Animation Means Many Things to Many People

Animation is defined as the rapid display of a sequence of images in order to create an illusion of movement. There are several techniques used in animation, namely traditional animation, stop motion animation, and computer animation.

 

Many people when they hear the term animation they automatically think of cartoons, yet if they are on the computer at all then they have most likely been exposed to animation. This does not mean they have been watching cartoons when they were suppose to be working. Animation is not just restricted to cartoons. Nor is there just one type of animation. 

Nowadays, computer animation seems to be the way to go whether it be for a motion picture, video program or any other means of presenting animation. Computer animation covers a plethora of techniques, with the unifying factor being that it is digitally created on a computer. There are two kinds of computer animation, namely 2D and 3D animation.

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, interpolated morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping. 2D animation has many applications, including analog computer animation, Flash animation and PowerPoint animation. Cinemagraphs are still photographs in the form of an animated GIF file of which part is animated.

3D animation is digitally modeled and manipulated by an animator. The animator starts by creating an external 3D mesh to manipulate. A mesh is a geometric configuration that gives the visual appearance of form to a 3D object or 3D environment. The mesh may have many vertices which are the geometric points which make up the mesh; it is given an internal digital skeletal structure called an armature that can be used to control the mesh with weights. This process is called rigging and can be programmed with movement with keyframes.