Computer Animation

A picture is worth 1000 words. Tom and Jerry cartoon, being the all time favorite of many is enjoyed even without the dialogues. Who wouldn't love the jolly green ogre and humors donkey in the movie Shrek? Movies like Shrek and Finding Nemo, has taken animation to a great heights. Animation is one of the powerful and smartest product in Hollywood. Walt Disney's animated characters are world famous icons adored by several people in all parts of the world. You can see computer animation everywhere, right from the Animated E-Cards, logo, animated screen savers, commercials, TV shows, computer games and movies. There are several fun games, animated tutorials teaching vocabulary and math to children. It is the animation that attracts kids to use computer even at preschool level. The advancement in computer technology has revolutionized the field of animation. It is swiftly growing and has huge impact on all ages to people.

What is animation?
Animation is the technique of sequencing several drawings and creating a rapid movement to add life to it. The speed in the movement creates optical illusion and the persistence of vision makes the picture realistic. In this the drawings seems to move. Animation is the realm of fantasy. Flip book is one of the simple sample of animation. It consist of sequence of drawings in every page of the book and when it is flipped rapidly by thumbing, it creates an illusion of motion. Creating an animation is time consuming, strenuous work. Each drawings or the frame in the sequence, must be blend seamlessly with the other frames to create smooth and continuous motion in time. Time line is very important in this too. For one second of animation, they use 24 frames.

Animation types:
With the advancement in technology, there are several techniques used in animation. Traditionally, animation was created by hand drawing the pictures frame by frame for the action. It is quiet tedious and time consuming. Computer animation removes the need for many of the extra tools required to create an animation. Computer animation with 2D and 3D techniques, is widely used. Images generated through this technique is known as Computer generated images (CGI). Animation involves storyboarding which sequences the scenes and actions of the character. The sound track are done even before creating the actual animation because it determines the timing of the frame. But they redo this every time until they get the final perfection. 3D animation involves modeling, animating and rendering the 3D scenes. Clay animation, stop motion animation, puppet animation are several other techniques.

Animation softwares and career
In 1937, Walt Disney produced the first full length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Animation requires people skilled in different arts like drawing to produce wonderful images, huge and endless imagination and creative designing, planning the scene, adding sound track and giving special effects. There are several latest fantastic tools for creating the animation. Commonly used one are Macromedia flash, fireworks, Adobe creative suit, photoshop, Anime studio pro, Maya, 3D Studio from Autodesk, and many more. Animation courses are given in several specialized arts and animations colleges worldwide. A student from these universities will have the potential for a career in the dynamic fields of web design, animation movie making, video game art, advertising and graphic design.

Animation applications
Sultan: The Warrior is a forthcoming animated Indian film which is to be released in early 2009 worldwide. The main character is an animated version of super star Rajinikanth (A prominent actor in Indian filim industry) and will also be voiced by him, has big expectations by his fans. Animation is not only used for entertainment. It is also used extensively in marketing, used to present meteorological data, medical imaging, in architecture industry to create models of proposed buildings, in engineering to design new devices and vehicles.