What is Animation?

2D Animation3D Animation

What is animation?

Animation is derived from moving pictures in the 19 century. In the past, people produce photographs to capture life images, events, beautiful scenes, human portraits and more. However these images are stationary.


A sequence of images of an object were captured while it is in motion. When human eyes view these images one after continuously, our eyes perceive these objects in the images as if moving. Animation is hence emerged from moving pictures.

With our current technology, we are no longer constrain to creating animation with photographs. Animations can be created by drawing on papers, 2D animation softwares such as Adobe Flash, or 3D animation softwares such as 3D Studio Max or Maya.

What is the use of animation?

Animation has many visualization purpose which allows excellent visual communication. Viewing an object or person in motion provides more details, behavior or personality about the subject.

A typical 2D logo might look flat and still. By animating the logo at a different angle and perspective, the logo would turn out to be more interesting. Objects that are viewed in 3D space contains depth and volume, thus they look more realistic and appealing.

Product visualization make use of motions to communicate their ideas. It might be tough to imagine how a machine would operate or transform just by looking at the blueprint. Creating an animation video showing the object's movement would help designers to see exactly how it works.

User interface that we see on web browsers or computer games contains many animations too. Taking a simple hyper link button for example, when user move their mouse over it, it will change to another color. That is a simple form of interactive animation however it is not visually appealing. That is why many website design their buttons with animation to spice up the flavor. Animated button creates a better aesthetic appeal to the users when they interact with them. Animation in this instance serves as visual feedbacks.

In cartoon series, the whole cartoon is animated! Animation allows the writer to bring forth their imagination on big screens vividly. There are definitely more use in creating animated projects and I'm only sharing a tiny part of it.

 

Why do we use animation?

We use animation for a number of reasons to value add when we are producing an idea.

We animate videos for a number of reasons when we are producing an idea.

1. The cost of visualizing a product can very expensive using moulding machines. Having the product created with animation would cut down the cost drastically. Since digital design is editable, this allows revision of the design until it is fixed before prototyping.

2. Creating creative concept is another main use of animation. Movies uses visual effects with realistic animation to create impossible ideas. Some movie examples are Harry Porter, Avatar, Transformers and etc.

3. Lastly, creating animation is fun! Sometimes it is just pure fun to design a character and animate him comically for entertainment.

Check out various animation that you can learn to create!