Animation breathes life into the usual still and dull objects. The animation industry in India has certainly gained its momentum in the 21st century, which is evident from the recent spate of successful Bollywood flicks such as Hum Tum, which saw the cartoon characters adding a new dimension to the script. This extended to complete animation movies such as Hanuman and Lord Krishna that apart from mesmerizing the children also generated interest among other section of the population. Some other well-known cartoon characters of the west that have gained appreciation among the masses are Aladdin, Hercules, Tom & Jerry, the recently released 3d movie Ratatouille, and so on.
The concept of animation is quite broad and starting from the basic 2D clips extends to complex 3D modeling of characters and features. Some of the software which it revolves around is MS Flash (for 2D animations) and 3dsMax, Poser, etc for 3D animations. The real-life modeling is achieved by these software by incorporating the basic scientific parameters experienced by us such as gravity for falling objects, elasticity for colliding bodies, friction and rotation, etc. It basically demands a lot of creativeness on the part of the creator, who has to conceptualize and give his characters identity on screen. He has to convince the audience that the character’s actions are the result of its own inner motives, and not the animator’s inner motives. The technical task of the animator is restricted to defining the initial frame, the intermediate one if a change of path occurs and the final frame of the moving object and the remaining work of giving it a smooth transition is done by the respective software.
The generation of huge amount of interest is linked to the fact that it creates real-life characters that portray human emotions, style of interacting and hence arouse curiosity among the viewers. The animation industry has begun its up trend and is now looked upon as a separate discipline of study.
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. Cel or 2D Animation: Also known as classical animation, 2-dimensional animation deals more with drawing and framing and is the base of 3D animation. 2D animators work mostly on paper, creating frames to define a sequence that are then moved at varying speeds to create the illusion of motion.
The process involves creating large number of drawings, and scanning them into the computer and importing them into the software that helps in setting the timing and layers for the scanned sequence of images. Toonz Harlequin, Adobe Flash, CelAction, Anime Studio, Toon Boom Animation, Animaker are some of the software s used for creating 2D animation characters.
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