Canfi N. - Animation Techniques

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List of Animation Techniques

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I've listed here the major animation techniques used today.

Each is listed with an example that you can look up.

Some of them, especially in the StopMotion section, are

general terms, and have as many sub-techniques as there are

imaginative people.

GIF animation of clouds

2D Animation Techniques

Classic, hand drawn animation - Disney's Lion King.

Cut outs - Monty Python (see also in stop motion and in 3D. This technique

crosses all barriers!)

Rotoscope - Waking Life

Flip book - Keith Haring has made some famous ones.

Computer Assisted Animation (2D)

This term refers to all types of animation that use a computer somewhere in the

process.

One could argue that this means ALL ANIMATION today.

Mostly we use it to describe the tools that have come to replace pencil, paper and

film, for example:

Flash animations - Many TV series are now done in Flash, check out this

example.

Coloring and layering hand drawn animation using a computer

Drawing directly into an animation software with a Pen Tablet

3D Animation Techniques

3D animation- Pixar's Up, Toy Story

List of Animation Techniques www.the-ying-animator.com https://www.readability.com/articles/tiuyagjo

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Stereoscopic 3D - Coraline, Avatar

CGI cut out - South Park

Motion Capture (an aid tool for 3D animators)- Final Fantasy, Avatar,

Gollum in Lord of the Rings.

Morphing (Remember the changing faces in Michel Jackson's Clip Black or

White? that's Morphing.)

Stop Motion Techniques

Clay or Plasticine ("claymation")- Nick Park's Wallace and Gromit

Real Clay animation (and lot's of other stuff you won't suspect)- Jan

Svankmajer's Dimensions of Dialogue

Puppet animation- Tim Burton and Henry Selick's The Nightmare Before

Christmas

Pixilation - Peter Gabriel's music video "Sledgehammer"

Cut outs - Daniel Greave's Flat World is a stunning combination of classic

hand drawings with cut outs.

Types of Animation that are done on a light table, shot frame by

frame under a camera:

Sand animation - This is sometimes done as a performance art, shown live

for an audience, and sometimes it's stop framed into proper film.

Oil colors - Caroline Leaf's The Street, and the frankly-unbelievable Old Man

and the Sea by Alexander Petrov.

Plasticine - Ishu Patel's Afterlife

Types of animation named after a software

Some types of animation are named after the software used to create them.

Flash animation has come to mean a certain kind of graphic look and feel, which

has also spawned the pleading request "Can you make it NOT look like Flash,

PLEASE!"

There are also:

GIF animations - GIF is a type of file format, used for small, light weight

animations with no more than a few frames.

After Effects animation - usually means either cut outs done in After Effects,

or animation done with the program's Puppet Tool (which is amazing, BTW).


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Blender, Mudbox, and Maya - all names of 3D animation softwares.

Pivot stick figure - A freeware for making stick figure animations. So simple,

and so popular!

Morphing is a type of animation that uses a software to fill in the gap

between two images - MJ's "Black or White" music video.

Have I missed anything?

I hope I've covered all the major topics.

If I've missed something - do drop me a line!

How does computer animation work?

Cut-out animation rages through the ages - From Lotte Reiniger to Waltz with

Bashir

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Canfi N. - Animation Techniques