Types of animation
In this Veera Web Apadana article, we mention different types of animations from animation techniques and styles. Animation is the process of creating the illusion of movement and shape change by rapidly displaying a sequence of static images that are minimally different from each other. Animations are ubiquitous, including your favorite TV commercials, music videos, feature films, series, educational films, industrial films, documentaries, and even films where you can see stop motion animation. Animation techniques include conventional traditional animation and stop motion animation techniques of 2D and 3D figures, for example, paper set patterns, dolls, and clay figures. Keeping stop motion as the foundation of all animation, a variety of styles of animation techniques can be used to create animated sequences.
Traditional two-dimensional animation
Traditional animation was the drawings that were drawn by the artist on paper. If you love drawing on paper, the traditional approach is very appealing. Traditional animation is creating one-by-one drawings on the frame. Two-dimensional animation consists of creating multiple maps and then feeding in plastic cells, hand painting them and creating a moving sequence on the painted background image. From this model of animations, you can refer to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs cartoons, Peter Pan and Sleeping Beauty, Aladdin and… Cited.
One of the most popular two-dimensional animations is Cinderella, which has been broadcast many times on Iranian TV. This animation, which was made in 1950 by the Walt Disney Company, was included in the list of the top ten animations in the world. This charming 72-minute animation cost 2.9 million dollars, which was able to set a great record for itself with the extraordinary sale of more than 263 million dollars. This animation was directed by Clyde Geronimi, Hamilton Lusk and Wilfred Jackson and it was produced by Walt Disney.
The famous Mickey Mouse animation was created using the 2D animation technique. The first 2D animation was called Fantasmagorie, a cartoon short film created by Emile Cohl. Filmed entirely in black and white, the cartoon is all about a simple stickman in live action.
This cartoon is 75 seconds long and was drawn to make about 700 different drawings. This historical animation was published in 1908. Other popular 2D animations include 1960s cartoons such as The Jetsons and The Flintstones.
Two-dimensional digital animation is another type of animation. Creating two-dimensional animation with the help of digital technologies is known as two-dimensional digital animation. You don’t need to create digital models, you just need to draw the frames. Design and animate (order to animate) them to create a type of motion technically known as 2D digital animation. Using software such as Flash, Adobe, etc., animators can limit the number of drawings used, which allows them to create 2D digital animation. Small changes like changing color or frame rate can be changed almost instantly, thus making the animators’ job easier.
If you are interested in turning unrealistic characters into a realistic one, the best animation model is 3D animation. Digital 3D animation characters are much faster to create and are quite popular in the filmmaking industry. Using computer software, 3D animated images are used to create many short films, feature films, series, educational films, documentaries, music videos, and promotional teasers, compared to 2D animation. Digital and traditional, 3D animation models are very realistic.
The best and the first 3D animation that was made is the Toy Story animation, which was made by the good director of this field, John Lester. The producers of this fascinating 3D animation are Bonnie Arnold, Ralph Guggenheim and the author of this work is the director John Lester.
The music was composed by Randy Newman and the painstaking editing was done by Robert Gordon and Lee Unkrich. This animation was made by Pixar and it was able to sell 373 million dollars with a cost of 30 million dollars for its production, which is unique in its kind. The film was first released on the silver screens in the United States on November 22, 1995. So far, 4 versions of this 3D animation have been made. And its version has been in the list of top 10 animations in the world. In the summary of the first part of this animation, it is stated that Andy is a 6-year-old boy who loves his toys very much, among all his toys, he loves Luke the cowboy the most and even wrote his name on the sole of his shoe, but With the arrival of the space toy baselighter, everything changes for Luke the cowboy and…
What kind of animation is called stop motion animation?
Stop motion animation is another type of animation. Have you ever wondered if a piece of rock could walk or talk, well anything is possible in animation? Using frames as animation, static physical objects are moved around and shown in fluid motion during post-production. Stop motion animation has been around since the evolution of puppets. Many films have been made using stop motion, some of the best
Examples are “Entertainment in a Bakery” made in 1902. Edwin Porter directed “Teddy Bears”, which was one of the first stop-motion animation films. The film is a short sequence of the Teddy Bears game, over a minute long, which took 50 hours of work.
Audio and automatic animation
Walt Disney was the inventor of this model. They created the trademark electronic sound animation featured in Disney’s theme parks. Otto is a robot that can easily sense a person in a room, have a conversation with them, and can also be happy or not. Autonomic technology is different from Audio-Animatronic technology. Electronic sound and animation technology repeats a pre-programmed program once again. Automated electronic technology is driven by advanced cameras and sensors that give Auto choices about what they say and do.
Instead of robotics, machines can be animated using mechanical animation techniques. Instead of creating the actual device, creating these mechanical animations allows the animator to understand how the device works. It is very easy to explain the operation of these machines using this type of animation technique.
What is Chakimation?
Chuckimation is one of the popular animation techniques developed by “Action League Now!” has been created. It is a combination of frame animations and live shots where the characters are placed in a specific frame. It has similarities with famous puppet shows.
Puppet animation
In puppet animation, puppets are created instead of objects. The movie “Humpty Dumpty Circus” (1908), which was made by James Stewart Blackton and Albert Smith, is considered as the first animated film produced and a puppet show. Today, puppet animation is mostly used in children’s cartoons and films. An example of puppet animation used in cinema is in the movie King Kong (1933).Nightmare Before Christmas (1993) is an American musical fantasy horror film directed by Henry Selick. This film has been used and also 400 heads have been used to make it possible to express any emotion.
Clay animation or Claymation
If you like to play with clay, this is one of the best stop motion shapes in Claymation. In this Claymation, pieces of clay are molded to create characters and a story is told based on the animator’s imagination. Oil and water based clays are available. Sometimes clays are molded into free forms or filled with a wire-like structure called armature. Animated characters are kept in a set and with only short movements, the whole scene is like a movie.
What is a zoetrope?
The zoetrope is an animation model that was invented in the 19th century as people experimented with methods for creating motion graphics and moving images. Invented in 1834 by William George Horner, it is one of the first forms of animation. Some of the images are still drawn on the drum and give the illusion of movement when rotated in a circle. The visual effect created by a zoetrope is still used today to create animated GIFs.
Cut-out animation
Cut-Out animation is probably one of the oldest forms of stop motion animation in the history of animation. The first cut animation was made by LotteReiniger in 1926 and was called “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”. Accurate paper drawings were used to convey a beautiful story. In this method, paper cutouts move under the camera lens to tell a story. Since the evolution of the computer, it has been much easier to introduce computer cut images into the queue.
In typography it’s all about letters and animation is anything that moves. In animation, typography is widely used in the title section of a movie. If you love faces and fonts, you should check out Bart Forrest’s stop-motion typographic animation called “Atlantic Ocean.” Using software like Fontlab, it’s easy to create new types of fonts.
Sand animation
In this method, you will have to get your hands dirty with sand. A clear glass table is used as a canvas and the animator creates animation by moving the sand in certain directions. Yes, you guessed right, animators have to constantly clear their creativity to create another scene. The entire process is filmed and then merged during production to show the animation of the sand. Even if the animation takes hours to complete, the final creation will truly blow your mind.
In Iran, this animation has been welcomed by the people after the new evening program. Since Fatemeh Ebadi, the ascetic artist of our country, was able to win the votes of the majority of the viewers of this program with her attractive sand paintings and win the title of the first person of this program.
painting on glass
This technique uses slow-drying paintings on a glass canvas, allowing the animator to manipulate the art and photograph them at the same time. Sometimes turpentine is used in the drawings, which makes the work of the animator easier to work on the drawings. It is a difficult and laborious task where you have to paint on the glass, take pictures and then create another scene
The footage, which is then mixed in post-production, should provide an animated version of the painting.
Animation drawn on film
Drawn-on-film animation dates back to 1916, but most animations from that period are lost. This technique involves scratching, either directly on a roll of exposed film or in a dark room, creating shadows that are permanently embedded in the film by creating changes in light. Sometimes animators can just stick a reel of black film on a workbench and poke holes in them, or stick to almost anything on the reel. This animation was one of the earliest forms of animation technique and probably one of the cheapest as you only need a roll of film, etching tools and a projector.
Erasable animation
Erasure animation uses 2D animation for motion graphics. Many popular films such as Clear Coal have been made using this technique and one of the famous animators in this field is William Kentrix. Photography and animation to create a smooth movement in the animation film should be done in every change.
Experimental animation
Experimental animation is the art of combining two or more drawings or illogical art to create an animated scene. Various types of animated drawings are introduced at odd points that are not completely unrelated to each other. Therefore, randomly introduced drawings create a different frame in the animation process. Some animators have used a magnifying glass to create an animation and several frames have been recorded.
What is pin screen animation?
A page tricked by thousands of silent pins is used to create a pin page animation. Alexander Alekseev and Claire Parker invented the pin screen animation method in the 1930s. The duo used a pin board to create Night on Bald Mountain. When the pins are scratched, the plate is illuminated from one side, which casts shadows, deepening the shadow based on the depth of the pin. Night was the first animated film to use a pinboard, a 3 x 4 foot rectangle containing about 240,000 pins that move laterally to create different shadows.
Notebook animation
Before the invention of the computer, notebook animation was fashionable. Artists would create these notebook animations by carrying a small book and drawing a series of pictures, with a slight change in the pictures. That’s why when this book flips quickly, you can see the series of images with fluid movement, the animators are trying to show an attractive scene. Flipbook animation is one of the oldest but attractive animations. In our beloved country of Iran, in the past, this model of animation was very popular among children and even adults, and even art has its own fans.
