Cut Out Animation Evaluation

Cut Out animation is when you take segments of magazines, newspapers or images that are either drawn/printed off of the internet. These images are then organized into specific orders, and moved slowly as the camera takes a shot of them.

If these images are moved slowly each time, the motion picture will look smooth. However, if the images are moved to far apart the animation looks rough; this results in your motion picture looking like a non-professional film.

Cut-out animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs.

Today, cut-out-style animation is frequently produced using computers, with scanned images or vector graphics taking the place of physically cut materials. South Park is a notable example of this transition since its first episode was made with paper cut-outs before switching to computer animation.

Examples of cut out animation include TV shows such as Angela Anaconda, Charlie and Lola and Blue’s Clues.

The strengths of this technique are the use of your characters already being pre drawn for you. This saves time and therefore makes the animation process quicker.  In addition to this cut out animation is also favourable due to the detail of a drawing not changing giving your work better quality. Furthermore, cut-out animation is cheaper and has endless possibilities.

The weaknesses of cut-out animation are that it is time consuming and may not always produce great quality work. Also there are limitations as to how far you can create a 3-D effect as the pictures are only 2-D.

Before we started our Cut- out Animation we had to research previous skills, techniques and animators that have used it. We began by looking through magazines and old newspapers for inspirations for ideas.

This process was quite time consuming as finding the correct size letters and images was very difficult. After this I created a sketched out thought bubble and began to take shots of the letters crawling onto the page creating the question ‘Does God Exist and Why?’ This idea would then be presented with both opinions from Christians/ Muslims and Catholics and then from Atheists and Agnostics. In my animation I am most proud of the use of words crawling onto the page as if they are moving to a certain rhythm. This made my motion picture look smoother. However I believe I could improve this by adding a follow up question or my own opinion.