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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
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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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