Communication Technology

Animation

Animation is the process of giving the illusion of movement or life to cinematographic drawings, models or inanimate objects. Animation has been around for a long time. The main technique, until recently, has been cel animation. This technique was perfected by Walt Disney. The intorduction of computer based animation tools has brought new techniques. Most of these are built around a computerized technique evolved from the cel animation technique for tweening (in-betweening)

In the modern day, the most common form of animations are cartoons, which are drawn figures which appear to come alive fropm the use of motion and voice. There are many types of animations. One form of animations is cel amnimation, which is recently evolved from computer animation.

The picture (above) is an example of animation. Of course it's a still images but really it is just a cel from an anmition t.v. show called Dragon Ball Z

Cel animation was created and started by Walt Disney and was tradionally images drawn and colored on transparent images called acetate, or a type opf papaer called onion skin. Cel animation involves many techniques needing plenty of frames-per-second leading to about 1800 cels per minute of video animation

Morphing is another form of animation. It is a computer based technique which transforms 1 image to another in a series of stages. When morphing is used for animation, the secuence of events is much like cel animation. The many of the animations are created by computer software.

Animation is usually performed in stages:

The story line is developed
This is followed by a story board
Key frame
In between frames are designed
Cels are drawn
Backgrounds are created
Filming or videotaping

Here is an example of computer animation in work:

Animation Sites

Some sites that use or are animation based are:

YTV
Stick Death
The Simpsons
FOX Kids
Shock Wave