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In this article:
- What is animation
- History of animation
- Animation Techniques
What is Animation
Animation is the optical illusion of motion created by the consecutive display of images of static elements. It may also refer to the techniques by which each frame of a film or movie is produced individually. These frames can be generated by computers, or by photographing a drawn or by a painted image, or by repeatedly making small changes to a model unit and then photographing the result with a special animation camera. When the frames are put together and the resulting film is viewed (that is, each frame is played one after the another in quick sucession), there is an illusion of continuous movement due to the phenomenon which is called persistence of vision under which the mind is not able to remove the previous picture as percepted by the eye and replaces it with the new one. Making of such films is a very labour intensive, tedious and long process.
Today, animation is typically done either partially or completely using computers. Graphics file formats like GIF, MNG, SVG and Flash (SWF) allow animation to be viewed on a computer or over the Internet.
History of Animation
Throughout history, animation has been used typically for entertainment purposes. In the modern day world, however, animation is also used for of instructional purposes. An example maybe taken in this regard of the use of three-dimensional animation by lecturers in classes to explain some key points of building design to architecture students.
The classical form of animation developed and prospered in the 1900s which was later added to by Ub Iwerks, Walt Disney and others. This type of animation was hand-made and required up to 24 distinct drawings for one second of such animation. Animation movies for TVs as well as cinemas usually come from large production houses or animation studios owing to its characteristic property of being a time-consuming and costly process. Independent artists still exist and several of them eventually joined one or the other animation studios. Bill Plympton is one of the most well-known independent animators today. Today, inexpensive animation programs like Macromedia Flash among others are significant in creation and production of well-detailed animations. This combined with the free distribution channels including the Internet makes it easier for independent artists to be seen far and wide by millions of people.
Limited animation is another way of animation that increases production and decreases the costs of animation by using "short cuts" in the animation process. Originally pioneered by UPA and made famous by Hanna-Barbera, this method went on to be adapted by other studios as cartoons moved from movie theaters to television.
Popular animation studios that include Pixar, produce animation movies that earn in millions when released.
Animation Techniques
Traditional animation needed each frame to be painted and then filmed one by one. The changed by Bray and Hurd who developed Cel animation in the 1910s. It boosted the process of animation by using transparent overlays such that characters could be moved without requiring repainting the background for each and every frame. Today, a plethora of styles of animation that are based on painting and drawing have come to the front. These include the minimalist Simpsons cartoons and the roughly sketched The Snowman.
Today, computer animation has advanced rapidly and is becoming the norm in the industry. Originally, all cartoons were 2D or two-dimensional. This means that the effect of perspective was created artistically. Computer animation has made it possible to make 3D animations where objects are modeled in internal 3D representations and then 'lit' and 'shot' from chosen angles. After this, they are 'rendered' to a 2D bitmapped frame. The advantage of 3D animations is that it provides a sense of depth which makes the animated objects look closer to real-life.
Computer animation involves modelling, motion generation, followed by the addition of surfaces, and finally rendering. Computers are capable of producing complete movies or part of them as can be seen in the movie Iceage and Iceage 2 (completely made with computers) and Spirit (made with some help from computers).
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