If One Would Sum Up All The Economical, Social And... Essay - 2,706 words

If one would sum up all the economical, social and technological progress our society has gone through for the past two centuries he would clearly see that the human race has done a great leap during this period when comparing to the two millenniums past after the major reformation in our mindset. On the verge of the 21st century numerous discoveries have been made which have considerably enhanced our lifestyle making it much easier to oppose the severity of nature and considerably separating us from it further and further. Human progress (as we experience it) has both positive and down sides in relation to our natural behavior and attitude towards the world we live in on one hand it is much more interesting to live today observing and utilizing technological devices and on the other experiencing the blending of male/female roles and inability to survive without technology. Probably the most controversial thing ever created by a human was personal computers and World Wide Web it at the same united and separated mankind. Everyday new people find it more convenient and satisfactory to lead their lives online communicating, having fun, finding hobbies and making virtual love. Computer generated graphics since the 1980s has gone through considerable changes from basic pixel/spite images to the modern 3d rendered environments which astonish us every time we see it.


The pace or society has set for its development in the past few years is unbelievable, and still does not stop amazing us with the new products coming out every day. The prospects for future are wonderful and somewhat scary if one thinks about the virtual society we might turn into. Still optimism overcomes those scary prophecies, as nature is something that continues to inspire CG artists, as nothing can be compared to its diversity of beautiful and dreadful sceneries. America was growing in industry but a country that does nothing other than work cannot stand for very long. Necessity is the mother of invention and the United State needed entertainment. Early animators managed to get the attention other performers lost because they not only used technology, but a way of creating life in things that werent alive.


Had not animation come into the picture when it did, visual arts today would not have come as incredibly far as they have. Today, animation can be made to look so realistic; it can actually take the place on an actor in a film. In addition, without the cartoons that were made in the past 60 years, millions of people would not have an escape from the toil and hardships of everyday life. This was done through humor and the misfortunes of characters it was all right to laugh at, as such was the case with characters only in animation, like Mickey Mouse or Popeye. Animation aided in Americas growth by opening gates to creativity and relating to people and the issues the faced. Despite the recent birth of animation and its ability to appeal to both young and old, people grew weary of the same sort of cartoon recreated in theaters and desired something that would be more refreshing.


For this reason, animators struggled to find ways to liven up their cartoons, a sure fire way of doing so was by adding music to the cartoons. Prior to this time, cartoons were shown with the accompaniment of a live pianist to offer something other than a visual pleasure, but this wasnt doing enough for audiences. This was all changed however by an unpopular and unheard of animator by the name of Walt Disney who was credited with creating the first cartoon that had sound (Bohl 16). This wasnt a whole truth however, as two artists had created animated films with sound before Disney, but his attempt proved to be much more successful than the others, giving this Golden Age in animation a temporary name of The Disney Era. The first film with sound created by Disney and his co-workers was Steamboat Willie, a comical portrayal of Disneys own Mickey Mouse who, at the time, resembled more of a rat then anything. Disney soon learned not to make a mean or ill tempered character as it would never be as greatly appreciated as a fun loving, easy going one.


Along with new ideas in making animation better to view, the tail end of the industrial revolution made it easier for animators to make the cartoons, one such idea being the assembly line which came from Henry Ford as well as using cells for animation, rather then whole scenes drawn for every shot. Due to the speed at which animation and its technologies progressed it was only a matter of time before a studio made a cartoon with color as well as sound, the perfect place to do so was Walt Disney Studios. (Gordon 34-36) Warner Brothers career began during the same time as World War II and therefore always had some way to promote something or make a gag out of something that would almost always reach everyone who viewed it. If the studio needed political or financial support, it was customary to make a war promoting cartoon to sell its viewers on the idea it portrayed. Another way of gaining publicity was to make cartoons that would relate to the people who saw the cartoons, those who did not want to leave home and fight. One such cartoon was that of a short man for the drafting agency coming to draft Daffy Duck into the war, but Daffy did everything possible to avoid his fate of leaving for the war. (Grant 19) This almost anti-war cartoon received much criticism by those who use to support such studios as Warner, however, was openly accepted by the general public. These same cartoons were much like those that ran into heavy rotation on television in what was known as the Golden Age of Television Animation.


(Sculley 57) Much like before, Warner was a pioneer in this field and had little competition as Disney remained almost completely in the full length animated movie scene. Animation suffered a blow however during the late sixties all the way until the late seventies, bringing a halt to all studios who couldnt afford not having an audience. Today however, animation and cartoons have grown to a completely new level, using technology and creativity together to make realistic and meaningful films that let the viewer escape the world they live in, but unlike the past, helps them also to learn from the mistakes of the main character, giving the patron a small lesson in morals as well. Animation has also proven to be very useful in computer sciences as well by giving it a visual efficiency that is much more useful than if it were without. (Gordon 40-41) Up to the mid-1980s, computer graphics was concerned primarily with rendering. Parametric patches were the start of suitable modeling methods, but these were rather tedious and suitable only for representing car bodies and aeroplanes.


A serious project, which initiated animation for more entertaining applications, was about oil pumping in Alberta. Apparently, in order to extract crude oil from the absorbent rock, it was important to know the temperature gradients which could be set up when pressurized hot water was pumped in to the rock to displace the oil. Animation was a very suitable tool for this, given certain parameters about the physical properties of the materials involved. Animation of 3D objects could be started by blending skeletal elements - primitives - which were in close proximity. For example, if two geometrically defined spheres were brought ever closer together, at a certain distance, a dog's bone shape could be created. Taking the idea further, with different size spheres at varying distances, a dinosaur shape could be made.


By 1987, Professor Wyvills work allowed a series of such connected volumes or shapes to follow a trajectory, exhibiting some novel properties. An example of this, well illustrated with a video clip, was The Great Train Rubbery, in which a train shape followed the bends and undulations of a roller-coaster-type track, as though the train was made of rubber. (1) Negative objects can also be created. These allow holes and boundaries to be defined within objects. Animation is clearly more than meets the eye. Another one shown, HiFi Mike, had inbuilt mechanical dynamics, so that the objects moved in a realistic manner, bouncing on the floor and off other objects, for example.


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Essay Tags: animation, computer, computer graphics, virtual reality, cartoon

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