Styles of animation

Animation has traditionally been either hand drawn or made from physical models.

Hand Drawn Animation

Ub Iwerks drew the first Mickey Mouse cartoons for Walt Disney. In Steam Boat Willy you can see the extensive use of stretch and squash animation techniques, that is where inanimate objects become alive. Look out for the  funnels on the boat and how Mickey's neck stretches out of shape.

I have used stretch and squash in a recent animation produced for REACT in Bristol. The drawings were

Model Animation

Ladislas Starevich was a Russian animator notable for producing the first puppet films which he created out of dead insects.

Svankmajer

Bruce Bickford produced these plasticine model animation for Frank Zappa's babysnakes/

Cut Out Animation

Terry Gilliam used a cut up collage technique to produce the animations for Monty Python. 

Bob Godfrey's Do-It-Yourself Animation Show: Terry Gilliam  demonstrates how he produces his animation using cut out and glass to kep the shapes flat. Of course this is much easier to do in photoshop or animate. Gilliam went on to direct films such as Time Bandits (1981) and Brazil (1984)

Vector

Han Hoogerbruge made a series of animations in flash for his website http://ml.hoogerbrugge.com/. Flash has evolved into animate which can be used to create the same hard edged animation.

Animated loops

Revolver from Jonas Odell on Vimeo.

Abstract