Portal:Animation

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Introduction

The bouncing ball animation (below) consists of these six frames.

Animation is a dynamic medium in which images or objects are manipulated to appear as moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Today most animations are made with computer-generated imagery (CGI). Computer animation can be very detailed 3D animation, while 2D computer animation can be used for stylistic reasons, low bandwidth or faster real-time renderings. Other common animation methods apply a stop motion technique to two and three-dimensional objects like paper cutouts, puppets or clay figures. The stop motion technique where live actors are used as a frame-by-frame subject is known as pixilation.

Commonly the effect of animation is achieved by a rapid succession of sequential images that minimally differ from each other. The illusion—as in motion pictures in general—is thought to rely on the phi phenomenon and beta movement, but the exact causes are still uncertain. Analog mechanical animation media that rely on the rapid display of sequential images include the phénakisticope, zoetrope, flip book, praxinoscope and film. Television and video are popular electronic animation media that originally were analog and now operate digitally. For display on the computer, techniques like animated GIF and Flash animation were developed.

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Selected general articles

  • An example of pixels. The image looks smooth when zoomed out, but when a small section is viewed more closely, individual pixels can be distinguished.

    A pixel artist is a graphic designer who specializes in computer art and can refer to a number of artistic and professional disciplines which focus on visual communication and presentation. Similar to chromoluminarism used in the pointillism style of painting, in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors, a pixel artist works with pixels, the smallest piece of information in an image. The technique relies on the perceptive ability of the eye and mind of the viewer to mix the color spots into a fuller range of tones. Pixel art is often utilitarian and anonymous. Pixel design can refer to both the process (designing) by which the communication is created and the products (designs) which are generated.

    Common uses of pixel design include print and broadcast media, web design and games. For example, a product package might include a logo or other artwork, organized text and pure design elements such as shapes and color which unify the piece. Composition is one of the most important features of design especially when utilizing pre-existing materials or using diverse elements. Pixel artists can also be a specialist in computer animation such as Computer Animation Production System users in post production of animated films and rendering (computer graphics) images like raster graphics. Read more...
  • Motion capture (sometimes referred as mo-cap or mocap, for short) is the process of recording the movement of objects or people. It is used in military, entertainment, sports, medical applications, and for validation of computer vision and robotics. In filmmaking and video game development, it refers to recording actions of human actors, and using that information to animate digital character models in 2D or 3D computer animation. When it includes face and fingers or captures subtle expressions, it is often referred to as performance capture. In many fields, motion capture is sometimes called motion tracking, but in filmmaking and games, motion tracking usually refers more to match moving.

    In motion capture sessions, movements of one or more actors are sampled many times per second. Whereas early techniques used images from multiple cameras to calculate 3D positions, often the purpose of motion capture is to record only the movements of the actor, not his or her visual appearance. This animation data is mapped to a 3D model so that the model performs the same actions as the actor. This process may be contrasted with the older technique of rotoscoping, as seen in Ralph Bakshi's The Lord of the Rings (1978) and American Pop (1981). The animated character movements were achieved in these films by tracing over a live-action actor, capturing the actor's motions and movements. To explain, an actor is filmed performing an action, and then the recorded film is projected onto an animation table frame-by-frame. Animators trace the live-action footage onto animation cels, capturing the actor's outline and motions frame-by-frame, and then they fill in the traced outlines with the animated character. The completed animation cels are then photographed frame-by-frame, exactly matching the movements and actions of the live-action footage. The end result of which is that the animated character replicates exactly the live-action movements of the actor. However, this process takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Read more...
  • The history of Russian animation is the film art produced by Russian animation makers. As most of Russia's production of animation for cinema and television were created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to some extent as the history of Soviet animation. It remains a nearly unexplored field in film theory and history outside Russia. Read more...
  • The history of Brazilian animation is relatively recent. In the first half of the 20th century, there were some small experiments produced in animation without much continuity, to the emergence of several animated films in the other half of the century. The 21st century saw the advent of many animated series for television. Read more...
  • This is a list of films with live action and animation, films that combine live action and animated elements, typically interacting. Read more...
  • The history of animation in the United Kingdom began at the very origins of the artform in the late 19th century. British animation has been strengthened by an influx of émigrés to the UK, renowned animators such as Lotte Reiniger (Germany), John Halas (Hungary), George Dunning and Richard Williams (Canada), Terry Gilliam and Tim Burton (USA) have all worked in the UK at various stages of their careers. Notable full-length animated features to be produced in the UK include Animal Farm (1954), Yellow Submarine (1968), Watership Down (1978), and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). Read more...
  • The history of Chinese animation began in the 20th century in the Republic of China when the people became fascinated with the idea of animation. A lengthy history interlocks between the art, politics and the ever-changing economy. Chinese animation has long been under the shadow of Disney and Japanese animations, but it once played a very important role in world animation. Read more...
  • Mickey Mousing occurred with forms of the Villain's Theme, such as with steps synchronized with the notes About this sound Play (help·info)


    In animation and film, "Mickey Mousing" (synchronized, mirrored, or parallel scoring) is a film technique that syncs the accompanying music with the actions on screen. "Matching movement to music," or, "The exact segmentation of the music analogue to the picture." The term comes from the early and mid-production Walt Disney films, where the music almost completely works to mimic the animated motions of the characters. Mickey Mousing may use music to "reinforce an action by mimicking its rhythm exactly....Frequently used in the 1930s and 1940s, especially by Max Steiner, it is somewhat out of favor today, at least in serious films, because of overuse. However, it can still be effective if used imaginatively". Mickey Mousing and synchronicity help structure the viewing experience, to indicate how much events should impact the viewer, and to provide information not present on screen. The technique, "enable[s] the music to be seen to 'participate' in the action and for it to be quickly and formatively interpreted...and [to] also intensify the experience of the scene for the spectator." Mickey Mousing may also create unintentional humor, and be used in parody or self-reference.

    It is often not the music that is synced to the animated action, but the other way around. This is especially so when the music is a classical or other well-known piece. In such cases, the music for the animation is pre-recorded, and an animator will have an exposure sheet with the beats marked on it, frame by frame, and can time the movements accordingly. In the 1940 film Fantasia, the musical piece The Sorcerer's Apprentice, composed in the 1890s, contains a fragment that is used to accompany the actions of Mickey himself. At one point Mickey, as the apprentice, seizes an axe and chops an enchanted broom to pieces so that it will stop carrying water to a pit. The visual action is synchronized exactly to crashing chords in the music. Read more...
  • A normal shader (left) and a NPR shader using cel-shading (right)

    Non-photorealistic rendering (NPR) is an area of computer graphics that focuses on enabling a wide variety of expressive styles for digital art. In contrast to traditional computer graphics, which has focused on photorealism, NPR is inspired by artistic styles such as painting, drawing, technical illustration, and animated cartoons. NPR has appeared in movies and video games in the form of "toon shading", as well as in scientific visualization, architectural illustration and experimental animation. An example of a modern use of this method is that of cel-shaded animation. Read more...
  • An animation studio is a company producing animated media. The broadest such companies conceive of products to produce, own the physical equipment for production, employ operators for that equipment, and hold a major stake in the sales or rentals of the media produced. They also own rights over merchandising and creative rights for characters created/held by the company, much like authors holding copyrights. In some early cases, they also held patent rights over methods of animation used in certain studios that were used for boosting productivity. Overall, they are business concerns and can function as such in legal terms.

    Currently there are about 201 animation studios dedicated to the production and distribution of animated films that are active. Few are actual production houses where as others are corporate entities. Many of these animation studios help with the fulfillment of animation works for big brand names and have carried out outsourced projects including Nemo. Read more...
  • The Indian animation industry encompasses traditional 2D animation, 3D animation and visual effects for feature films.
    In 1956, Disney Studios animator Clair Weeks, who had worked on Bambi, was invited to Films Division of India in Mumbai to establish and train the country's first animation studio as part of the American technical co-operation mission. He trained a core group of Indian animators, whose first production was a film called The Banyan Deer (1957). Veteran animator Ram Mohan started his career at Films Division's Cartoon Unit.

    Another landmark animated film from Films Division is Ek Anek Aur Ekta, a short traditionally animated educational film released in 1974. The film is presented as a fable meant to teach children the value of unity, and was frequently broadcast on India's state-run television station, Doordarshan. The first Indian animated television series was Ghayab Aaya, which aired in 1986 and was directed by Suddhasattwa Basu. The first Indian 3D and VFX were done for the television series Captain Vyom by animation. Read more...
  • The following lists of animation studios presents current and former organizations similar to artists studios but principally dedicated to the production and distribution of animated films. Such studios may be actual production facilities or corporate entities. The countries with the most listed, active studios, are Japan, United States, Canada, United Kingdom and South Korea, but studios are found across all continents. Read more...
  • The following is a list of the highest-grossing live-action/animated films, films that combine live action and animation characters. Read more...
  • Virtual cinematography is the set of cinematographic techniques performed in a computer graphics environment. This includes a wide variety of subjects like photographing real objects, often with stereo or multi-camera setup, for the purpose of recreating them as three-dimensional objects and algorithms for automated creation of real and simulated camera angles.

    Virtual cinematography allows among other things physically impossible camera movements, in example the so-called bullet time scenes in The Matrix films, the flow-motion camera movements in David Fincher films, the camera runs and the crowd simulations as can be seen in The Lord of the Rings and the airport terminal that doesn't exist looking very real and existing in the Pan Am that aired in 2011–2012. Read more...
  • Crowd simulation is the process of simulating the movement (or dynamics) of a large number of entities or characters. It is commonly used to create virtual scenes for visual media like films and video games, and is also used in crisis training, architecture and urban planning, and evacuation simulation.

    Crowd simulation may focus on aspects that target different applications. For realistic and fast rendering of a crowd for visual media or virtual cinematography, reduction of the complexity of the 3D scene and image-based rendering are used, while variations in appearance help present a realistic population. Read more...
  • The history of French animation is one of the longest in the world, as France has created some of the earliest animated films dating back to the late 19th century, and invented many of the foundational technologies of early animation.

    The first pictured movie was from Frenchman Émile Reynaud, who created the praxinoscope, an advanced successor to the zoetrope that could project animated films up to 16 frames long, and films of about 500~600 pictures, projected on its own Théâtre Optique at Musée Grévin in Paris, France, on 28 October 1892. Read more...
  • Syncro-Vox (sometimes spelled Synchro-Vox) is a filming method which combines static images with moving images, the most common use of which is to superimpose talking lips on a photograph of a celebrity or a cartoon drawing. It is one of the most extreme examples of the cost-cutting strategy of limited animation. The method was developed by cameraman Edwin "Ted" Gillette in the 1950s in order to simulate talking animals in television commercials. Gillette filed the technique on February 4, 1952, and obtained patent #2,739,505 on March 27, 1956.

    Because animating a mouth in synchronization with sound was difficult, Syncro-Vox was soon used as a cheap animation technique, such as in the cartoons produced by Cambria Studios: Clutch Cargo, Space Angel, and Captain Fathom, in which actors' lips voicing the scripted dialogue were laid over the animated figures. Read more...
  • In this example from the open source project Sintel, four facial expressions have been defined as deformations of the face geometry. The mouth is then animated by morphing between these deformations. Dozens of similar controllers are used to animate the rest of the face.

    Morph target animation, per-vertex animation, shape interpolation, shape keys, or blend shapes is a method of 3D computer animation used together with techniques such as skeletal animation. In a morph target animation, a "deformed" version of a mesh is stored as a series of vertex positions. In each key frame of an animation, the vertices are then interpolated between these stored positions. Read more...
  • This is a list of animated short films. The list is organized by decade and year, and then alphabetically. The list includes theatrical, television, and direct-to-video films with less than 40 minutes runtime. For a list of films with over 40 minutes of runtime, see List of animated feature films. Read more...
  • W3C SVG Logo
    W3C's SVG logo

    Animation of Scalable Vector Graphics, an open XML-based standard vector graphics format, is possible through various means:
    Libraries have also been written as a shim to give current SVG-enabled browsers SMIL support. This method is also known as SVG+Time.

    Because SVG supports PNG and JPEG raster images, it can be used to animate such images as an alternative to APNG and MNG. Read more...
  • 1886 illustration of the kineograph


    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. Read more...
  • The following films are all animated films that cost over $150 million to create,masepoes dis baie. 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2016 are the most represented years with 3 films each.

    Pixar is the most represented st. Cars is the most represented franchise with all three main films on the list. Read more...
  • Rubber hose animation was the first animation style that became standardized in the American animation industry. The defining feature of the style is "rubber hose limbs"—arms, and sometimes legs, that are typically simple, flowing curves, without articulation (no hinged wrists or elbows). Read more...
  • The history of Iranian animation, which began in its modern form in the mid 20th century in Iran, can also be traced back to the Bronze Age. Read more...
  • The history of Canadian animation involves a considerable element of the realities of a country neighbouring the United States and both competitiveness and co-operation cross-border. Read more...
  • Outsourcing of animation has become widespread. Many entertainment giants such as The Walt Disney Company and IMAX are beginning to outsource an increasing amount of their animation production to Asian countries, particularly India, while other companies are outsourcing animation from India for commercials and computer games. A factor making India an outsourcing destination for animation films is its vast base of English speaking workforce. Animation, which requires understanding of the English language in order to lip-sync the animated media to the audio dialogue, benefits from this particular talent that the Indian workforce possesses. A number of animation companies in the country are also creating skilled manpower for the animation market through various training programs.

    Overall though, the main reason why foreign entertainment firms are flocking to India is the cost advantage the country offers. As an example, American animators can cost about $125 an hour; in India, they cost $25 an hour. The total cost for making a full-length animated film in America is estimated to be $100 million to $175 million. In India, it can be made for $15 million to $25 million. Studios in India are also able to provide a large supply of low-cost, high-quality software engineers, even going so far as to establish studios outfitted with state-of-the-art hardware and software to carry out production overseas. Read more...
  • Independent animation is animated short cartoons and feature films produced outside the professional Hollywood animation industry. A good portion of the work is viewed in animation festivals and private screen rooms along with schools that produce animation through instruction. The significance of independent animation is as important as studio fare. Read more...
  • Traditional hand puppets

    A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. The puppeteer uses movements of their hands, arms, or control devices such as rods or strings to move the body, head, limbs, and in some cases the mouth and eyes of the puppet. The puppeteer often speaks in the voice of the character of the puppet, and then synchronizes the movements of the puppet's mouth with this spoken part. The actions, gestures and spoken parts acted out by the puppeteer with the puppet are typically used in storytelling. Puppetry is a very ancient form of theatre which dates back to the 5th century BC in Ancient Greece. There are many different varieties of puppets, and they are made from a wide range of materials, depending on their form and intended use. They range from very simple in construction and operation to very complex.

    Two simple types of puppets are the finger puppet, which is a tiny puppet that fits onto a single finger, and the sock puppet, which is formed and operated by inserting one's hand inside a sock, with the opening and closing of the hand simulating the movement of the puppet's "mouth." The sock puppet is a type of hand puppet, which is controlled using one hand that occupies the interior of the puppet and moves the puppet around. A "live-hand puppet" is similar to a hand puppet but is larger and requires two puppeteers for each puppet. A Marionette is a much more complicated type of puppet that is suspended and controlled by a number of strings connected to the head, back and limbs, plus sometimes a central rod attached to a control bar held from above by the puppeteer. Read more...
  • The history of anime can be traced back to the start of the 20th century, with the earliest verifiable films dating from 1917.

    The first generation of animators in the late 1910s included Ōten Shimokawa, Jun'ichi Kōuchi and Seitaro Kitayama, commonly referred to as the "fathers" of anime. Propaganda films, such as Momotarō no Umiwashi (1943) and Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei (1945), the latter being the first anime feature film, were made during World War II. During the 1970s, anime developed further, with the inspiration of Disney animators, separating itself from its Western roots, and developing distinct genres such as mecha and its super robot subgenre. Typical shows from this period include Astro Boy, Lupin III and Mazinger Z. During this period several filmmakers became famous, especially Hayao Miyazaki and Mamoru Oshii. Read more...
  • Character animation is a specialized area of the animation process, which involves bringing animated characters to life. The role of a Character Animator is analogous to that of a film or stage actor, and character animators are often said to be "actors with a pencil" (or a mouse). Character animators breathe life in their characters, creating the illusion of thought, emotion and personality. Character animation is often distinguished from creature animation, which involves bringing photo-realistic animals and creatures to life. Read more...
  • The following is a list of lost or unfinished animated films. Read more...
  • Czech animation has been a tradition for almost 100 years. Czech animators are considered pioneers in film animation. It began in 1920s and its "Golden Era" dates between 1950s and 1980s. Czech animators include Jiří Trnka, Karel Zeman, Břetislav Pojar, Jan Švankmajer or Jiří Barta. Czech animators have employed Cutout animation, Puppet animation and Clay animation. 3D animation is seldom used due to lack of finances and trained 3D animators. This led to downturn in the years after 1989.

    There are opinions that Czech animated films undergo "revival." It is result of a new Generation of animators. Many of these young animators are still students. Creation of animated films is supported by some Czech universities such as Film and TV School of the Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague or University of West Bohemia. Read more...
  • PowerPoint animation is a form of animation which uses Microsoft PowerPoint and similar programs to create a game or movie. The artwork is generally created using PowerPoint's AutoShape features, and then animated slide-by-slide or by using Custom Animation. These animations can then be shared by transferring the PowerPoint file they were created in, and can be viewed with PowerPoint or Microsoft's free PowerPoint Viewer. Read more...
  • A dancer's movements, captured via optical motion capture can be stored in an animation database, then analyzed and reused.

    An animation database is a database which stores fragments of animations or human movements and which can be accessed, analyzed and queried to develop and assemble new animations. Given that the manual generation of a large amount of animation can be time consuming and expensive, an animation database can assist users in building animations by using existing components, and sharing animation fragments.

    Early examples of animation databases include the system MOVE which used an object oriented database. Modern animation databases can be populated via the extraction of skeletal animations from motion capture data. Read more...
  • Machinima (/məˈʃiːnɪmə, -ˈʃɪn-/) is the use of real-time computer graphics engines to create a cinematic production. Most often, video games are used to generate the computer animation.

    Machinima-based artists, sometimes called machinimists or machinimators, are often fan laborers, by virtue of their re-use of copyrighted materials (see below). Machinima offers to provide an archive of gaming performance and access to the look and feel of software and hardware that may already have become unavailable or even obsolete; for game studies, "Machinima’s gestures grant access to gaming’s historical conditions of possibility and how machinima offers links to a comparative horizon that informs, changes, and fully participates in videogame culture." Read more...
  • An animated series is a set of animated works with a common series title, usually related to one another. These episodes should typically share the same main characters, some different secondary characters and a basic theme. Series can have either a finite number of episodes like a miniseries, a definite end, or be open-ended, without a predetermined number of episodes. They can be broadcast on television, shown in movie theatres, released direct-to-video or on the internet. Like animated films, animated series can be of a wide variety of genres and can also have different target audiences, from children to adults. Read more...

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