Animation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision. This could be anything from a flip book to a motion picture film.

Winsor McCay created detailed animations that required a team of artists and painstaking attention for detail. Each frame was drawn on paper, requiring backgrounds to be redrawn, as well characters to be animated. His films such as Gertie the Dinosaur (1914).

 Traditional animation

Also called cel animation, the frames of a traditionally animated movie are hand-drawn. The drawings are traced or copied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are then placed over a painted background and photographed one by one on a rostrum camera. Nowadays, the use of cels is mostly obsolete, since the drawings are scanned into computers, and digitally transferred directly to 35 mm film. The "look" of traditional cel animation is still preserved, and the character animator's work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Because of the digital influence over modern cel animation, it is also known as tradigital animation.
Examples: The Lion King.

Full animation

The most common style in animation, known for its realistic and often very detailed art.

Examples: Disney animated films.

Limited animation

A cheaper process of making animated cartoons.

Examples: The Flintstones.

Rubber hose

The characters are usually cartoony, and the animators have a lot of artistic freedom as rubber hose animations don't have to follow the laws of physics and anatomy.

Examples: Mickey Mouse.

Rotoscoping

A technique where animators trace live action movement.

Stop motion

Stop-motion animation is any type of animation which requires the animator to physically alter the scene, shoot a frame, again alter the scene and shoot a frame and so on, to create the animation.

Clay animation

Often abbreviated to claymation, this is a type of stop-motion animation using figures made of clay or a similar malleable material. The figures may have an armature or wire frame inside of them, similar to puppet animation . Alternatively, the figures may be made entirely of clay.

Cutout animation

In this type of stop-motion animation, the animation is formed by moving 2-dimensional pieces of material such as paper or cloth.

Examples: Monty Python's Flying , South Park

Model animation

In this form of animation, model animated characters interact with, and are a part of, the live-action world.

Examples:Ray Harryhausen

Puppet animation

model animation The puppets generally have an armature inside of them to keep them still and steady as well as constraining them to move at particular joints.

Examples: The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Computer animation

Like stop motion, computer animation encompasses a variety of techniques, the unifying idea being that the animation is created digitally on a computer.

2D animation

Figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics. This includes automated computerized versions of traditional animation techniques such as of tweening, morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping.

Examples: Jib Jab

3D animation

Figures are created in the computer using polygons. To allow these meshes to move they are given a digital armature. This process is called rigging. Various other techniques can be applied, such as mathematical functions, simulated fur or hair, effects such as fire and water.

Examples The Incredibles.