1) WHAT IS ANIMATION?

Definition of Animation

'To animate' literally means to give life to. Animating is moving something that cannot move on it's own. Animation adds to graphics the dimensions of time, which tremendously increase the potential of transmitting the desired information. In order to animate something the animator has to be able to specify directly or indirectly how the 'thing' has to move through time and space.

http://www.developingwebs.net/flash/images/hurdle2.gif

http://www.developingwebs.net/flash/frameXframeanimation.php

Traditional Methods

As is evident from the history, animators have used and invented a variety of different animation techniques. Traditionally most of the animation was done by hand. All the frames in an animation had to be drawn by hand. Since each second of animation requires 24 frames (film), the amount of work required to create even the shortest of movies, can be tremendous.

http://media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lyv57h9VvL1qa6tny.jpg

http://www.slideshare.net/HarryArnold/frame-rate-200213

Key Frames

In this technique a storyboard is laid out and then the artists draw the major frames of the animation. These major frames are in which a lot of changes take place. They are the key points of animation. Later a bunch of artists draw in the frames in between. This technique is, of course, very time and effort intensive.

http://www.3dmax-tutorials.com/graphics/il_animation_traditional-2.jpg

Cel Animation

In this technique each character is drawn on a separate piece of opaque paper. Then, at the time of shooting animation the different characters are overlaid on top of the background in each frame. This is relatively a less tedious process, as the artists do not have to draw in entire frames but just the parts that need to change such as individual character.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsA8IY3uDv_C2mz0Bji-XVDDjmwU8Ul-OFHj1DoS-5THqACNlxAdbLcFpUldQTkymdX3FH4XYcV3DFFPQLNJmaiz73OHBPC0iVhVdeKC5qPo5N5smfqEjtp80gVwEpl9U_Am_z64rK9HT5/s1600/Animation_cells.png

http://burnleyandpendlenews.blogspot.com/2011/01/web-animation-for-interactive-media.html

Rotoscoping

Rotoscoping is a technique where images are copied from a moving video into an animation. The animator draws the motion and shape of the object by referring to the video as opposed to imagining in his head. With the help of the rotascoping one can animate some complex scenes that would be hard to visualize otherwise. The disadvantage is that one will have to hunt for the exact video that one wants to animate.

http://takenoticemagazine.co.uk/rotoscoping-the-underrated-technique/

2) Computer Animation

With time the technique of animation has become more and more computer -assisted and computer- generated. All of such techniques require a trade-off between the level of control that the animator has over the finer details of the motion and the amount of work that the computer does on its own. Broadly, the computer animation falls into three basic categories: keyframing, motion capture, and simulation.

Keyframing

The significance of the term "Keyframing" can be traced back to traditional hand animation technique. Keyframing requires that the animator specify critical or key positions for the objects. The computer then automatically fills in the missing frames by smoothly interpolating between those positions. The characters for a movie called Toy Story made in 1995 were designed through key frame animation. It's believed that each character had as many as 700 controls. Keyframing requires that the animator has a well thought out plan of how the moving objects are going to behave over time as well as the talent to express that information through keyframed information. The continued popularity of keyframing is a function of the degree of control that it allows the animator to exercise over the subtle details of the motion.

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjbYwp7o4ODndJBciRWcmG39zSXmS3M54HPhgec3eADd-LR9sVCszHM0SdjEU7vqQQ61xsNoWKdJhutToMEBStWTyquHXHJmt-ZI8EqtEVMEI6yVm21WLfqicePyQ3nQDBY1fgV2PRULI/s400/Pixar+Post+-+Toy+Story+of+Terror+Concept+Art+Progression.jpg

http://www.pixarpost.com/2013/10/toy-story-of-terror-concept-art-follows.html

Motion Capture

Another technique is Motion Capture, in which magnetic or vision-based sensors record the actions of a human or animal object in three dimensions. A computer then uses these data to animate the object. This technology has enabled a number of famous athletes to supply the actions for characters in sports video games. Motion capture is pretty popular with the animators mainly because some of the commonplace human actions can be captured with relative ease. However, there can be serious discrepancies between the shapes or dimensions of the subject and the graphical character and this may lead to problems of exact execution.

http://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/Avatar-mo-cap-21.jpg

Simulation

Unlike key framing and motion picture, simulation uses the laws of physics to generate motion of figures and other objects. Virtual humans are usually represented as a collection of rigid body parts. These models though physically plausible are only an approximation of the human body. With more research and complex models the simulations are becoming increasingly life like. Simulations can be easily used to produce slightly different sequences while maintaining physical realism while in other animations like key framing or motion capture a mere speeding up or slowing down the playback can spoil the naturalness of motion. Secondly real-time simulations allow a higher degree of interactivity where the real person can maneuver the actions of the simulated character. In contrast the applications based on keyframing and motion select and modify motions form a precomputed library of motions. One drawback that simulation suffers from is the expertise and time required to handcraft the appropriate controls systems.