Animation
...objects, or people in various positions of incremental movement—that when played back no longer appear individually as static images but combine to produce the illusion of unbroken motion. The term animation applies to creations on film, video, or computers, and even to motion toys, which usually consist of a series of drawings or photographs on paper that are viewed with a mechanical device or by flipping through a hand-held sequence of images (for example, a pad of paper can be used to create an animated flipbook of drawings). The term cartoon is sometimes used to describe short animated works (under ten minutes) that are humorous in nature.
II TECHNIQUES
There are many ways to create animation, depending on whether the materials used are two-dimensional (flat, such as drawings, paintings, or cut-out pieces of paper) or three-dimensional (having volume, such as clay, puppets, household objects, or even people). In each case, an animator must keep in mind the basic principle of frames per second (the number of images needed to produce one second of film). Because sound film runs at 24 frames per second, a film animator must make 24 images for each second of animation that he or she wishes to create. A common timesaving practice is to film animation on twos or on threes, meaning that the animator actually uses one image for two or three frames of film in a row, rather than using each image only once.
A The Production Process
After choosing an idea for a film, an animator must think about a concept in terms of individual actions. For instance, if the animator decides on an action that will take 3 seconds of animation to complete, he or she will have to create images to fill 72 frames of film (3 seconds of movement multiplied by a running speed of 24 frames per second). Filmed on twos, 36 drawings showing progressive changes in the movement will be...
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