Animation

From ArticleWorld

The art of animation involves taking a series of still images and displaying them one after another at speed to create the impression of movement. Animated films include cartoons, claymation and stop motion but primarily the frames used are either hand drawn images, or frames which have been computer generated.

Computer animation

Only a few years ago, the majority of animation was created using hand drawn frames of film. This was time consuming and very labour intensive, meaning that a single 90 minute film took years to create. However, over the last few years computer animation has seen huge advancements and many animated films are now made using this technique. 3D animation is now possible using a computer and this can create characters which look almost life-like. Part of the reason for this is the creation of perspective which is achieved with 3D animation. When it is done in 2D the perspective has to be created by the artists, but 3D objects are represented as such on the computer, allowing it to be viewed, lit and filmed from any angle.

Cartoons

The traditional animated cartoon, such as those made by the most famous animation company in the world, Disney, are perhaps the most labour intensive of all animations. The technique was developed in the 1900s and while it has been refined and modernised somewhat over the years the main principles remain the same. Using this technique requires up to 24 different drawings, each with a slight change from the one before it, to create one second’s worth of animation. As cartoons have moved from the cinema on to the television screen the amount of work involved was not seen to be very practical. As such a new type of animation was developed by UPA but did not gain in popularity until Hanna-Barbera began to use it. This was called limited animation and utilised various shortcuts to reduce the time it took to create a cartoon and also to bring the associated costs down.