What is Animation?

  Hmmm... where to start, where to start?  I guess you could say that animation started about 5,200 years ago actually.  The earliest form of animation that we have is in fact a bowl with paintings on the sides, and when it is spun the images move- showing a goat jumping up to try to get a pear from a tree.  

   Animation may seem easy, but in reality animation is an extremely complicated process.  It is also an illusion of the images- each movement is drawn and created and then when it is played back it seems as though the picture is moving.  There are multiple ways to display and present animation, but there are two methods that are more common than others.  These methods are motion pictures and video programs.  So just imagine- to create one fluid movement you have to keep on drawing and redrawing until you have a series of pictures, so that when you flip through it, or play it back, the picture will have the illusion of motion.  


   Being an animator has it's pros and cons- its pros being the fact that- from movies and cartoons to advertising and business- animation is used in just about everything, and if you have the right experience and education, might not have the hardest time searching for a job in this particular department.  Then again, it has its disadvantages.  Some of them including that the process of animation is exceptionally tedious and it is also fairly expensive, though computer animation is somewhat cheaper than traditional animation.  So as you can see animation is not exactly what you can call a piece of cake.  Animation includes the process, the illusion, the actual display, and presentation of motion in its entirety.