Teach Me Animation!
What is animation?
Animation is very much derived from moving pictures in the 19 century. In the past, humans produced photos to capture live images for records of life events, beautiful sceneries, human portraits and more. However these images are still, i.e. Not moving.
To make an image look as if it is alive or moving, a sequence of images was taken on an object while it is in action. When human eyes view these images one after another at the same spot continuously, our eyes perceive these images as if are moving. Animation is hence emerged from moving pictures.
In short, animation is the process of creating a sequence of images, such that when they are viewing through one particular space continuously, at a certain fast speed, the images will be perceived as moving.
In our current era, we are no longer restricted to creating animation with photos. 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 usage which allows communication visually with the viewing audience. Viewing an object or person in motion would give more details, behavior or personality about the subject.
A typical logo might look flat and still. When we create an animation to view the logo at a different angle and perspective, it would turn out to be more interesting. Objects that are viewed in a three dimensional world provides depth and volume, thus they look more realistic and appealing.
Product visualization makes use of animation to communicate their ideas. It might be tough to imagine how an object would operate or transform just by looking at the initial design plan. Having a mock up animation on the object's transformation would help designer to see exactly how things work.
User interfaces that we see on web browsers, computer games contains many animations too. Taking a simple hyperlink button for example, when the user moves their mouse over it, it will change to another color. That is the simplest form of animation. There are websites with their buttons very nicely designed with animation, allowing aesthetic appeal to the users when they interact with them. The animation in this instance serves as visual feedbacks.
In the cartoon series, the whole cartoon is produced in animation! There are more elements in the cartoon other than animation, but having the whole story done with animation would allow the writer to be as creative as he wants the story to be!
There is definitely more use of the animation 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.
1. Cost of visualizing a product might get expensive and costly to build with physical materials. Having the product created with animation would cut down the cost drastically. This allows revision of the design until it is fixed before prototyping.
2. Visual impossibilities are another main use of creating animation. Things that we imagine might be very creative and not necessarily available or logical in our world. Therefore only using current animation technology to create such visualization would be possible to actualize the concept. Movies uses visual effects with realistic animation to create impossible ideas, some movie examples are Harry Porter, Avatar, Transformers and more.
3. Last but not the least, creating animation is fun! Sometimes it is just pure fun to create something and animate it to act comically for entertainment.
Animation is very much derived from moving pictures in the 19 century. In the past, humans produced photos to capture live images for records of life events, beautiful sceneries, human portraits and more. However these images are still, i.e. Not moving.
To make an image look as if it is alive or moving, a sequence of images was taken on an object while it is in action. When human eyes view these images one after another at the same spot continuously, our eyes perceive these images as if are moving. Animation is hence emerged from moving pictures.
In short, animation is the process of creating a sequence of images, such that when they are viewing through one particular space continuously, at a certain fast speed, the images will be perceived as moving.
In our current era, we are no longer restricted to creating animation with photos. 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 usage which allows communication visually with the viewing audience. Viewing an object or person in motion would give more details, behavior or personality about the subject.
A typical logo might look flat and still. When we create an animation to view the logo at a different angle and perspective, it would turn out to be more interesting. Objects that are viewed in a three dimensional world provides depth and volume, thus they look more realistic and appealing.
Product visualization makes use of animation to communicate their ideas. It might be tough to imagine how an object would operate or transform just by looking at the initial design plan. Having a mock up animation on the object's transformation would help designer to see exactly how things work.
User interfaces that we see on web browsers, computer games contains many animations too. Taking a simple hyperlink button for example, when the user moves their mouse over it, it will change to another color. That is the simplest form of animation. There are websites with their buttons very nicely designed with animation, allowing aesthetic appeal to the users when they interact with them. The animation in this instance serves as visual feedbacks.
In the cartoon series, the whole cartoon is produced in animation! There are more elements in the cartoon other than animation, but having the whole story done with animation would allow the writer to be as creative as he wants the story to be!
There is definitely more use of the animation 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.
1. Cost of visualizing a product might get expensive and costly to build with physical materials. Having the product created with animation would cut down the cost drastically. This allows revision of the design until it is fixed before prototyping.
2. Visual impossibilities are another main use of creating animation. Things that we imagine might be very creative and not necessarily available or logical in our world. Therefore only using current animation technology to create such visualization would be possible to actualize the concept. Movies uses visual effects with realistic animation to create impossible ideas, some movie examples are Harry Porter, Avatar, Transformers and more.
3. Last but not the least, creating animation is fun! Sometimes it is just pure fun to create something and animate it to act comically for entertainment.
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