Animation: Turning Fantasy into Reality

Animation is a field which offers endless possibilities for you to explore your creativity. Earlier fantasy stories could be read and understood only through books but now it is possible to see them happening in front of our eyes with the help of animation. Animation technology has made it possible to create characters which look and behave in such a realistic way that it is hard to imagine that they are man made.

Definition

Animation is the display of a sequence of images or cartoons one after another to create an illusion of movement. It is especially useful where live action is not possible. Animation is based upon the principle that our brain visualizes movement when a series of still images are moved at a particular speed in front of our eye. To create this illusion each image differs slightly from the image before it.

History of animation

No single person can be credited with the invention of animation. Several animation devices such as the zoetrope and praxinoscope where in existence as early as the eighteenth century but it was only with the development of the motion picture technology that animation got its real momentum. Disney is considered as the pioneer in the field of motion picture animation. Today animation is heavily dependent on computer technology.

Types of animation

Animation today is used extensively in a variety of medium such as television, motion pictures, video games and the internet. The following are the most common types of animation technologies.

Cel animation also called as traditional animation is the oldest form of animation. A lot of effort is required to create this type of animation and it used to be quite time consuming. But nowadays much of the work is done with the help of computer technology. In this type of animation high levels of drawing skills are required since most of the characters are still drawn by hand. Some examples of cel animation based films are Pinocchio and the animal farm.

Stop motion animation consists of bringing about movement in real world objects and then photographing the different poses one at a time to create an illusion of movement. Some of the popular forms of this type of animation are clay animation and puppet animation.

Computer animation This is the fastest and most popular form of animation today. It is categorized into 2d and 3d animation. The common factor here is that most of the animation work is done on the computer digitally.

2d animation is extensively used in creating two dimensional cartoons. It is also used in creating intros, ad banners and other animations on the web.

3d animation is today the hottest area of animation. 3d animations are very life like and are used in motion pictures and special effects. The demand for skilled 3d animators is extremely huge and will continue to grow in the future.

Scope of animation

Animation provides a very interesting avenue for a creative person to display his skills. There is a huge shortage of skilled people in the animation industry as it is growing at a very fast rate. Animation is considered to be one of the most financially lucrative fields today. Usually the more experienced an animator is the more money he draws. Truly, Sky is the limit for a skilled animator.