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Introduction to Animation

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Overview

What Is Animation? Frame-by-Frame Animation Motion Tweens Key Terms

– Frame– Claymation– Persistence of Vision– Key Frame– Tween– Vector Image– Stream

Underlined terms are terms you should know

What is Animation?

Animation is a type of optical illusion. It involves the appearance of motion caused by displaying still images one after another.– Play: Flipbook Animation - Goku vs Superman

A cartoon animation is made up of lots of single pictures. In fact, every movie or TV show you watch works this way. When someone shows you a series of still pictures one after another, your mind fills in the gaps and you are tricked into thinking that the cartoon characters are actually moving (persistence of vision).

What is Animation?

Frame - contains an individual picture In traditional animated cartoons, frames are hand

drawn. Ex: Flipbook Animation - Goku vs Superman

When animation is used for films, frames are individually produced using computers or photographs of images.

Frames can also be generated by altering a model unit in small ways and using a special camera to take pictures of the results, as in claymation.

No matter what method is used, the end product fools the eye into seeing continuous movement.

What is Animation?

The term persistence of vision is used to describe the reason the eyes can be fooled into seeing continuous movement that isn't really happening.

Basically, the brain stores the images the eyes see for a fraction of a second and automatically smooths out any minor jumps or blips that occur. Since animation frames are shot at very fast rates, most individuals see the movement without stoppages.

What is Animation?

Animation is created by the use of consecutive frames, done in a gradual progression of steps, that simulate motion. By doing this, the eye can be fooled into perceiving motion when the images are shown at 12 fps (frames per second) or faster.

Two main types of animation: frame-by-frame and tweening.

Frame By Frame Animation

Frame-By-Frame Animation is a technique in which each frame or cell varies slightly from the one before in order to convey motion when the frames are photographed by a special camera. When these images are played back the final product shows each frame in rapid succession, thereby mimicking movement, so it’s important to make sure each cell lines up carefully with the others when shooting, or else the final product will appear jittery or jumpy.

Clay puppets are commonly used when filming frame-by-frame animation because their movements can be easily manipulated between frames with minimal risk of damage to the puppet itself (claymation).– Ex: Breakdance Claymation.flv

Motion Tweens

In-betweening or tweening is the process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image evolves smoothly into the second image.

In-betweens are the drawings between the keyframes which help to create the illusion of motion.

Key Terms Frame

– Individual pictures used to create motion pictures and animation

Claymation– When a model clay character is altered in small

ways and photographed using a special camera. Creating pictures that are made into frames.

Persistence of Vision– Persistence of Vision is the term used for an illusion

of movement created by the brain when viewing still pictures

Frame-by-Frame– Animation technique in which each frame is drawn

individually

Key Terms Tweening

– Tweening (short for in between-ing) is the process of generating frames between keyframes to create the illusion of motion

Key Frame– A picture or drawing that defines the beginning

and ending points of any smooth transition Vector Image

– A scalable, resolution independent image created by using mathematical points on a graph

Streaming– A continuous display of images

Summary What Is Animation? Frame-by-Frame Animation Motion Tweens Key Terms

– Frame– Claymation– Persistence of Vision– Key Frame– Tween– Vector Image– Stream