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Definition of Animation
The technique of photographing successive drawings or positions of puppets
or models to create an illusion of movement when the film is shown as a sequence.
Type of Animation
Animation can be classified into Flipbook Animation, Stop Motion Animation,

Flipbook Animation

A flip book or flick book is a book with a series of pictures that vary
gradually from one page to the next, so that when the pages are turned rapidly, the
pictures appear to animate by simulating motion or some other change. Flip books
are often illustrated books for children, but may also be geared towards adults and
employ a series of photographs rather than drawings. Flip books are not always
separate books, but may appear as an added feature in ordinary books or
magazines, often in the page corners. Software packages and websites are also
available that convert digital video files into custom-made flip books.
Flip books are essentially a primitive form of animation. Like motion pictures,
they rely on persistence of vision to create the illusion that continuous motion is
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being seen rather than a series of discontinuous images being exchanged in
succession. Rather than "reading" left to right, a viewer simply stares at the same
location of the pictures in the flip book as the pages turn. The book must also be
flipped with enough speed for the illusion to work, so the standard way to "read" a flip
book is to hold the book with one hand and flip through its pages with the thumb of
the other hand. The German word for flip bookDaumenkino, literally "thumb
cinema"reflects this process.
Stop Motion Animation
Stop motion (also known as stop frame) is an animation technique to make a
physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in
small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of
movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence. Dolls with
movable joints or clay figures are often used in stop motion for their ease of
repositioning. Stop motion animation using plasticine is called clay animation or
"clay-mation". Not all stop motion requires figures or models; many stop motion films
can involve using humans, household appliances and other things for comedic
effect. Stop motion using objects is sometimes referred to as object animation.
The term "stop motion", related to the animation technique, is often spelled
with a hyphen, "stop-motion". Both orthographical variants, with and without the
hyphen, are correct, but the hyphenated one has, in addition, a second meaning, not
related to animation or cinema: "a device for automatically stopping a machine or
engine when something has gone wrong" (The New Shorter Oxford English
Dictionary, 1993 edition).
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Stop motion is often confused with the time lapse technique, where still
photographs of a live surrounding are taken at regular intervals and combined into a
continuous film. Time lapse is a technique whereby the frequency at which film
frames are captured is much lower than that used to view the sequence. When
played at normal speed, time appears to be moving faster and thus lapsing.

Clay Animation

Clay animation or claymation is one of many forms of stop motion animation.
Each animated piece, either character or background, is "deformable"made of a
malleable substance, usually Plasticine clay.
Traditional animation, from cel animation to stop motion, is produced by
recording each frame, or still picture, on film or digital media and then playing the
recorded frames back in rapid succession before the viewer. These and other
moving images, from zoetrope to films tovideogames, create the illusion of motion by
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playing back at over ten to twelve frames per second. The techniques involved in
creating CGIare conversely generally removed from a frame-by-frame process.

Each object or character is sculpted from clay or other such similarly pliable material
as Plasticine, usually around a wire skeleton called an armature, and then arranged on the
set, where it is photographed once before being slightly moved by hand to prepare it for the
next shot, and so on until the animator has achieved the desired amount of film. Upon
playback, the human mind of the viewer perceives the series of slightly changing, rapidly
succeeding images as motion.
A consistent shooting environment is needed to maintain the illusion
of continuity: objects must be consistently placed and lit, and work must proceed in a
calm environment.
A subvariation of clay animation can be informally called "clay melting".
[2]
Any
kind of heat source can be applied on or near (or below) clay to cause it to melt while
an animation camera on a time-lapse setting slowly films the process. For example,
consider Vinton's early short clay-animated film "Closed Mondays" (coproduced by
animator Bob Gardiner) at the end of the computer sequence. A similar technique
was used in the climax scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark to "melt" the faces of the
antagonists.




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Puppetoon

Puppetoon animation is a type of replacement animation, which is itself a type
of stop-motion animation. In traditional stop-motion, the puppets are made with
movable parts which are repositioned between frames to create the illusion of motion
when the frames are played in rapid sequence. In puppetoon animation the puppets
are rigid and static pieces; each is typically used in a single frame and then switched
with a separate, near-duplicate puppet for the next frame. Thus puppetoon animation
requires many separate figures. It is thus more analogous in a certain sense to cel
animation than is traditional stop-motion: the characters are created from scratch for
each frame (though in cel animation the creation process is simpler since the
characters are drawn and painted, not sculpted) including the African-American
character Jasper.
The style and the term "Puppetoons" were invented by George Pal.

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Traditional Animation

Traditional animation, (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn
animation) is an animation technique where each frame isdrawn by hand. The
technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until the advent
of computer animation.
Even though animation was conceived as early as 1824 by Peter Roget, the
very first actual methods of animation were made possible by a device called a
zoetrope. The zoetrope was a spinning cylinder with open slits that would allow
viewing of certain still images in a certain sequence. Someone viewing a zoetrope at
a particular angle could see images that appeared to be moving.
After Edison and the invention of motion pictures in 1889, film director Emile
Cohl combined more than 700 still drawings, which were then each meticulously
photographed individually. When Cohl combined all of the shots together, the
drawings appeared to be moving on the film, "Fantasmagorie," which was released
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in 1908. Other animated films soon followed like "Gertie the Dinosaur" and "Felix the
Cat," both released around 1920.

First, a storyboard is created showing a quick sketch of the general idea and
direction of the cartoon or animated feature. Next, the dialog is recorded before the
actual animators create the final inked cartoons on pieces of clear celluloid acetate,
or cels. After inking, animators paint in the color on the opposite side of the cel and
finally combine all the cels to be photographed, using a special film motion picture
camera.
Cel animation allows animators to repeat certain frames, eliminating the need
to draw each individual frame over and over in a sequence of animation.
Backgrounds and fixed objects may be included in every background cel while other
cels are removed and replaced over and over to simulate movement by animated
characters.
For example, if there are two characters in a scene and only one character is
moving in this scene, an animator would draw character A on a clear piece of film
called a cel. Then, using another second cel, the animator will draw character B. As
character A is jumping up and down in a sequence of moves, a new cel is created for
each movement. These cels are then combined and shot on a special film camera in
a logical sequence that makes character A look like he's jumping up and down, while
character B remains unmoving.
The animator can just leave the first cel attached to the base plate which
contains the unmoving character B while placing and removing the cel containing
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character A's movement sequence. When each subsequent cel containing character
A's movements is placed on the plate, a special camera takes a quick shot of both
characters that appear together. These quick shots are combined later to simulate
movement, or animation.
Computer Animation

Computer animation, or CGI animation, is the process used for generating animated
images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer-generated
imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images while computer
animation only refers to moving images.
Modern computer animation usually uses 3D computer graphics,
although 2D computer graphics are still used for stylistic, low bandwidth, and
faster real-time renderings. Sometimes, the target of the animation is the computer
itself, but sometimes the target is another medium, such as film.
Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques
used in traditional animation with 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D
illustrations. Computer-generated animations are more controllable than other more
physically based processes, such as constructing miniatures for effects shots or
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hiring extras for crowd scenes, and because it allows the creation of images that
would not be feasible using any other technology. It can also allow a single graphic
artist to produce such content without the use of actors, expensive set pieces,
or props.
To create the illusion of movement, an image is displayed on the computer
monitor and repeatedly replaced by a new image that is similar to it, but advanced
slightly in time (usually at a rate of 24 or 30 frames/second). This technique is
identical to how the illusion of movement is achieved with televisionand motion
pictures.
For 3D animations, objects (models) are built on the computer monitor
(modeled) and 3D figures are rigged with a virtual skeleton. For 2D figure
animations, separate objects (illustrations) and separate transparent layers are used
with or without a virtual skeleton. Then the limbs, eyes, mouth, clothes, etc. of the
figure are moved by the animator on key frames. The differences in appearance
between key frames are automatically calculated by the computer in a process
known as tweening or morphing. Finally, the animation isrendered.
For 3D animations, all frames must be rendered after the modeling is
complete. For 2D vector animations, the rendering process is the key frame
illustration process, while tweened frames are rendered as needed. For pre-recorded
presentations, the rendered frames are transferred to a different format or medium,
such as film or digital video. The frames may also be rendered in real time as they
are presented to the end-user audience. Low bandwidth animations transmitted via
the internet (e.g. 2D Flash, X3D) often use software on the end-users computer to
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render in real time as an alternative to streaming or pre-loaded high bandwidth
animations.
2D Animation


2D animation figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap
graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics. This includes automated
computerized versions of traditional animation techniques such
as interpolated morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping. 2D animation
has many applications, including analog computer animation,Flash
animation and PowerPoint animation. Cinemagraphs are still photographs in the
form of an animated GIF file of which part is animated.


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2D Terms
Final line advection animation, a technique that gives the artists and
animators a lot more influence and control over the final product as everything
is done within the same department:
In Paperman, we didnt have a cloth department and we didnt have a hair
department. Here, folds in the fabric, hair silhouettes and the like come from of the
committed design decision-making that comes with the 2D drawn process. Our
animators can change things, actually erase away the CG underlayer if they want,
and change the profile of the arm. And they can design all the fabric in that Milt
Kahl kind-of way, if they want to.
3D Animation

3D animation is digitally modeled and manipulated by an animator. The
animator usually starts by creating a 3D polygon mesh to manipulate. A mesh
typically includes many vertices that are connected by edges and faces, to give the
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visual appearance of form to a 3D object or 3D environment. Sometimes, the mesh
is given an internal digital skeletal structure called an armature that can be used to
control the mesh by weighting the vertices. This process is called rigging and can be
used in conjunction with keyframes to create movement.
Other techniques can be applied, such as mathematical functions (e.g.,
gravity, particle simulations), simulated fur or hair, and effects such as fire and water
simulations. These techniques fall under the category of 3D dynamics.
3D Terms
Cel-shaded animation is used to mimic traditional animation using CG
software. Shading looks stark, with less blending of colors. Examples
include, Skyland (2007, France),Appleseed Ex Machina (2007, Japan), The
Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker (2002, Japan)
Machinima Films created by screen capturing in video games and virtual
worlds.
Motion capture is used when live-action actors wear special suits that allow
computers to copy their movements into CG characters. Examples
include Polar Express (2004, US), Beowulf (2007, US), A Christmas
Carol (2009, US), The Adventures of Tintin (2011, US)
Photo-realistic animation is used primarily for animation that attempts to
resemble real life, using advanced rendering that mimics in detail skin, plants,
water, fire, clouds, etc. Examples include Up (2009, US), Kung-Fu
Panda (2008, US), Ice Age (2002, US).

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