Talk:Animation: Difference between revisions

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To-do list for Animation: edit · history · watch · refresh · Updated 2018-12-11 Here are some tasks awaiting attention: Expand : Describe other 3D animation techniques such as morph target animation

Hello Everyone,

I modified a few spelling errors in the history section of the article and added a picture that is, public domain, of Betty Boop next to the Full animation paragraph. If I have made a mistake let me know and I will fix it. If I don't fix it myself, feel free to fix it yourself.

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 10 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nutellatoastt (article contribs).

123 223.188.250.55 (talk) 13:26, 24 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 25 January 2023 and 12 May 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Jelotan (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Adelehink.

— Assignment last updated by WikiEdit7205 (talk) 18:56, 19 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

(Hundreds of years before the introduction of true animation, people all over the world enjoyed shows with moving figures that were created and manipulated manually in puppetry, automata, shadow play, and the magic lantern)

This above text is mentioned in the animation history section of the article. which refers to shadow play and puppet show as an initial attempt to make animation. In fact, the authors do not mean the shadow play as an animation, but only refer to the initial actions. The paintings found on the cup that burned in the city are not animations. We are talking about 5000 years ago. But these drawings are the first step to make animation. If I am not mistaken, five images of a goat are drawn in different positions, when we rotate the cup 360 degrees, we can see the movement of this goat. The same idea was used in the creation of the first real animations, such as Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, and this work was created. I hope that in this article you will allow us not to call it the first real animation, but the first attempt at animation or the first idea for making animation.

Coolcaesar (talk) & Janke (talk)

I must say that Oxford University researchers have done this before us and it is useful to follow them in this field

Mitrayasna (talk) 04:55, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"the first attempt at animation or the first idea for making animation." - it is neither. The entire concept of animation did not exist before the technical methods were available (flip books, slotted discs etc.) Before that, no artist could actually see the creation in motion. Consider the very first sentence in the article: Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images. Neither cave paintings nor cups could make images move. The "animated" image of the jumping goat requires technology (not existing when the cup was made), thus it is a falsification of facts. Janke | Talk 16:59, 10 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Finally what you are saying is that we can't see the motion, you are somewhat correct, you have to move the cup 360 degrees to feel the motion. With all the reasons you give, you cannot deny that the set of 5 images on this clay cup is the first attempt to show movement, and showing movement is equivalent to animation.

As the first part of the article says :

“Animation is a method by which still figures are manipulated to appear as moving images”

In this part of the article, we are not only talking about the animation that we know today. Why shouldn't this part of the article mention the human effort to show the movement of a goat? What they started 5000 years ago made us have animation today. In fact, humans invented animation a few centuries ago to show movement for the same purpose that humans had 5000 years ago. I don't have much experience with wikipedia, but as far as I know, it shouldn't be used with taste. Items that have valid sources cannot be deleted. You can take a look at this source, I'm sure your opinion will change, it clearly talks about animation.

The title of this section is before filming, in fact, this section does not talk about real animations at all Mitrayasna (talk) 04:40, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I put in the link to the main article Early history of animation that covers this and many other examples of possible early steps towards animation. The history section on the Animation page is probably too long as it is, and could do better with trimming instead of stuffing.

I personally have strong doubts whether the depictions of the goat were supposed to express motion. If animated, the trees move much more (in a very messy random way), while the goat changes more in shape and size instead of following a clear path. When some website first promoted this as a "very first animation" they used a gif in which they had the goat cut out and hop up in about 9 frames, while one tree was kept in place.

The Khnumhotep tomb wrestlers form a much better example, but I don't think there is anything else like that in the whole of art history before the 19th century. Most of the many suggested examples of earlier sequential art don't suggest more than the passing of time between two images. If you carefully study the remaining few that supposedly depict motion and judge them without that autosuggested notion, you may want to conclude that in most cases the artists may have had something else in mind (relevant exceptions are Carlo Urbino's studies of the motion of the body and Christiaan Huygens' sketches of plates for the magic lantern). Joortje1 (talk) 07:15, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are dozens of images in this article, it wouldn't hurt to add another image to the article. We can add a summary of the early history of animation article in just one image and very short text. Mitrayasna (talk) 09:10, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What you are proposing is to use Wikipedia as a first publisher of original research. That's a clear violation of core policies WP:NOR, WP:NOT, and WP:V. You need to find a reliable published source in compliance with WP:RS that expressly makes your novel point. Until then, the image and that material needs to stay out of the article. Also, it sounds like you don't fully understand what is animation. Try attending D23 Expo. I've done it three times, to watch some of the world's top animators speak about their work in person.

WP core policies can be extremely frustrating, but they have been debated dozens of times by the WP community and the consensus has always been to keep. It just means you have to be on the lookout for such sources every time you visit a proper university research library. For example, I was curious about the history of the MUTCD for a long time, and then I finally dug up a history of AASHTO at the library and added citations to that book to the MUTCD article. --Coolcaesar (talk) 15:11, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I do not understand what you are saying. You added the same photo in the other article you mentioned above. How come there was no problem to add this fact in other wikipedia articles but there is a problem in this article and it is against wikipedia rules?

What photo and what fact are you talking about? The only photos I added to the D23 article are two photos of the D23 Expo entrance (in 2015 and 2022), which have nothing to do with your image. Your statement makes no sense at all. Did you read the core policies I just cited? --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:25, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Dozens of articles have been written about this, so this fact is not an original research.^[1]

Your behavior seems to be extremely inconsistent and you have no logical reason for what you are saying, you just don't want this fact to be written in the article. Mitrayasna (talk) 19:00, 11 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You cited an article from an electronic journal from a small Swiss publisher behind a firewall which is so obscure that OCLC's WorldCat reveals that only 22 libraries in the entire world list that journal in their library catalogs. Only six of them are in the United States.

Also, you haven't attempted to quote verbatim from that article, which is kind of suspicious. For example, I quote verbatim all the time from sources when I cite them on Wikipedia because I only add citations to sources which actually say what I'm citing them for.

Again, please read the Wikipedia core policies I cited above. They're really not that hard to understand. If you are unable to conform your edits to those policies, your edits will be treated as disruptive and reverted accordingly. --Coolcaesar (talk) 10:25, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I have already met exactly the criteria you just mentioned

The second source was just to refute your false claim that this fact is the original research.

“Many sources refer to this cup and the images on it as the first animation in history for example : An animated piece on an earthen goblet that belongs to 5000 years ago! was found in Burnt City in sistan-Baluchistan province, south-eastern iran. on this ancient piece that can be called the first animation of the world, the artist has portrayed a goat that jumps toward a tree and eats its leaves.... On this goblet, with a diameter of 8 cm and height of 10 cm. the images show movement in an intricate way that is an unprecedented discovery. Some earthenware found in Burnt City show repetitive images, but none of them implicate any movements”^[2] Mitrayasna (talk) 12:58, 12 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

• You say: "when it is spun, the gazelle appears to leap" - that is NOT true, if you spin the cup, you only see a blur. Try it yourself: put a strip of paper with the drawings around any cup and spin it, you won't see the goat jump, you will only see the drawings move sidewise. --Janke | Talk 07:23, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

  Your and my personal opinions are not important in this matter. According to Wikipedia's rules, we must cite authoritative sources, and various sources from Oxford University and others I have mentioned above clearly state that the images on this goblet are the world's first animation. Mitrayasna (talk) 08:41, 13 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I reverted your edit. You refer to a Oxford University source, but it is behind a paywall, i.e. not accessible. The bowl is mentioned in the early history article, thus not needed here - and, saying that you see the goat jump when you spin the bowl is a falsification of fact. --Janke | Talk 13:02, 18 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it used to show page 6 of the book automatically. Now you have to find that page manually

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Animation_A_World_History/G63MCgAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Burnt%20city%20animation&pg=PA7&printsec=frontcover Mitrayasna (talk) 11:39, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Did you read the second paragraph on that page: "To what we now call animation, they have no cause-and-effect connection. They are purely anecdotic and thus useless to our historical discourse"... and then cites the cup as an anecdote example. So, the author says exactly the opposite of what you're saying. Please don't misconstrue references! --Janke | Talk 17:59, 20 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Fully concur with User:Janke. User:Mitrayasna is reading a quote out of context. Please do not misconstrue references. Please read up on how to do proper close reading of a text. It's not that hard. --Coolcaesar (talk) 16:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

@SilverLocust hi I must thank you for your good faith.

However, your understanding of Mr. Giannalberto Bendazzi's book is wrong.He says this in his book about the burnt city cup “Many sources refer to this cup and the images on it as the first animation in history for example : An animated piece on an earthen goblet that belongs to 5000 years ago! was found in Burnt City in sistan-Baluchistan province, south-eastern iran. on this ancient piece that can be called the first animation of the world, the artist has portrayed a goat that jumps toward a tree and eats its leaves.... On this goblet, with a diameter of 8 cm and height of 10 cm. the images show movement in an intricate way that is an unprecedented discovery. Some earthenware found in Burnt City show repetitive images, but none of them implicate any movements”^[1]

I think the text you added is about other works of art found in this ancient city. I hope you will take another look at this book and comment again. Thank you Mitrayasna (talk) 16:08, 21 April 2023 (UTC) Mitrayasna Mitrayasna (talk) 16:34, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your response. I believe you inadvertently quoted your own words as part of the book. The first sentence of your quotation is not in the book ("Many sources refer to this cup and the images on it as the first animation in history for example :"). The remainder is a news article that Bendazzi is quoting, but not agreeing with. (Janke (17:59, 20 April 2023) and Coolcaesar (16:51, 21 April 2023) noted this above.) This is what the book says:

A forerunner is just a forerunner. He doesn't – nor does he care to – predict what posterity, with hindsight, will call him.
   Most of the actions, productions, and inventions that took place before the nineteenth century and look like something we now call animation were produced by forerunners. To what we now call animation, they have no cause-and-effect connection. They are purely anecdotic and thus useless to our historical discourse.
   For the sake of completeness, we will look for a few examples from history.
On 30 December 2004, and article called 'First Animation of the World Found in Burnt City, Iran' was published.
   This is the text:

An animated piece on an earthen goblet that belongs to 5000 years ago¹ was found in Burnt City in Sistan-Baluchistan province, south-eastern Iran.
   On this ancient piece that can be called the first animation of the world, the artist has portrayed a goat that jumps toward a tree and eats its leaves. . . . On this goblet, with a diameter of 8 cm and height of 10 cm, the images show movement in an intricate way that is an unprecedented discovery. Some earthenware found in Burnt City show repetitive images, but none of them implicate any movements.²

SilverLocust (talk) 18:10, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
(Edited) SilverLocust (talk) 19:33, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, unfortunately there are serious academic sources that regard this Burnt City cup with pictures of an ibex as the earliest animation. It's interesting to note that these sources were written by historians that haven't studied animation, while it seems like all the sources by experts on animation discard such "forerunners". But even if we disregard the opinions of the experts and go with the opinion of some people from other fields, or want to state both opinions, I still believe this example takes up too much space in an already way too long summary of the Early history of animation and History of animation pages (I just shortened it somewhat before finishing this comment). Also note how this picture and it's long description about whether it is or it isn't animation move the other illustrations of this summary downwards, which were nicely in place next to the relevant sections before this pic was introduced. And, especially, note that this example is already featured on Early history of animation, where it perfectly illustrates what is written there, while it doens't illustrate the text on this page.Joortje1 (talk) 23:01, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]

What are the sources of your claim, which says that all serious sources do not consider this cup to be the first animation or pioneer?

Without a source our claims can only have value to ourselves.

mr Giannalberto Bendazzi, as an animation historian, says that this cup was a pioneer in animation. He says this in his book in 2015. What are your sources in this field? Mitrayasna (talk) 18:18, 13 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Please try to read the comments and the sources more carefully. If you read my comment with the statement "unfortunately there are serious academic sources that regard this Burnt City cup as the earliest animation", how can you interpret that as "all serious sources do not consider this cup to be the first animation or pioneer"?

Now, let's have a look at the actual sources that you claim to value so much. You cite Fotz as saying "this ancient piece that can be called the first animation of the world" and as calling it "an unprecedented discovery". Fotz words actually are: "A goblet was found which, when spun, shows a deer leaping in motion—perhaps the world’s earliest example of animation."([1]) His source? Wikipedia (all he credits is a description of the illustration on wikimedia commons)! The words that you cite can actaully be found on the Iranian website [2]Pars Times, which uses the bogus gif and gives no sources for the statements.

(edit: I seem to have mixed up your citations where you thought you were directly quoting Bendazzi rather than the press statement that he refutes, which confused me into thinking you were referring to your "Oford University researchers" source. Sorry for any further confusion.)

I did point out that the serious academics who support such claims are not experts on animation and the experts on animation tend to discard such forerunners. One of the animation history experts is Bendazzi, who you still seem to think is a good source for your claims. He doesn't say "this cup was a pioneer in animation", but actively opposes that very idea!!! As already pointed out to you, he says such forerunners "are purely anecdotic and thus useless to our historical discourse" because they "have no cause-and-effect connection" to "what we now call animation".

Can you please explain why you think it's so important to have this illustration in this article and why there should be no less than three illustrations on the "Early history of animation"?

I noticed that the ideas about this being an animation often have been forwarded to promote Iranian culture, originally with the bogus gif and lately with an even more ridiculous video impression. Check the video on [3]iranpress : it starts to show how spinning the goblet results in a blur, but then superimposes a slow moving and morphing image of the ibex over it. I think it's great if we can learn more about Iranian culture and believe the region contributed a lot to the civilazation of the world. Unfortunately, I'm not convinced about the Burnt City goblet having much relevance to the history of animation. Although I personally have strong doubts that its five images were intended to depict a sequence, I accept that this interpretation has been cited enough to make it worth mentioning on the "Early history of animation" (just not on the "Animation" page). However, the large picture picture and the modern animation you put there seem a bit superfluous when the picture with the five images already perfectly ilustrated this example, while the other examples have none or just one picture. And, once again, you messed up the careful layout which had the illustrations next to the corresponding lines in the articleJoortje1 (talk) 10:26, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding User:Mitrayasna's recent edit summary saying that "the parties have reached an agreement": I do not think there was ever actual agreement. I did urge everyone to avoid edit warring (when I edited the image's caption because the shorter version is not really supported by the sources). Ultimately, however, I agree with User:Joortje1, User:Janke, User:Coolcaesar that this image should just be removed. User:Mitrayasna disagrees.

The image was added to the article on April 9 by IP 94.176.[...] in Tehran (which I assume was User:Mitrayasna while forgetting to log in).

I suggest that the image be removed from the article for now, while User:Mitrayasna can seek further support (such as via WP:RfC) for including the image, which is currently the position firmly in the minority. SilverLocust (talk) 23:31, 16 May 2023 (UTC) (edited).[reply]

hi SilverLocust: Wikipedia is not a democracy where only the number of people who agree and disagree has value alone. This article that I have added has enough resources and value not to be deleted. None of those who want this photo to be removed have a compelling reason. As long as there is no valid reason, even if the number of opponents reaches 100 people, this photo should not be deleted. The existence of this photo in the article does not cause any harm, and on the contrary, it gives useful information to the reader about the history of animation Before cinematography. --Mitrayasna (talk) 23:29, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Hence my careful phrasing of firmly in the minority and near-consensus against. It may not be a democracy, but every editor has a duty to engage with the views of others, not a prerogative to insist upon implementing one's own view. SilverLocust (talk) 23:44, 16 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Why do they say delete this photo? There is no reason. In Wikipedia, you have to weigh the reasons together. We argue to identify stronger reasons. Mitrayasna (talk) 00:15, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

From the very beginning of the debate, opponents of the photo's existence made many false claims, including that it was first-rate research. I proved them wrong. Or the fair edit you did, they said it was confusing and long, I shortened it. One by one they come up with any excuse they think to delete this photo. All their excuses have failed. Probably their last excuse is that this photo does not belong in this article. But they also know that the place of this photo on this page is in the part before filming Mitrayasna (talk) 00:26, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion of reasons for or against the photo is located above, before this subsection. Here, I am only suggesting that the status quo be restored (per WP:STATUSQUO) while you can continue to discuss, suggest compromises, or seek more input from others (WP:RfC). SilverLocust (talk) 00:53, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

You say you disagree. Why do you disagree? What do you think is the reason for deleting this photo?

All the claims of those who were against the existence of this photo have been false so far. It was said that this claim is a first-class investigation. Or most scientists disagree that this cup is leading, they were all wrong. They had no source for their claim

.

What reason do you have for your opposition?

Mitrayasna (talk) 10:41, 17 May 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Since there already are detailed pages on the history of animation, I think the section on this page should be much shorter. At the moment it is quite a large part of the page, almost every line has a "citation needed" claim, and people are war editing over one picture (which has even received a long description to reflect the different ideas about whether it can be regarded as animation or not, while the Early history of animation page already clarifies the issues surrounding this and other examples).

I personally tend to expand information on pages rather than shorten it, so it might be good if someone else has a go. Joortje1 (talk) 21:49, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]