What is Animation?

By Kaine Spindler

In the following body of text my intention is to give a brief yet informative overview of
Animation as a whole, to show what Animation excels at and where it lacks, and to show the
subcategories of Animation and how they differentiate from one and other. I also intend to
show just where Animation came from and how its progressed throughout its lifetime, all
the way up until modern day. Though before delving through Animation's history let’s start
with what does animation even mean.
Animation is the process of manipulating an inanimate object or image, such as a clay model
or computer-generated model, to give the appearance of movement in a linear sequence.
This can be used to either breathe life into characters and other living beings, recreate how
objects move when interacted with or/and simulate how nature moves such as the
pattering of rain on concrete or the gushes of wind on the leaves of trees. Animation is often
used to tell a story through the linear sequence of movements, whether that is through an
animated show or playable video game there is almost always a story behind the animation.
There are many different Animation techniques and many overlap with each other in some
way or another, yet all types of Animation have unique properties to them, though some are
more popular than others. One such animation type of animation is Digital Animation, this is
the process of using computers to create an Animation, which can include animation types
such as 3D Animation, 2D Animation, Augmented reality, and realistic cartoons to name a
few. Another example of an encompassing type of animation is stop motion, this is the
process of taking multiple photos of a physically created scene and characters and slightly
moving the desired entity between each photo to act like frames of an animation before
being put together into an continues video clip. Stop motion includes some more well-
known Animation types such as Claymation and Chuckimation. There are also some types of
Animation that are widely known but are often not considered a form of animation by the
general viewer such as Audio-Animatronics and Autonomatronics, this is the process of
creating a machine or some other construct that can be artificially controlled to be used in
representing a living being such as an animal or a creature that does not exist. A well know
example of this are the Jurassic Park films where they used a combination of Animatronics
and CGI to create their “dinosaurs.”
“Animation is important because it makes us be able to tell stories and communicate
emotions and ideas in a unique, easy-to-perceive way that both small children and adults
can understand.” - Dylann Gibson, 13/3/2019.
Animation has become a large part of life in the modern world for many people whether
they realise it or not, it has become a core factor in the lives of many whether that is
through the media we consume or through medical testing and training that has helped
save thousands of lives, or even through the construction where buildings or machinery can
be reviewed and viewed before its even given the greenlight for construction. Animation is
important for the reason Dylann Gibson said, but it is also important for so much more,
though Animation for media is far more well known by the public. Without Animation not
only would we lose one of the largest forms of entertainment and artistic expression to
date, but we would lose valuable medical, construction and training animations that have,
and still do, save thousands of lives.
“Animation continually offers new possibilities narratively, aesthetically and technically,
encouraging new animators, artists and practitioners to explore new kinds of storytelling” -
Paul Wells, 2005
Animation has many advantages over other forms of media and even the several types of
animation have advantages over each other. Animation can be used to create the illusion of
fantastical or disturbing events or beings that either do not exist or/and are too hard to
recreate in the real-world to a realistic standard. Animation further allows for almost any
concept to be possible no matter how ludicrous it may be. it also allows for many diverse
types of art styles to be expressed in the form of a moving piece, allowing for different
animations to look vastly different from each other in new and interesting ways even if the
type of animation used is the same. Animation further allows for the characters to perform
stunts and movements which would have a high chance or would certainly harm a real
actor, allowing for more extravagant feats of movement. It can also provide a disconnect
from the characters depicted on screen, some scenes that would be considered too violent
or too disturbing for the live action shows could be shown in an animated show as it would
allow people to more easily discern that the characters and the events depicted are clearly
not real, over exaggerating a scene with animation can also help people disconnect from it
as it could easily be discerned as too unrealistic. Computer animation, CGI, can be used in
tandem with live action animatronics to create a more realistic entity that does not exist or
no longer exists, one of the most famous examples of this is the dinosaurs in the Jurassic
Park films which used a mixture of well-designed animatronics and animation to create
realistic movements and appearance. Computer generated animation can be designed to
move and act when instructed to using keys and buttons far more easily and seamlessly
than other methods of animation, along with providing far more control over the animation
with simple button presses, this is what allows computer generated animations to be
created into games with far more ease.
Just as animation has many advantages over other forms of media, and even over itself, it
also has many disadvantages linked to it too. Animation can take a long time to create to the
standard quality, though this depends on the method of animation as some animation types
can be created far faster than others. Such as, Digital animation is on average quicker to
create than hand drawn animations. Though overall, Animations can just take a long time to
be made. Making animations can be complicated, such as with Digital Animation, as you
must do a lot of different technical things before you can get a look at the final animation
other than just animating such as lighting, shading, modelling, and texturing.
The history of Animation stretches much further back in time than many would think, one
such pinnacle in the timeline of Animation is The Magic lantern, it is considered the first
form of projection animation from all the way back in 1603 by Christiaan Huygens. About
two hundred years after the creation of the Magic lantern, the Thaumatrope would be
created by John Ayrton in 1824 to demonstrate the persistence of vision, which would go on
to be the inspiration for the creation of more advanced methods of animation. The
Phenakistoscope would follow eight years later, created in 1832 by Joseph Plateau and
Simon Von, it was a disk that had pictures drawn on the spin wheel which when spun and
looked at through a mirror would give the illusion of movement. The Zoetrope would then
follow two years later, it was first created in 1834 by William Horner which at the time was
named the Daedalum, it was a drum like spinning contraption that would spin much like the
disked Phenakistoscope but eliminated the need for a mirror because of its clever use of
slits to act like a pseudo shutter. The Praxinoscope then came out forty-three years after the
Zoetrope, created in 1877 by Charles-Emile Reynaud, it was like a combination of the magic
lantern, Zoetrope and Phenakistoscope which was able to remove the flaws of its
predecessors such as the unstable and shaky sequencing. Then in 1906, a short twenty-nine
years later, James Stuart created the first ever animated film on the standard picture film.
Where the first fully animated movie, Fantasmagoria, using this Animation method would
follow in 1908. And in the same year Fantasmagoria was released the first Claymation was
produced called "The Sculptors Nightmare" by Wallace McCutcheon, following 8 years after
the invention of plasticine which is still used to today in Claymation. Digital Animation was
first founded in the early 1960s by John Whitney.

So, what is Animation? Animation is a lot of things, it can be as physical as an animatronic or

lump of clay or could be just thousands of tiny pixels on a screen, it could depict a comedic
duo of a cat and a mouse beating each other up or be a lifesaving training simulation for
doctors and surgeons. But they all have one defining feature, they are something inanimate
given movement through a variety of means. Whether it is for Artistic expression, media,
training, or stress testing it is all still animation. Animation is the freedom to create an
illusion of whatever we want, whether it is fantasy, or something embedded in real life.

References:
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