Types of animation mediums
Animation can be basically 2D or 3D but when we use different mediums we get different types of animations. Lets have a look at them.
- Traditional 2D Animation on Cells– As I’ve told before it is a type of animation where each frame is hand-drawn, right from the character to the props, the environment and also the backdrop everything is meticulously hand painted.
- Stop-motion - In this technique the object to be animated is shot with a still camera, now the camera is kept steady and the object is moved slightly and another still frame is captured, again the object is moved and its image is shot and so on. Now, when the still frames are played, since the camera was motionless the object now appears to be in motion. Hence the name Stop-Motion. This basic idea of Stop-motion has been extended to various mediums such as clay, puppets, cutouts, sand etc.
- Computer Generated – As the name suggests all animations generated with the help of a computer fall under this category be it 2D or 3D. Softwares such as ToonBoom and Macromedia Flash are used for making 2D animations. Where as softwares like 3Dstudio Max, Maya, Lightwave3D, Houdini, SoftImage etc. are used to create animations ranging from home experiments to high-end computer generated imagery. An example of a very high end CG film is Final Fantasy made in Maya 1.0. Also have a look at Beowulf released in 2007. The stunning CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) will make you wonder how thin the line between real and CG has become.
a female model from Final Fantasy
