Disney’s innovations in animation

As Disney and its stock price struggles with streaming, Reuters looks at how Disney overcame previous challenges in its 100-year history. One of the first challenges was making animation that was believable:

He obsessed over quality and poured money into producing cartoons that would resonate with his audience. He wrote that observing the real world was key and animation must have, “a foundation of fact, in order that it may more richly possess sincerity.”

The studio formalized 12 principles of animation which transformed static sketches into lively characters on a screen. Veteran animators taught the principles to each of the new artists who joined the studio to ensure consistency.

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John Snow’s cholera map, an animated version

Sarah Bell made an animated version of John Snow’s classic map from 1854.

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Changing Fed projections

This clever chart by Lazaro Gamio shows changing interest rates set by the Fed and changing projections. The animation makes it.

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World water gap

We tend to use more water than is available in the world, which as you can imagine, can be problematic. In a collaborative effort, National Geographic mapped the water gap since 1980:

The result is a water gap in an increasing number of places. Humans are using more water than the water cycle can provide, and so we deplete shallow aquifers, and may need to tap into deep ones that will not be renewed in our lifetime. In the process we threaten not only our own health, peace, and well-being, but also the health of ecosystems and wildlife.

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History of wars and power in Europe, animated from 1500 to present

Agar.io is a multiplayer game where people control cells in a Petri dish-type environment. The animation above used the same visual metaphor to show power and war in Europe, from 1500 to 2022. Circles represent countries, and they split and collide with time.

See also the history of America and East Asia in the same style.

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Animated charts to show sports results

Krisztina Szűcs likes to make animated charts to show sports results, from fencing, handball, soccer, to hockey. She cataloged all of her sports charts in one place. I’m partial to the triangle timelines, which play well to sports with back and forth scores.

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How long it takes a ball to drop on various Solar System bodies

James O’Donoghue made this straightforward animation that shows how long it takes for a ball to drop one kilometer on different planets:

It might be surprising to see large planets have a pull comparable to smaller ones at the surface, for example Uranus pulls the ball down slower than at Earth! Why? Because the low average density of Uranus puts the surface far away from the majority of the mass. Similarly, Mars is nearly twice the mass of Mercury, but you can see the surface gravity is actually the same… this indicates that Mercury is much denser than Mars.

Okay, sure, but what’s heavier on Mars: a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks? [via kottke]

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Pandemic timeline as animated dot density map

As a lead-in and backdrop to a timeline of the past year by The Washington Post, an animated dot density map represents Covid-19 deaths. “Every point of light is a life lost to coronavirus.”

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Waves of distraction

I’ve been distracted lately, so instead of making regular charts, I’ve been making animated GIFs using various visual encodings. It hits the sweet spot of producing something without having to access the part of my brain for longer thinking sessions.

Tunnels:

Round and round:

Needles of uncertainty made certain:

I hope this brings some calm and predictability to your day.

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Two.js for two-dimensional drawing and animation in modern web browsers

“Two.js is deeply inspired by flat motion graphics. As a result, two.js aims to make the creation and animation of flat shapes easier and more concise.” It also renders in webgl, canvas2d, and svg, with not much change in your code. Two.js is definitely going on my list of things to try.

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