Computer Animation
Animation is the creation of moving images using computer technology. There are two categories of computer animation. Computer generated animation is designed solely on the computer system using animation and 3D graphics software, and computer-assisted animation where traditional animations are computerized. Animation has the power to give life to plain blank objects by injecting energy and emotions into them.The idea behind animation is to play Images "frames" really fast to fool the human eye into thinking its a video that shows motion. Animation can make a group of still images come to life.
From simple lines on TV screen to Life like characters,The world Computer animation has come a long way. Today computer animations and graphics is a billion dollar industry. Animations for mainstream media today are done by multiple animation artists in studios, Shown below is what happens inside of the most popular animation studios today, Dreamworks.
Many techniques has been invented by animators over the years which has their own advantages and disadvantages.
Traditional Animation - Traditionaly animation was done by hand primarily before the use of animation software. So each frame was hand drawn going at a speed of 24 frames per second (FPS). The amount of work that had to be put in to create an animation this way is tremendous.
Key Framing - When using this technique artists lay out a story board and then draw the major frames that prominent change takes place. After this is done they can use the computer to easily fill in the images in-between with images of the motion taking place generated automatically using the computer.
Procedural - When using procedural animation the objects are animated by a procedure not key framing.The animator specifies rules and initial conditions and runs simulation. Rules are often based on physical rules of the real world expressed by mathematical equations.
Behavioural - When using behavioural animation an autonomous character determines its own actions. This gives the character some ability to improvise, and frees the animator from the need to specify each detail of every character's motion.
Motion Capture - Motion capture animation is done by tracking the real movements of a human or animal using magnetic or vision based sensors that record the movements and saves them in a computer 3 dimensional. This techinology is one of the most used techniques of animation sin video games and some movies. Games developers use this technique to track athletes motions for sports video games, and generally most animators uses this excessively for lip syncing.
In gaming one of the best games that took animation to the next level is overwatch, I have first hand experience in that game and this game is the most smoothly animated game I've ever played. The developers of the Over watch, Blizzard did conform that they focused alot on animation to give the player a smooth playing experience. The game has really well done in game animations such as actions, movement. jumping etc as well as tittle screen animation for the characters. Overwatch managed to use the art of animation to show the characteristics and personality of a character in the. Shown below are some of the intro animation for the characters in over watch.
Source:
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/computer_animation.html
http://www.tutorialspoint.com/computer_graphics/computer_animation.htm
(http://www.traditionalanimation.com/wpcontent/uploads/2013/12/TheBearandtheHareAnimation1.jpg)
(http://www.real3dtutorials.com/images/img00073.jpg)
(http://runevision.com/thesis/videos_demos/step_walk_06.png)
(https://mir-s3-cdn-cf.behance.net/project_modules/disp/75441a16734909.562b084013b62.gif)