Computer Animation - A Brief Guide

Animation actually refers to any kind of animated graphic, not just the 3D animations. Animation has historically been produced in two ways. The first is by artists creating a succession of cartoon animations frames, which are then combined into a film. A second method is using physical models, such as in King Kong. The model is positioned, the image is recorded, then the model is moved, the next image is recorded, and the process continues. At times a simple rendering machine is used to produce successive frames to create animations, where the image is slightly changed in each one. It is hard to believe that it all started as basic cartoon figures in a book and flipping the pages over.

The major part of computer animation, or actually of all types of animation, is motion control. Early systems did not have the type of computational power it takes for animation preview and interactive control to create animations. Also, many of the early animators were computer scientists rather than artists, thus scripting systems were developed, meaning the animator wrote a script, or program to control the animation.

In the early days of animations cartoons, expert animators such as Walt Disney, would design (choreograph) an animation by drawing certain intermediate frames called keyframes. Then the other, less experienced animators would draw the in-between frames. The sequence of steps to produce a full design computer animation would include developing a story (or script), and laying it out on what is known as a storyboard. This is a sequence of drawings showing the form, structure and story of the animation. Once a detailed layout of the action scenes is produced, it is correlated with a soundtrack. They would then transfer the frames to sheets of acetate film, called "cels". The cels were then assembled into a sequence and filmed.

Many people assume that when you refer to computer animation you are talking about 3D animations. However, if you use applications such as PowerPoint, you are normally creating a project using 2D animations. Using a computer to create 2D animations is a faster method of creating the type of animations that would have normally been hand-painted on cels. 3D animation, however, is an area where the computer shows clear superiority over hand-drawn animation. Not to mention the fact that it is impossible to produce by hand all of the tens of thousands of drawings needed for an animated film.

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