Drawn-on-film animation.
What is drawn-on-film animation? It is a type of animation that is commonly known as direct animation or animation without camera, it’s a technique where footage is produced by creating the images directly on a film strip. Where as other animations are produced by photograph frame by frame.
The techniques to this type of animation is two basic methods to produce directly on film. It starts with blank film strips and the other one with black that’s already been developed. The black film can then be scratched and etched in to to get the drawing the artists wants. All of the techniques can be combined together, an existing image may be distorted by chemical or mechanical ways. A third method is by going into a dark room and the artist places the objects on the new film strip and then using a small light beam to shine through the film and and it then starts to create the image.
The best artists that work on drawn on film animation are, Len Lye, Norman McLaren, Stan Brakhage and then Steven Woloshen. Their work covers over the abstract animation. Other animators in the 1960’s expanded the idea of this work and the film stock methood started to increase up until the point that the film was destroyed in the process of projection. Direct animation could be an inexpensive way to produce a film, and it can be done on outtakes or discarded film strips from previous or old projects, rather than using actual photographed animation and animating it that way, it’s a more expensive process than this one.
Louise Marie 