Redefining Animation Methods: From the Past to the Future

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There is a huge industry dedicated to animation and creating entertainment like movies, cartoons, video games, and educational software to deliver a message, tell a story, and/or educate the masses. Animation is the process of creating a continuous motion and shape change illusion by means of the rapid display of a sequence of static images that minimally differ from each other. Anyone who as ever turned on a television, gone to the movies, seen a commercial has been exposed to an animation style at some point. Some love animation and some are not so interested in it, but regardless it is a booming business that started out simply and is evolving at a rapid pace. Animation today is very advanced and it is amazing what goes into putting things into action, especially when it comes to current animated features and video games. Creators have been able to make fictional characters appear as if they are real and have extraordinary detail, take three-dimensional animation for example. With some 3-D animations it is hard to differentiate if it is indeed an animation or a film with real actors. Scenery can be just as detailed as its real counterparts and characters, although still cartoon-like, have very realistic detail from facial muscle movement to pigment in their skin and eyes. There are some two dimensional works that are exceptional as well. Many are created by drawing out each individual scene and combine in sequence. One can see that 2-D animation today has seamless transitions, compared to jagged transitions exhibited seen in earlier animations. This is due to the thriving technology that animators have at their disposal. From black and white, flat and jagged with poor audio quality to vivid colors, three dimensional...

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