Assignment 1: Techniques

Techniques

Introduction:
This is part 1 of task 1 about techniques. These techniques impact on the future of stop motion because without stop frame and frame rate there wouldn't be stop motion. Persistence of vision, beta movement and the phi phenomenon are an important impact because it helps to create movement.   

Persistence of Vision:

Persistence of Vision is a theory which says that the human brain subconsciously stores images for around 1/25 of a second. The human brain recognises a fluid movement when slightly different images are shown in a quick succession. It was later debunked because it only explained why black slides on early projected animations and films were not recognised by the audience (This was known as an ‘illusion’ and only worked when it was down to 16 fps). Two more theories came out about vision called ‘The Phi Phenomenon’ and ‘Beta Movement’. The Phi Phenomenon was founded by Max Wertheimer in the early 1900s. The Phi phenomenon is an optical illusion that when different objects are viewed in rapid succession gave the illusion of movement. Beta Movement was also founded by Max Wertheimer in the early 1900s. Beta Movement, like The Phi Phenomenon, is also an optical illusion where a series of static images on a screen can create the illusion of smoothly flowing scenes. This happens where the frame rate is higher than 10-12 images per second.
Phi Phenomenon Example:

 Beta Movement Example (Snake Game): https://playsnake.org/

       Persistence of Vision                 The Phi Phenomenon                     Beta Movement

Stop Frame:

‘Stop Frame’ is a type of animation where each frame is manipulated that when played together in quick succession, images seem to move. There are positives and negatives to Stop Frame animation. The positives are that you have more control, you can animate inanimate objects, you can create more surreal story lines, you can make difficult subjects easier to tackle and you can create interesting effects. The negatives are that it is difficult to get the correct speed, it is time consuming, you can’t have fluid motion, it is difficult to visualise and you need to create a separate audio track.

Example (Wallace and Gromit): 

A recent example (Early Man): 

                Wallace and Gromit                                          Early Man
Frame Rate:
Frame rate is expressed in ‘frames per second’ (fps). It is the rate at which consecutive images called frames appear on a screen. It is seen in film, video cameras, computer graphics and motion capture systems. Frame rate can also be called frame frequency which is expressed in hertz.

Frame Rate Example (Beginners Guide to Frame Rates): http://aframe.com/blog/2013/07/a-beginners-guide-to-frame-rates/

                                    Frame Rate Chart