How Well Do You Know Animation?

Introduction to Animation and Computer-generated Animation

• Animation is the act of making something come alive visually or aesthetically.
• Animation is possible because of the biological phenomenon of persistence of vision and psychological phenomenon of phi.
• Animation can be used for artistic purposes, storytelling, scientific visualization, and instructional purposes.
• Types of animation include 2D, 2.5D, and 3D space.
• Cel animation is a technique that uses progressively different graphics on each frame of movie film, and it begins with keyframes.
• Keyframes are the first and last frames of an action, and the frames in between are drawn in the tweening process.
• Tweening is followed by the pencil test in cel animation.
• Path animation involves the movement of an object along a predetermined path on the screen.
• Computer animation is similar to cel animation but involves electronically generated movement on a computer screen.
• Kinematics is the study of movement and motion of structures with joints, and inverse kinematics is the process of linking objects and defining their relationship and limits.
• File formats used in animation include .dir, .dcr, .fli, .flc, .max, .pics, .fla, .swf, and GIF89a.
• Successful animations require careful and sparing use, superior display platforms and hardware, raw computing horsepower, and file compression for the web. Some animation tools include Macromedia's Flash, Kai's Power Tools' Spheroid Designer, Alias|Wavefront's Maya, and NewTek's Lightwave.