Animation Essay

Animation is “the art of bringing to life” in other words it is a simulation of movement by displaying a series of pictures or frames. The earliest animation started even before the Stone Age. Stone Age artists used a lot of cartoon like techniques to show motion in the form of cave paintings, where the head or tail was drawn to show movement. These paintings are mostly found in Lascaux cave. Bone disc is another form of Thaumatrope that showed motion. The most convincing case is that of a Magdalenian bone disc where on one side the horse is drawn standing and on the other side the horse is drawn sitting, when the disc is turned a peculiar motion is seen. One of the greatest examples to show motion and to show that animation started during the Stone Age is that of an earthen bowl that was excavated in Iran’s burnt city. The bowl depicts a deer hopping and going towards a tree and eating the leaves.

After this stage was the invention of illusion toys based on the toys that was found during the Stone Age. Some of these toys included the Thaumatrope and the flipbook. All these toys worked on the persistence of vision. They were all traditional toys that could only be hand held. These Thaumatropes are used even now in some movies to show the persistence of vision, for example in the film “PRESTIGE” and “HUGO”. After this was the flipbooks, where images were drawn on each paper and when the book is flipped a beautiful motion is seen. This was the first step into the world of animation. The next stage was the introduction of traditional animation. Traditional animation otherwise known as cel animation is where the artistic mind has to be converted into a sequence of still frames and all these frames are drawn by hand.

This stage c...

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...or visual effects movies. Most of the movies that are released today used this technique only to bring clarity and depth to the film.

Animation has turned into a worldwide medium of use and it is no longer a slave to Hollywood. The vastness of CGI will change the character and the content of film animation. In addition to filling entertainment in theatres, television and even advertising departments, animation is an essential teaching element for education and industry. Animation is no longer looked down upon as a poor relative to live action film making. Soon animation will be used in medicine for performing live surgeries virtually. The world of animation will never die, just like how technology increases step by step, animation is also rising gradually. Therefore animation is definitely “The act of bringing to life”, where the impossible is made possible.