Uses of Animation.

The uses of animation.

Animation has a variety of uses throughout media, including roles in Advertising, Creative arts and Simulation. Each specific use of animation usually has a certain form of animation that it forms around, such as Cartoon and CGI for Entertainment purposes.

Animation used in Advertising.

A prime example of Animation used in advertising can be seen in the well-known ‘Compare the Market’ Adverts which feature the lovable animated Meerkat salesmen Aleksandr Orlov , the advert uses fully rendered CGI animation to create the anthropomorphic Meerkat. The Campaign by British Sales comparison site has become extremely popular and has even spawned its own collectible toy range further increasing the sites popularity.

Animation used in the creative arts.

Many different media artists use animation in their content, Such as Music videos and YouTube videos, the types of animation used in this form of media often varies dependent on the nature or topic of the media. An example of a popular media artist is the Hit band the Gorillaz. The Gorillaz are an English musical and visual project created in 1998 by Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett. The project consists of Gorillaz itself and an extensive fictional universe depicting a "virtual band" of cartoon characters.

Animation used in Entertainment.

Animation is quite common within the Entertainment business, Between TV shows and computer entertainment animation is the most commonly used aspect between the two, Many types of animation are used within televised media, such as Children’s TV shows and movies , Many other movies use animation however CGI animation is more common with media aimed for older audiences, an example of this is the 2013 box office hit Pacific Rim, the movie feature God-like Creatures named Kiju attacking the human populous, humanity is forced to create Gigantic Mecha’s Known as Jaegers to combat the alien threat, Directed by Guillermo del Toro the movie heavily uses CGI animation with most of the movies scenes being filmed via Green Screen.

Animation used in Education.

Animation used in educations isn't
as obvious as other aspects but it is used, most presentation software is a form of animation, such as Microsoft Office Power Point and Prezi’s. Though they’re not extensive uses of animation technology they still use many types of animation to engage audiences into the presentations. Examples of features in this type of animation may be: animated page changes, images and videos.

Animation used in Simulation.

Simulation technology is extensively used in many major training based services , ranging from military to medical to engineering careers, Specific situations are simulated and made to feel like real life events and the trainee is tasked with dealing with that situation as if it were a real job, over time simulations have been able to be created into more realistic representations, rather than staged events computers are tasked with creating virtual situations instead, This has also spawned many computer entertainment brands such as ‘Oculus Rift’. A good example of animated simulation can be the use of computer flight simulators used to train Pilots in the military.

Task 1

Define the term animation.

Animation is the process of creating a continuous motion and shape change of an image by means of rapid display of a sequence of similar images to create the allusion that the display is moving.

Where is animation used?

Animation is used in a lot of modern day media, For example Pixar’s Animated Family comedy Toy story , this was the first movie to ever use 3D animation as its main concept , Known as CGI. Other examples of media in which animation is used are; Computer games, such as Cult hit Borderlands, TV adverts, and Cartoons.

Who’s the audience?

Specific Animations often are cause for specific Audiences, Most commonly , the basic form of animation, Cartoons , Is usually aimed towards children and young people whereas more serious forms of animation Such as C

CGI Is Used for Video games and other media for older audiences, With the exception of the rising CGI trade that focus’ on children’s movies.

The History.

However Animation isn’t just a modern day feat William Horner (1786 -1837) A British mathematician is known as the pioneer of animation, He created what is known as the Zoetrope, A cylinder shaped item with framed imaging that when spanned it created the impression of a moving image. This type of technology was later improved A common, non-computer generated, type of animation was the flipbook animation. Later improvement came the age of Stop-start animation, the most widely known stop-start animation Was Nick Parks Wallace and Grommet the Incredibly popular family animated comedy, one of the first of its kind. Other Big names in the animation industry include; Thomas Edison, the 19^th century inventor creating the picture camera, the Phonograph, this acted like a large speaker and he also created the Zooproxiscope an advanced version of the zoetrope. Walt Disney the pioneer of modern day cartoon industry, And the Lumiere brothers, who created the world’s first projector, much like that of what is used in modern day theatres.

This is a screenshot of the timeline of an animation I created by using Frame by Frame Shape tween. First I created a Text box with a ‘1’ inside and placed it in the centre of the stage, there I pressed Ctrl-B breaking the object up, and then I proceeded to create a key frame at frame 20. From frame twenty I created Another text box with a ‘2’ inside and placed it in the same area where the ‘1’ was then I once again broke the object up using Ctrl-B, then I added a shape tween at frame 5, causing the timeline box to go green with a black arrow through it, when viewing this gave the illusion that the 1 was morphing into the 2.

Masking is a process of animation that involves two moving objects being played over and over with one on top of the other, sometimes giving the illusion of one running through the other. 

This is a screenshot of the timeline of a masking animation I created. To do this I Imported an image on layer 1. From there I added another layer and added an oval shape onto the stage and Changed it into “mask” then I created a key frame at point 20 and then moved the oval over the image to another location , after that I created a classic tween between frame 0 and 20. This successfully created a mask animation.