage
Stock footage, and similarly, archive footage, library pictures, and file footage is film or video footage that can be used again in other films. Stock footage is beneficial to filmmakers as it saves shooting new material. A single piece of stock ...
* UPA (animation studio)
United Productions of America, better known as UPA, was an American animation studio active from the 1940s through the 1970s. Beginning with industrial and World War II training films, UPA eventually produced theatrical shorts for Columbia Pictur ...
* Adult Swim
Adult Swim (AS; stylized as dult swim
Dult is a village in Batala in Gurdaspur district of Punjab State, India. It is located from sub district headquarter, from district headquarter and from Sri Hargobindpur. The village is administrated by Sarpanch an elected representati ...
and often abbreviated as s is an American adult-oriented night-time cable television Television channel, channel that shares channel space with the basic cable network Cartoon Network and is programme ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Limited Animation
Animation techniques