Do you ever imagine how boring our life would have been if Tom and Jerry would have just stood there on the screen with the audio in the background? What makes it interesting and worth watching is the numerous hours put it by the creators in the form of Animation. It is a method wherein one manipulates pictures to make them appear as if they were moving.
Ways to add Animation weren’t always the same. The Traditional way was way different as in 20th century. The images were drawn or painted on paper, one slightly different from the other and then traced on transparent sheets called Celluloid or Cel that are filled with vibrant and different colour tones.
Nowadays,(sincere thanks to Walt Disney for saving and savouring our Childhood), most Animations are made with the help of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) which is highly detailed and efficient. It makes the image appear so real that you almost believe that Thanos is snapping his fingers, right in front of you or that Arnold Schwarzenegger is the real Terminator.
Now a complex system like this has to be vast and has numerous branches. There are different types of Animation like 3D, 2D, Stop Motion, Motion Graphics and many more. Let's take a look how they are different from each other.
2D Animation
2D or 2 Dimensional animation creates movement in a two-dimensional artistic space, Means no true depth, and no Blobby characters. Just flat and vector looking images. It gives a good overall outlook to the pictures and make them move in definite yet acceptable manner. A big shout out to our Tom and Jerry and Rick & Morty who have an attractive presentation with just the right amount of movement followed by correct audio sequence. Softwares like CelAction, Toon Boom Harmony, Adobe Animate CC are used by vast group of companies as it is easier to grab and provides more options than basic Animation softwares.
Example: Tom and Jerry, Doremon, The Lion King (1994) etc.
3D Animation
3D or 3 Dimensional animation gives us the most realistic movements and scenarios which can almost blow the senses out of us. No one is stranger to Game of Thrones or our too good to be true tales of Cinderella and Snow White. 3D animation gives highly accurate details in the drawings and plausible movement to make it seem lifelike. Though it can be time-consuming because of Rigging, Character Weighting, Texturing, Lighting and the most important and a nightmare for the animator is Rendering. It takes a lot of time and computer power. Software like Autodesk Maya, Autodesk 3Ds Max, Blender, Cinema 4D, ZBrush, Houdini and Modo are blessing which combines keyframe to animate your own 3D character.
Example: Despicable Me, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, How to Train Your Dragon etc.
Stop Motion Animation
It basically includes providing manual animation to 2D or 3D objects as Paper Cuts, Puppets, Clay etc. It is a technique used to bring static objects to life. It is done by moving the object in increments while filming a frame per increment. The next frame should have the increment data or position of the previous frame. When all the frames are played in a sequence it shows movement. Stop Motion Pro Eclipse and Dragon frame software are powerful enough to easily helps to capture selective movements, composition, light and your own perfect shots, until you're satisfied and then edit the shots with help of advanced editing tools. Icing on the cake is that you can also insert audio and edit it accordingly to how you want your character to sound.
Example: Kubo and the Two Strings, Shaun the Sheep, Pingu the Penguin etc.
Motion Graphics
Motion Graphics create an illusion of movement combined with vector graphics, shapes and keyframes. We can almost say that it breathes still graphics into the animation. Motion Graphics mostly used to create Explainer Videos, Commercial Ads, Text Animation and Logo Intros. Just like 2D animation, it doesn't require highly detailed characters, and an Illustration from Adobe Illustrator or other vector graphics can be easily animated. Softwares like Adobe After Effects, Cinema 4D, Adobe Animate and Moho, Trapcode suit etc are industrial standard software to create motion graphics during post-production of movie, keying, tracking, composting, intros and more.
In Short,
Animations are extremely essential part of any video or film and can be created in shape of-
2D: It gives a more definite and more easily acceptable effects.
3D: It gives more realistic and lifelike effect to the animation.
Stop Motion: It helps us create/design our very own characters manually with the help of clay modeling, puppets etc., And even design their movements.
Motion Graphics: It helps in adding life to the still graphics, by editing the movements, keyframe them etc.