The word cartoon has various meanings, based on several very different forms of visual art and illustration. The word is French and describes the cardboard 'carton', on which draughtspersons used to draw.
The term, Cartoon, has evolved over time. The original meaning was in fine art, and there cartoon meant a preparatory drawing for a piece of art such as a painting or tapestry.
The somewhat more modern meaning was that of humorous illustrations in magazines and newspapers. Even more recently there are now several contemporary meanings, including creative visual work for print media, for electronic media, and even animated films and animated digital media.
We can divide Cartoons broadly into three categories:
Caricatures: The comic strips based on day to day life, and politics, to elicit laughter and thought, is often full of subtle satire. The common man by R.K.Laxman is an exemplary example of Caricatures.
Comics: Comics are a sequence of caricatures designed to tell a story using character of its’ own. Comics can be short – strips like Dennis the Menace or long comic books, like Tintin.
Animation pictures: The new cartoons of today, the Animation movies we see on our television screens take a long route from the imaginations of its’ creators to the seemingly realistic movements on your screen.
The original animation was a kid toy, a book whose leaves could be scrolled rapidly. On each page there were figures slightly different from the previous ones, and through the rapid scrolling they merged one with the other. It was an optic illusion. Modern technology is much more evolved, but it works on the same principle: static images presented rapidly and successively.
Mickey Mouse opened the Golden Age of the cartoons that lasted until the middle of the '50s. Disney was followed by the Fleisher Brothers with Popeye the Sailor, the spinach eating sailor with steel muscles, and after them, an invasion of the characters preferred by today's children: Tom and Jerry, Road Runner, Bugs Bunny, Duffy Duck, Sylvester, Tweety and others. Later, the Simpsons with their odd heads boosted again the popularity of the cartoons.
The first feature cartoon, in 1937, was "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", which had a huge success. Other feature cartoons followed and, in 1994, for example, Lion King, made at Walt Disney studios, had one of the grossest revenues of the year.
How is an Animation movie made: The first thing that is done is that the story itself is developed as what is called a "storyboard". This is literally a giant sized comic strip. As the story is developed the artist adds new drawings to this storyboard. Sometimes the entire story is known beforehand and other times it is developed as they go along. These drawings are pinned into a cork board so it is very easy to make changes as they go along.
After the storyboard is laid out, backgrounds are made for the cartoon. These are painted on cardboard with either tempera, acrylic or sometimes even oil paints. These backgrounds are where the characters of the cartoon will be performing their movements and are extremely large to allow for all the motion that may be required. The camera will then move across the background as the characters move across it.
Before the drawing of the characters even begins, the voices of the characters are recorded on tape and then transferred to magnetic film. The film is fed through a sound reader and every syllable is recorded on an exposure sheet. This is required in order to perform the synchronization between the sound and the picture. Each frame of film must be synchronized separately. This is extremely time consuming.
Finally after all this, the hard work begins. Yes, it gets harder. Every second of film consists of 24 frames with as many as 24 different drawings. That means that an hour animated film can contain as many as 86,400 drawings. Taking these frames, they are fed through a projector to make sure that the movement of each character for each second is smooth. If there are any problems, certain drawings may have to be redone. Note that these drawings are all in black and white.
If the movements of the frames passes the quality control test, it is at that time that color is added to all these drawings, all done by hand.They are then superimposed onto the backgrounds.
The actual filming is done on what is called an animation stand. Many times the picture will be divided into several levels which are separated by about 12 inches. Each part of the background is on a different level so that a 3 dimensional effect can be achieved.
Finally, the film is fed back through a projector which is showing each filmed board at a very fast rate. This gives the cartoon the feeling of motion.
Next time you watch a cartoon, see if you can pick any of this out. If the cartoon is well done, you won't be able to.
