what is animation ?

 Animation is a process of creating an illusion of movement by displaying static images in a sequence. It breathes life into imaginary characters.

The term Animation is derived from the Latin word anima, which means to give life or to give soul.

 It is a form of art that is celebrated in the world. wide film festivals. In animation movies every single frame is produced individually by using computer generated images or photographs of hand drawn or edited images.

 Whatever be the method the end product always baffles our eyes. Persistent vision makes animation movies appear smooth and continuous to the human eyes as the minor breaks are overlooked by the already stored images in the human brain. However this theory of persistent vision is still a myth and not a proven fact.

It is gaining popularity in the world of entertainment and multimedia.

 Apart from being a source of entertainment animation is also an educational tool. Information can be presented in a much more interesting through show way animations. animated no. can texts, charts and even the movement of electrons, which cannot be recorded by video.

 Though creating animation movies is a laborious task, the advent of computers has made it much faster and less tedious.

 Whatever be the technological advancement, skilled animators are still required to generate the life-like images.



Animation works on the theory of  Persistence of vision.



 According to this theory, images appear smooth and continuous to the human eye and minor breaks are overlooked by already stored images in the human brain.

 In animated films, each image is placed frame-by-frame. When 2D, CG, or 3D frames are captured by a camera, compiled, and projected at a speed of 16 frames or faster per second, an illusion of movement is created. For several years, this illusion was described as the persistence of vision.

It is believed that minor breaks that appear when images are moved in succession are ignored by the already stored images in the human brain. However, in 1828, Paul Roget, a Frenchman described this belief to be a defect of the eye.



History of Animation

Egyptian Pharaoh Rameses Il built a temple to goddess Isis, which had columns with sequential images of the goddess.
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Peter Mark Roget invented the Thaumatrope cardboard disc with picture on each side. When the strings were twirled quickly between the fingers the pictures appeared OMI to combine into a single image.



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The Phenakistoscope invented by Belgian Joseph Plateau and the Austrian Simon von. This device had two discS mounted on a shaft. The front disc had slits all around its edges and the rear disc displayed a sequence of drawings. When the drawings were aligned with the slits and the disks were revolved, it created an illusion of movement.
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Zoetrope was invented in the United States of America in 1867 and was sold as toy. It was a long strip of paper with a sequence of drawings inserted into a cylinder that had slits on it. On spinning the cylinder and looking through the slits the drawings appeared to move.
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Kineograph (moving picture) was the name, under which the first flip book was patented by John Barnes Linnett in September, 1868. The Flip book comprised sheets of drawings that were bound like a book along one edge. On flipping the pages, it produced an illusion of movement.

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A Frenchman Emile Reynaud devised the Praxinoscope in 1877. The Praxinoscope consists of an inner circle of mirrors, placed such that the reflections of the pictures appeared more or less stationary in position as the wheel turned. Someone looking in the mirrors would therefore see a rapid succession of images producing an illusion of motion.



Need for Animation

 The advent of computers in animation has led to a rising popularity of video games and also increased the use of computer animations in films and advertising.

 This has not only helped in increasing the job growth but also helped in creating a fulfilling and challenging career in computer animation.

 The animation industry not only offers creative jobs, but also technology based jobs, that include designing games, digital ink and paint and scanning.

 Most of the Hollywood movies use digital technology to create unbelievable and complex digital effects.

 Currently, along with entertainment, animations are also used in other industries that have online advertising or Websites.

 After lapse of a few years, the global entertainment and animation industry has suddenly expanded. The sudden boom of the animation industry has not only seen an increase in the number of skilled resources, and in revenue, but also in the average number of shots developed per film.

 The use of modern technologies in animation and advancement of special effects allow animators to create images that look realistic. However, the basic skill of imagination and creativity is still a pre- requisite for developing any animation.

 Traditional animation Techniques

 Traditional animation Techniques, known as CEL animation or classical animation is the oldest and most popular form of animation.

 The word 'cel' came from the concept of celluloid layers wherein the active elements of the background are created by the animators once and the subjects are moved in the foreground instead of redrawing all the elements for each frame. Each frame in this animation is hand drawn and traced onto transparent acetate sheets called cels. The drawings are then photographed one by one onto rostrum camera along with a painted background.

 Traditional animation requires lot of effort as it involves breaking each gesture into its constituent parts and then drawing them carefully. Though, the use of a static background makes the process easier.

 Traditional animation using computers, makes it easier as incremental changes can be done on the elements by copying and pasting them into the subsequent frames. The in-between movements also can be done by use of a technique called tweening. You can also specify the path along which you want your object to move on the screen and the rest of the entire movement happens automatically.

Types of Traditional Animation 

Traditional Full Animation Traditional full animation produces high- quality films. It uses detailed drawings and plausible movements.
 Examples: The Sceret of NIMH and The Iron Giant

 Traditional Limited Animation 

Traditional limited animation produces animated cartoons. It reuses common parts between frames.
 Examples: The Flintstones and The Yellow Submarine

 Rotoscoping Animation 
Rotoscopy animation includes tracing of live-action film movement frame-by-frame. Examples: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Gulliver's Travels 


Different types of animation 

Cutout Animation 

• Characters in this type of animation are made using two-dimensional materials such as, paper or cloth.
• include Examples Gilliam's Terry animated Monty Circus, sequences fo Flying Fantastic Planet, Tale of Tales, and pilot episode of Python's South Park.

Clay Animation

• lay animation is also known as Claymation.
• Characters are made up of clay or similar material.
• Some characters may contain an armature within them that helps in manipulating the movements and creating different poses.
• Examples of clay animation are Morph, Wallace and Gromit, Jan Svankmajer's Dimensions of Dialog, The Amazing Mr. Bickford, The Trap Door, and Chicken Run.

Model Animation

• This type of animation includes real life characters and animated characters that communicate with the real world.
• Examples for this kind of animation include the films of Ray Harryhausen (Jason and the Argonauts) and Willis O'Brien (King Kong).

Puppet Animation

• This animation uses stop motion puppets. 
• Puppets interact with each other in constructed environment. They usually consist of an armature within.
• The armature holds the puppets still and steady and also restricts their movements at particular joints. 
• Examples for this animation are The Tale ofthe Fox, Robot Chicken, and Kooky.

Animation Techniques In Stop Motion animation, an animator manually captures an image of the object and recaptures it after moving the abject. when this process is repeated for a number of times and played in sequence, an illusion of movement is formed, resulting in an animation.

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