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Previous Issues > January 2007 > How Does That Work? > Animation
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 How Does That Work?
Animation
The word animate comes from the Latin word anima, and means to give life to. Animation makes inanimate or lifeless drawings or objects appear lifelike. Animation is used to make cartoons, movies and television shows. It can also be used in television commercials or in educational films. Animation is sometimes used in combination with live action in movies.
Before any type of animation begins, a storyboard is created. The storyboard is like a hand-drawn comic strip of the movie. It serves as the blueprint for the action and the dialogue that will occur in the movie.
There are three basic techniques for animation. The first uses two-dimensional or flat drawings. To make an animated film using this method, a series of pictures is drawn and then photographed, one picture at a time, by a special motion picture camera. In each drawing, the character changes its position slightly so that when the images are seen in order, the drawings appear to move. According to The New Book of Knowledge, a single action that takes one second of screen time may require as many as 24 drawings. For example, if a script calls for a character to raise his hand, the first picture the animators draw shows the character with his hand at his side. In the next drawing, his hand is raised slightly, and a third drawing shows his hand still higher. Drawing after drawing is made in this way until, in the 24th drawing, the action is completed. Millions of drawings may be used in an animated feature film. Most television cartoons use fewer drawings per second, so the characters movements may not look as lifelike.
A second type of animation uses three-dimensional objects, such as puppets or clay figures. This type of animation called stop-motion photography works in much the same way as two-dimensional animation. A character is filmed one frame at a time, adjusting the position of the character after each photograph. When the film is put together, the character appears to move. Some of the creatures in the early Star Wars films were animated using this technique.
The third type of animation, called computer-generated imagery (CGI) uses computer technology to create images and animate them. Computer- generated animation is used in movies, television shows and video games. Computer animation can create amazing effects and life-like images that would be almost impossible to create using traditional methods of animation. The characters, sets and props for the movie may be sculpted by hand and then scanned in three-dimensionally, or they might be modeled in 3-D directly in the computer using high-tech computer programs. Animators use computer controls to choreograph the movements and facial expressions in each scene. They study real animals, and even make models, to make sure that the computer-generated creatures move like real creatures. For todays popular movies, such as Monsters, Inc. and The Incredibles, animators have spent thousands and thousands of hours creating these lifelike creatures.
Source: Pixar Animation Studios; Solomon, Charles, Animation, The New Book of Knowledge, Scholastic Library Publishing.
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