Varieties of animation

Animation work

2D animation

Traditional animation is the oldest and most popular, historically form of animation. In the earlier forms of animation each frame was drawn by hand. Voice recording for  is usually done before the animation, almost all American animation is now pre-synced, whereas nearly all Japanese cartoons (anime in particular) is always post synced.

The most famous animated films are courtesy of Disney; in 1994 Disney was voted the 13^th best out of 50 greatest cartoons, the film chosen was the renowned ‘Steamboat Willie’ 1928, which was the first Disney film to have synchronized sound.

A useful form of traditional animation is the process of ‘Rotoscoping’-  this is a technique that essentially is tracing over a live action footage to animate. This technique does make the animating process considerably easier and quicker, it also creates lifelike movement.

Stop motion

Also known as frame by frame, this style of animation is making a physically manipulated object appear to move on it’s own. The object is moved only slightly between photographed frames, this creates the illusion on movement.

The first stop animation ‘The Humpty Dumpty Circus’ 1898- created by Albert Smith and J.Stuart Blackton. The film consisted of a toy circus of acrobats coming to life.

Another style of stop animation is Clay animation, which is stop motion with play-doh. The most famous for this kind of animation is Aardman, their iconic films being ‘Wallace and Gromit’ films and the character ‘Morph’.

Other types of stop animation consist of:

Cutout: eg, Terry Gilliam’s ‘Monty Pythons Flying circus’, South park.

Model animation: eg, Jason and the Argonauts, Clash of the titans.

Object animation: Animated movements that aren’t fully maleble. Eg, toys, dolls. ; Another form of object animation is using people, called ‘Pixelation animation’