Animation

The art of animation started with the cavemen who used to draw pictures on the rock surfaces. Though animation was formally demonstrated in 1828 by a Frenchman, Paul Roget, the first animated film 'Humorous phases of funny faces' by J. Stuart Blackton was made in 1906 by drawing comical faces on a blackboard, photographing them, and then erasing it to draw another stage of the facial expression. Computer animation, started during seventies and eighties, had a greater impact and with the passage of time, more and more advanced techniques were developed.

Animation which derived its name from the Latin word 'anima' meaning soul, can be defined as the art of breathing life to a character. A blend of entertainment industry and technology, it is concerned with design, drawing, layout and production of graphically rich and attractive multimedia clips. In other words animation is making of movies, games or cartoons by moving the drawings or models of animals or people with the help of computers or other electronic means. Time and space play a critical role in animation.

Animation is a field that could be pursued by those who posses excellent creativity and drawing skills. Animators are the talented artists who create characters for a variety of projects like movies, television, advertisements and so on. An animators task is to read the script carefully, study the storyboard and try to get into the character. In other words he needs to know and understand the character. Job opportunities are on the rise for an animator and they are in great demand, as it a growing industry and has become a popular feature in movies and advertising.

Creating an idea, developing it into a story script and giving technical assistance to it, are the procedures in making an animation. Besides the most commonly used animations , i.e two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D), there is also puppet animation, clay animation, sand animation, vegetable animation etc. Both 2D and 3D animation can be created digitally. Two-dimensional images are shallow in appearance, while three-dimensional images have a feel of depth to them, thus making them look more real.