Chapter 4: A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION ... - Vasulka.org

Chapter 4: A HISTORY OF COMPUTER ANIMATION 3/20/92 8
more efficient because the whole image is not redrawn each frame ;
furthermore the image is more steady . In practice the cuttout need
not be a free floating object, and may be attached to peg holes . It
may also be articulated, a technique pioneered by Cohl and
Armstrong (1910) . In Europe the cutout system remained the
preferred method of production as late as the 1930s .
Another strategy emerged at the Barre studio called the slash
system, in which scenes were printed in mass on transcluent paper
(1914) . The part of the field that contained changing action was
"slashed out" with a rasor blade and the paper laid overtop a clean
sheet, onto which the changing action was drawn . The pair of
drawings was then shot together (fig . 16) .
But more important still was the perfection by Earl Hurd of the
cel process (1915) (fig . 17) . The cutout and the slash system
reduced work because the entire scene was not redrawn every frame ;
furthermore the line quality is more stable, since the unchanging
lines were the same on each printed sheet . The cel system expands
this concept by inking the drawing onto a registered transparent cel,
opaquing it by painting the backside of the cel, and then layering this
cel overtop of a single static background and photographing the
stack . The cel process separates foreground and background art into
work which gets drawn once and work which gets drawn every
frame, and it allows the foreground cel to be translated relative to
the background . This requires the invention of a compound table
onto which the backgrounds and cels are placed for photography and
illustrate this technology may be placing her into a technology
which is before her time .)
16 . The slash system (aka the slash and tear system) begins with
identical drawings that have been printed onto paper and pegged .
Whever action occurs the drawing is torn away (leaving a hole in the
paper), laid over top a clean sheet of paper, and the area inside the
hole is drawn in . This approach is the opposite of the cutout because
the static action is laid on top of the changing element, rather than
laying the changing element on top of the background . This setup is
useful when the changing element wants to go behind things .
17 . The cel system . The background is drawn onto paper and
painted ; the foreground is drawn onto paper, then trace inked onto
one or more flexible transparent cels, backside painted with opaque
colors, then laid overtop the background and photographed . Action
which is static is draw onto cels or backgrounds which are used for
many frames, only the moving parts are transferred to cels which
are different for each frame . [color example, plus process diagram] .