British animation

small films Ivor the Engine is a British children's animation by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin's Smallfilms company.Several very popular series of short films were made using stop-motion animation, including The Clangers, Noggin the Nog, and Ivor the Engine. Another Smallfilms production, Bagpuss, came top of a BBC poll to find the favourite children's programme. Alexander The Mouse (1958) The Journey Of Master Ho (1958) Ivor the Engine (1959–1963) Noggin the Nog (1959-1965) Pingwings (1961–1964) Pogles' Wood (1966–67)Clangers (1969–1972)Bagpuss (1974)Clangers election special: Vote For Froglet (1974)What-A-Mess (1980)Tottie: The Story of a Doll's House (1984)Pinny's House (1985) . Based on concepts which mostly originated with Postgate, Firmin did the artwork and built the models, while Postgate wrote the scripts, did the stop motion filming and many of the voices. After Postgate's death in December 2008 Smallfilms was inherited by his son Daniel Postgate. Also, Universal took the distribution rights to the works of Smallfilms. Any such agreement does not include the materials Oliver published with The Dragons Friendly Society you can see most of the work on you tube, DVDs, and videos.





Oliver Postage

Oliver postage was an English animator, puppeteer and writer. He was the creator and writer of some of Britain's most popular children's television programmes. Pingwings, Pogles' Wood, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers and Bagpuss, were all made by Smallfilms, the company he set up with Peter Firmin, and were shown on the BBC between the 1950s and the 1980s, and on ITV from 1959 to the present day. In a 1999 BBC poll Bagpuss was voted the most popular children's television programme of all time. Setting up their business in a disused cowshed at Firmin's home in Blean near Canterbury, Kent, Postgate and Firmin worked on children's animation programmes. Based on concepts which mostly originated with Postgate, Firmin did the artwork and built the models, while Postgate wrote the scripts, did the stop motion filming and many of the voices. Smallfilms was therefore able to produce two minutes of film per day.They are shown on DVD’s, videos and you tube it is still going on today

FilmFair
,FilmFair was a British production company and animation studio that produced stop motion children's television series and animated cartoons from the late 1960s until the mid-1990s. Graham Clutterbuck started FilmFair in the late 1960s, working first in Paris and later in London. The company's stop-motion repertoire included puppets, clay animation, and cutout animation. The Legends of Treasure Island, The Legend of White Fang, Rod 'n' Emu, The Dreamstone, Bangers and Mash, The Shoe People, The Blunders, The Perishers, Astro Farm, The Gingerbread Man, Huxley Pig, , Windfalls, Edward and Friends and many more other programs.They are shown on DVD’s, videos and you tube it is still going on today 





cosgrove hall films 
Cosgrove Hall Films was a British animation studio headquartered in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester, that once was a major producer of children's television and animated programmes. Cosgrove Hall's programmes are still seen in over eighty countries. The company was wound down by then-owner, ITV plc, on 26 October 2009. Stop Frame Productions ceased production, and was closed, in 1975. However, Cosgrove and Hall were able to find new work in animation, specifically due to their earlier work on the 1972 series, Rainbow. The producer of Rainbow, Thames Television, an ITV company, created a new, subsidiary, animation studio called Cosgrove Hall Films.The Likeaballs (2006), 100% People (2004), Albie, Alias the Jester (1986), Andy Pandy (2002), The Animal Shelf (1997–1998), Avenger Penguins (1993–1994),The BFG (1989),Bill and Ben (2001),Brambly Hedge (1996 to 1998)Chorlton and the Wheelies (1976–1979), Captain Kremmen (1978–1980), Cinderella (1979), Cockleshell Bay (1981–1986), Count Duckula , Danger Mouse (Thames for ITV 1981 to 1992), Doctor Who, Engie Benjy (ITV 2002), Enid Blyton's Enchanted Lands (1997), Fantomcat (1995 to 1996), Father Christmas and the Missing Reindeer (1997), Fetch The Vet (2000s)Fifi and the Flowertots (2005)The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship (Thames for ITV 1990), The Foxbusters (1999 to 2000) , Grandma Bricks of Swallow Street (Thames for ITV 1976 to 1978), Guess with Jess (2009), Jamie and the Magic Torch (ITV 1976 to 1978), Kid Clones (2005), Lavender Castle (1998 to 1999), The Magic Ball (1971), Mimi & Scruff (as part of Jamboree, 1998), Grandma's Bricks Of Shallow Street (as part of Rainbow, 1978 to 1980), Oakie Doke (1995 to 1996), Oh, Mr. Toad (1989), Noddy's Toyland Adventures (1992 to 1995), Peter and the Wolf (1996), Postman Pat (2003–2010), The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1981), The Reluctant Dragon ( 1987), Roary the Racing Car ( 2007), Rocky and the Dodos ( 1998), Rotten Ralph (1999), Sally And Jake ( 1974 to 1978), Sooty's Amazing Adventures ( 1996 to 1997), The Sandman (1991), The Tale of Two Toads (1989), The Talking Parcel (978 to 1980), Terry Pratchett's Truckers (1992), Vampires, Pirates & Aliens (2000), Victor and Hugo (1991 - 1992), The Wind in the Willows (1983 to 1990.They are shown on DVD’s, videos and you tube. it is still going on today it is still going one today on Tv.

Techniques

 Drawn-on-film animation is exactly what it sounds like: animation that's drawn directly on the film reel, using a number of tools, techniques, and methods. This skips the entire process of cel animation, photographing, and video sequencing - or the more modern process of digital rendering. Instead, drawn-on-film animation imposes the animated image directly on the individual frames of a reel of film

Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Dolls with movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of repositioning. Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay animation or "clay-mation". Not all stop motion requires figures or models; many stop motion films can involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic effect. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as object animation.

Clay animation or clay mation is one f many forms of stop motion animation. Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"—made of a malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay .all traditional animation is produced in a similar fashion, whether done through cel animation or stop motion.Each frame, or still picture, is recorded on film or digital media and then played back in rapid succession.When played back at a frame rate greater than 10- 12 frames per second, a fairly convincing illusuion motion is acheved. While played back feature creating an illusion it true of all moving images (from zoetrope to films to video games ), they are made frame- by- frame process. 

In computer graphics, pixelation (or pixellation in British English) is caused by displaying a bitmap or a section of a bitmap at such a large size that individual pixels, small single-colored square display elements that comprise the bitmap, are visible. Such an image is said to be pixelated (pixellated in the UK).Early graphical applications such as video games ran at very low resolutions with a small number of colors, and so had easily visible pixels. The resulting sharp edges gave curved objects and diagonal lines an unnatural appearance. However, when the number of available colors increased to 256, it was possible to gainfully employ antialiasing to smooth the appearance of low-resolution 

objects, not eliminating pixelation but making it less jarring to the eye.

a puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, which is a very ancient form of theatre. There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made of a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They can be extremely complex or very simple in their construction.The black light puppet is a form of puppetry where the puppets are operated on a stage lit only with ultraviolet lighting, which both hides the puppeteer and accentuates the colours of the puppet.The bunraku puppets are a type of wood-carved puppet originally made to stand out through torch illumination. Developed in Japan over a thousand years ago and formalised and combined with shamisen music at the end of the 16th century.Carnival puppets (AKA body puppets) are usually designed to be part of a large spectacle these are often used in parades.

Caroline Leaf’s films are convincing proof that great film effects can be created with incredibly simple methods. Colour or even just sand are the basic materials for her pictures, which are painted on a sheet of glass. Lit from below, light and shadow produce expressive, even magical effects. Caroline Leaf changes the hand-drawn figures picture for picture, directly under the camera. Moving figures change their position in the picture. They must therefore be continually painted over, and the background suitably adjusted. Caroline Leaf works step by step to advance the movement and plot. Each picture must be destroyed to make the next. Nothing can be repeated. In her first film Sand or Peter and the Wolf, Caroline Leaf uses the light and shadow world of her sandpainting to convey the fright of darkness and of the unknown. She is more successful in her even more impressive interpretation of Kafka’s The Metamorphosis of Mr. Samsa. 

Rotoscoping is an animation technique in which animators trace over footage, frame by frame, for use in live-action and animated films Originally, recorded live-action film images were projected onto a frosted glass panel and re-drawn by an animator. This projection equipment is called a rotoscope, although this device was eventually replaced by computers.In the visual effects industry, the term rotoscoping refers to the technique of manually creating a matte for an element on a live-action plate so it may be composited over another background.

Digital animation is when there are a series of graphics which are the same only placed in different areas in each frame so that it can create the illusion of movement when in reality they are still pictures A simulation of movement created by displaying a series of pictures, or frames. Cartoons on television is one example of animation. Animation on computers is one of the chief ingredients of multimedia presentations. There are many software applications that enable you to create animations that you can display on a computer monitor.

The praxinoscope was an animation device, the successor to the zoetrope. It was invented in France in 1877 by Charles-Émile Reynaud. Like the zoetrope, it used a strip of pictures placed around the inner surface of a spinning cylinder. The praxinoscope improved on the zoetrope by replacing its narrow viewing slits with an inner circle of mirrors, placed so that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing the illusion of motion, with a brighter and less distorted picture than the zoetrope offered

A zoetrope is a device that produces the illusion of motion from a rapid succession of static pictures. The term zoetrope is from the Greek The zoetrope consists of a cylinder with slits cut vertically in the sides. On the inner surface of the cylinder is a band with images from a set of sequenced pictures. As the cylinder spins, the user looks through the slits at the pictures across. The scanning of the slits keeps the pictures from simply blurring together, and the user sees a rapid succession of images, producing the illusion of motion.

The Kinetoscope is an early motion picture exhibition device. The Kinetoscope was designed for films to be viewed by one individual at a time through hole viewer window at the top of the device. The Kinetoscope was not a movie projector but introduced the basic approach that would become the standard for all cinematic projection before the advent of video, by creating the illusion of movement by conveying a strip of perforated film bearing sequential images over a light source with a high-speed shutter

A flip book or flick book is a book with a series of pictures that vary gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or magazines, often in the page corners. Software packages and websites are also available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip books.

A thaumatrope is a toy that was popular in Victorian times. A disk or card with a picture on each side is attached to two pieces of string. When the strings are twirled quickly between the fingers the two pictures appear to combine into a single image due to persistence of vision. Examples of common thaumatrope pictures include a bare tree on one side of the disk, and its leaves on the other, or a bird on one side and a cage on the other. They often also included riddles or short poems, with one line on each side. Thaumatropes were one of a number of simple, mechanical optical toys that used persistence of vision. They are recognised as important antecedents of cinematography and in particular of animation.