What is Animation?

When Eadweard Muybridge began his series of proto-cinematic studies of movement in the late 1870s, he was already drawing upon science of human perception that had been around for at least forty years—albeit in reverse. Muybridge’s work was based on the notion that the movement of objects in space could be broken down into individual photographic frames, but already by the 1830s the zoetrope and phenakistoscope (whose name means “to deceive the viewer”) proved that flat images assembled linearly viewed rapidly in succession could create the illusion of moving objects. While a photographer like Muybridge used this science to study the movement of animals in single moments in time, mathematicians and physicists like Joseph Plateau and George Horner were already using drawing and painting to create small, narrative illusions. This is to suggest that not only is animation an important part of what we now call cinema, one that predates and predicts it, but that it is perhaps even the very ...  more

Animation is a type of optical illusion. It involves the appearance of motion caused by displaying still images one after another. Often, animation is used for entertainment purposes. In addition to its use for entertainment, animation is considered a form of art. It is often displayed and celebrated in film festivals throughout the world. Also used for educational purposes, animation has a place in learning and instructional applications as well. Cartoon animation is often considered to be animation in its classic form. The animated cartoon made its debut in the early part of the 20th century and calls for the use of 24 different drawings per second. In traditional animated cartoons, frames are hand drawn. Animation is both time-consuming and costly to produce. For this reason, most of the animation made for television and film is produced by professorial studios. However, there are also many independent studios. In fact, there are many resources, such as lower-cost animation ...  more

your animation questions answered in this series of videos by a former Disney animator.  more

Animation is a visual technique that provides the illusion of motion by displaying a collection of images in rapid sequence. Each image contains a small change, for example a leg moves slightly, or the wheel of a car turns. When the images are viewed rapidly, your eye fills in the details and the illusion of movement is complete. When used appropriately in your application’s user interface, animation can enhance the user experience while providing a more dynamic look and feel. Moving user interface elements smoothly around the screen, gradually fading them in and out, and creating new custom controls with special visual effects can combine to create a cinematic computing experience for your users.  more