Understanding Animation !!!

What is Animation ..??

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of artwork or model positions that creates an illusion of movements. Animation was the process used for majority of the animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are nothing but photographs of drawings, which are first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the previous one. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings.

Animation is mainly divided into 2D animation and 3D animation. In 2D most of the studios are using Flash software only. Traditional animation is used by very few people. In 3D most animators use the Maya & 3DS Max software.

The traditional cel animation process has become obsolete in the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects. The final animated piece is the output of several delivery mediums.

Some animation producers have used the term "tradigital" to describe cel animation which makes extensive use of computer technology. Several early disney films used cel frame animation.

Types Of Animation:

Stop motion animation
Stop-motion animation is used to describe animation created by physically manipulated real-world objects and photographing them on frame of the film at a time to create the illusion of movement. There are several types of stop-motion animation, usually named after the type of media used to create the animation.

Clay animation
Often abbreviated as claymation, uses figures made of clay or a similar malleable material to create stop-motion animation. The figures may have an armature or wire frame inside them, similar to the related puppet animation.

Puppet animation
Typically involves stop-motion puppet figures interacting with each other in a constructed environment, in contrast to the real-world interaction used in model animation. The puppets generally have an armature inside them to keep them still and steady as well as constraining them to move at particular joints.

Computer animation
Like stop motion, computer animation encompasses a variety of soft 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 graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics. In 2D we can see only height and width, we can't see depth in 2d animation.

3D animation
Digital models manipulated by an animator. In order to manipulate a mesh, it is given a digital armature . This process is called rigging. For this there are several softwares but most popular and widely used among them are Maya & 3D Studio Max. The third dimension, depth is also visible here.