Animation - Freelance 3D Animator, Filmmaker, Short films.

Animator Filmmaker

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images to create an illusion of movement. The most common method of presenting Animation is as a motion picture or video program, although there are other methods. This type of presentation is usually accomplished with a camera and a projector or a computer viewing screen which can rapidly cycle through images in a sequence. Animation can be made with either hand rendered art, computer generated imagery, or three-dimensional objects, e.g., puppets or clay figures, or a combination of techniques. The position of each object in any particular image relates to the position of that object in the previous and following images so that the objects each appear to fluidly move independently of one another. The viewing device displays these images in rapid succession, usually 24, 25, or 30 frames per second.

Traditional Animation (also called cel Animation or hand-drawn Animation ) was the process used for most animated films of the 20th century. The individual frames of a traditionally animated film are photographs of drawings that are first drawn on paper. To create the illusion of movement, each drawing differs slightly from the one before it. The animators' drawings are traced or photocopied onto transparent acetate sheets called cels, which are filled in with paints in assigned colors or tones on the side opposite the line drawings. The completed character cels are photographed one-by-one against a painted background by a rostrum camera onto motion picture film .

The traditional cel Animation process became obsolete by the beginning of the 21st century. Today, animators' drawings and the backgrounds are either scanned into or drawn directly into a computer system. Various software programs are used to color the drawings and simulate camera movement and effects. The final animated piece is output to one of several delivery media, including traditional 35 mm film and newer media such as digital video. The "look" of traditional cel Animation is still preserved, and the character animators' work has remained essentially the same over the past 70 years. Some Animation producers have used the term "tradigital" to describe cel Animation which makes extensive use of computer technology.

Examples of traditionally animated feature films include Pinocchio (United States, 1940), Animal Farm (United Kingdom, 1954), Akira (Japan, 1988), and L'Illusionniste (British-French, 2010). Traditional animated films which were produced with the aid of computer technology include The Lion King (US, 1994) Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi (Spirited Away) (Japan, 2001), Les Triplettes de Belleville (France, 2003), and The Secret of Kells (Irish-French-Belgian, 2009).

Stop-motion Animation is used to describe Animation created by physically manipulating real-world objects and photographing them one frame of film at a time to create the illusion of movement. There are many different types of stop-motion Animation , usually named after the medium used to create the Animation . Computer software is widely available to create this type of Animation ; however, traditional stop motion Animation is usually less expensive and time-consuming to produce than current computer Animation .

Puppet Animation typically involves stop-motion puppet figures interacting in a constructed environment, in contrast to real-world interaction in model Animation . The puppets generally have an armature inside of them to keep them still and steady as well as to constrain their motion to particular joints. Examples include The Tale of the Fox (France, 1937), The Nightmare Before Christmas (US, 1993), Corpse Bride (US, 2005), Coraline (US, 2009), the films of Jiří Trnka and the TV series Robot Chicken (US, 2005–present).

Puppetoon, created using techniques developed by George Pal, are puppet-animated films which typically use a different version of a puppet for different frames, rather than simply manipulating one existing puppet.

Clay Animation , or Plasticine Animation (often called claymation, which, however, is a trademarked name), uses figures made of clay or a similar malleable material to create stop-motion Animation . The figures may have an armature or wire frame inside, similar to the related puppet Animation (below), that can be manipulated to pose the figures. Alternatively, the figures may be made entirely of clay, such as in the films of Bruce Bickford, where clay creatures morph into a variety of different shapes. Examples of clay-animated works include The Gumby Show (US, 1957–1967) Morph shorts (UK, 1977–2000), Wallace and Gromit shorts (UK, as of 1989), Jan Švankmajer's Dimensions of Dialogue (Czechoslovakia, 1982), The Trap Door (UK, 1984). Films include Wallace Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Chicken Run and The Adventures of Mark Twain.

Computer Animation encompasses a variety of techniques, the unifying factor being that the Animation is created digitally on a computer. This Animation takes less time to produce than previous traditional Animation . 2D Animation techniques tend to focus on image manipulation while 3D techniques usually build virtual worlds in which characters and objects move and interact. 3D Animation can create images that seem real to the viewer.

2D Animation figures are created and/or edited on the computer using 2D bitmap graphics or created and edited using 2D vector graphics. This includes automated computerized versions of traditional Animation techniques such as interpolated morphing, onion skinning and interpolated rotoscoping.

2D Animation has many applications, including analog computer Animation, Flash Animation and PowerPoint Animation . Cinemagraphs are still photographs in the form of an animated GIF file of which part is animated.

3D Animation is digitally modeled and manipulated by an animator. The animator starts by creating an external 3D mesh to manipulate. A mesh is a geometric configuration that gives the visual appearance of form to a 3D object or 3D environment. The mesh may have many vertices which are the geometric points which make up the mesh; it is given an internal digital skeletal structure called an armature that can be used to control the mesh with weights. This process is called rigging and can be programmed for movement with keyframes.

Other techniques can be applied, such as mathematical functions (e.g., gravity, particle simulations), simulated fur or hair, and effects such as fire and water simulations. These techniques fall under the category of 3D dynamics.