Basic Tips for Animators and Animation

Advertisements and movies cannot be produced without special effects or animation. The skills and hard work of animators go behind the well illustrated cartoon animation. Entertainment has reached new heights because of the special effects and animation. People have accepted animation as a part of entertainment. Kids do not want to watch the TV serial shows without the character animation. Animators have a good future. They have to bear in mind the basic animation principles before they start planning for working on a movie or Television serial.

If you are good at Fine arts and possess lot of creativity in you, then why wait for anything? Animation gives name, fame and all that you need to be rich in life. You will be happy all your life. You'll be remembered for long for the special creativity in you. Why wait? Go ahead! You can be a good Story Board artist, animator, modeller or Background artist in this field. Can create wonders in the Special effects. People recognise whatever you do.

what is computer animation? For decades, animation has been a trade that rested solely in the hands of the entertainment industry; the process required a great deal of time, manpower, and complex equipment to accomplish. However, with the ever-growing movement to computerize the industry, the animation process has become progressively simpler. What was once done with pencils, cels, and paint by a team of dozens of animators can now be accomplished by a single person with a powerful enough home computer and the right software.

The term "computer animation" itself broadly covers a wide variety of genres and applications, though the simplest way to break it down is into the categories of 2D and 3D animation. "2D", short for "two-dimensional", is sometimes also called "vector animation", and is typically done in programs like Macromedia Flash and Macromedia Director.

The most familiar form of 2D animation can be found just by turning on your TV on a Saturday morning: traditional cartoons, which are progressing more and more into the digital realm. You probably see simpler animations every day just while surfing the web, in the form of advertisements, E-cards, and cartoon shorts. Vector animation is also useful in designing interactive interfaces for the web.

2D animation, true to its name, is rendered in a two-dimensional space. 3D animation, however, is rendered in a virtual three-dimensional space, using polygons captured by various virtual "cameras" to "film" the animation. 3D
animation has a variety of applications, from video games to animated films; most commonly, 3D animation is used to render many of the special effects seen in live-action films, removing the need for scale model sets or staged stunts.

While both types of computer animation can be accomplished by either frame-by-frame animation or by mathematical interpolation between key frames, the initial steps prior to animating are drastically different; the two separate
processes also require different software packages.

India has come of age in the Animation field. India definitely has some advantages and potential to develop the animation industry. With global players like Walt Disney, Imax, Warner Bros signing contracts with Indian animation companies for outsourcing and co-production, it is expected that the animation industry in India can touch $950 million by 2009 and is expected to grow at a fast pace over the next five years. Training, investing heavily in the industry, and providing original and compelling content, will be critical to its growth. The encouraging news is that while the primary work coming to India is through animation outsourcing, the industry is moving up to the next level, with some co-production assignments also trickling in – slowly, but surely.

Indians have produced great artists and animators, in the recent past. Many of them work for leading companies in USA and Dubai.

Interesting thing is that children are always attracted towards animated characters and animated movies. So, demand for animated movies and animators has always been there all over the world.

Computer graphics probably is one of the fastest moving and demanding in the field of information technology today. The development of new ideas and products has enabled the graphics and multimedia designer to create the graphics with fantastic results and quality, careers in multimedia are the different and numerous as the medium itself. The sheer variety and range of developments in the field of multimedia is amazing and overwhelming for the multimedia designers and creators.

The team of multimedia professional involved in multimedia products to develop amazing multimedia products. The large number of students who are choosing their field as multimedia designers having a broad range of career choices in the multimedia profession. The members of the multimedia projects development team include some or all of the given combinations of skills some of them are:

Art director
Art designer
Animator
Documentation specialist
Interface designer
Instructional designer
Visual effects designer
Game designer
Interactive script writer
Programmer or software designer
Technical lead
Sound producer
Special effects expert
Video grapher
These all are the various designations and skills, one can choose in the multimedia career.

Animated movies like Finding Nemo, The Lion King, Jungle Book, Madagaskar etc. are some super hits which children as well as Adults have appreciated.

Even working in the Animation field gives an artist thrilling experience and Creativity of the individual is enhanced to great heights.

Animation has progressed from painstaking labors with cels and paint to the digital animation, with dozens of hybrid techniques in between. Whether you're animating by hand or using digital techniques, there are some basic principles that remain universal. Lip-synching, squash and stretch, walk cycles - all are familiar hallmarks of animation, and should be mastered no matter how you prefer to animate.

Basic Principles of animation :

* Squash and stretch
* Anticipation
* Staging
* Straight ahead action and pose to pose
* Follow through and overlapping action
* Slow in and slow out
* Arcs
* Secondary action
* Timing
* Exaggeration
* Solid drawing
* Appeal

Learning walk cycle is an art in itself. An animator cannot be complete without the knowledge of walkcycles. So, importance is given to master the art of creating different walkcycles.