About Computer Animation

Computer animation is an art form used to create movement. In the film world, computer-generated imagery is called "CGI" and is done in 2D or 3D. It involves the illusion of making static images "come to life." This is easily demonstrated by making a "flap" book, where the pages of the book are lifted at the corner and fanned very quickly so that the naked eye sees motion. This is roughly how graphics animation works.

History

Computer animation began back in the late 1950s when John Whitney Sr., the founder of Motion Graphics Inc., first used the analog computer to make art.

Uses of Computer Animation

Computer graphics are used for much more than making cartoons and video games. Their use expands to all areas of life, including the making of weather maps, avatars, brain scans and other scientific purposes, as well as in architecture.

Amateur Animators

Amateur animators often use online and digital media software (Youtube and Dailymotion) and also the Windows Movie Maker or the .GIF (graphic interchange format) tools that typically are pre-installed on computers. The illustration above is an example of .gif animation.

Future Outlook

Computer animation has progressed rapidly since the cartoon characters "Davey & Goliath" and "Gumby" were developed. The wave of the future is what the Japanese call "anime," and we often refer to as anthromorphism, a process where cartoon characters become "human" in their expressions and movements. Examples are movies such as "Corpse Bride," "The Incredibles" and "The Polar Express."

Fun Fact

Portable Network Graphics (PNG) was designed as a replacement for the .gif format in order to avoid infringement of a patent held by Unisys for the Lempel-Ziv Welch (LZW) compression algorithm.

Resources

• Principles of traditional animation applied to 3D
• The "mystery" of computer animation