Creativa 
At Creativa, we’re known for our fabulous animation studio. Animation is one of the most common types of video production in Australia. But you may be wondering, what are the different types of animation, and what animation techniques should I be thinking about when I engage a studio for animation production?
What is the definition of animation?
Animation is the process of manipulating images or ‘assets’ to create the illusion of movement. In a sense, it’s not that different from live action video. Both use sequences of still images or ‘frames’ to make it seem like a picture is moving.
Live action video uses real people and objects captured on film or digitally. Animation uses hand-drawn frames, still or computer-generated images.
But what is animation is not always clear. Watch any popular film or even commercial and, invariably, you will find some combination of animation and video. Just look at the title sequence of any feature film.
What is the history of animation?
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
To define animation, we should first look at its history. Animation has its origins in simple flip books, and in devices like the zoetrope and phenakistoscope that produced optical illusions. In 1914, Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur dazzled vaudeville crowds with simple, hand-drawn dinosaur that moved. This was not the first animated film, but it was groundbreaking for its use of start and end images called key frames, and loops, techniques widely used to this day.
The Animation Process From 1938 – How Walt Disney Cartoons Are Made
Disney’s hand-drawn early animated films, like the famous Steamboat Willie, and continuing on to feature films, fully realised the potential of hand-drawn animation to tell stories. In these early films, and even some today, characters are hand-drawn up to twenty-five times for every second of animation. It’s a lot of work. But don’t throw this in the bag of ‘old animation techniques’ just yet. Many projects still rely on laborious traditional hand-drawn animation to this day. We were thrilled when the RSPCA engaged us to produce this hand-drawn animation.
Animation Video – RSPCA Gift In Wills
Computer-generated 3D animation now forms a major part of our animated media landscape. If you’ve seen a Pixar movie, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This kind of animation involves creating 3D models and virtual environments; imagine a film set, but inside your computer, and then making the elements move as your story requires. This is also labour-intensive. Check out our rollercoaster animation for an example of how 3D animation can tell a story. And it’s interactive!
Fortunately, digital technology has enabled a wide range of hybrid or lower-cost animation methods: 2D animation, motion graphics and simple character rigs – the creation of virtual puppets that are easy to move – are just some of the tools that modern animators use to do more with less. Here’s a link to some of our classic examples!
Now, with artificial intelligence, animators are using instantaneous content generation tools to create vastly more complex work in a fraction of the time.
What are the different types of animation?
| 2D animation | 2D animation uses flat drawings, whether hand-drawn or digital, to craft characters and worlds that are expressive, stylised, and endlessly versatile. |
| 3D animation | 3D animation builds characters and environments in digital space, adding depth, realism, and cinematic polish. Think Pixar and high-end video games. |
| Motion graphics | Motion graphics bring shapes, icons, and text to life. This is perfect for explainer videos and title sequences. |
| Typography animation | Typography animation involves animating text in compelling or creative ways to convey tone and emotion. |
| Traditional animation | Traditional hand-drawn animation is the art of drawing each frame by hand. It’s labour-intensive but incredibly beautiful. |
| Whiteboard animation | Whiteboard animation mimics someone sketching on a board in real time, turning even complex concepts into clear, engaging visual stories. |
| Rotoscope animation | Rotoscoping traces over live-action footage frame by frame, blending the real and the drawn. The Amazon series Undone was the first to be entirely rotoscoped. |
| Cut out animation | Cut-out animation moves flat shapes (think puppets or paper dolls) in stop motion to tell stories. |
| Stop motion | Stop motion animation involves moving physical objects in tiny increments, and photographing them, to create the illusion of movement in clay, paper, or toys. |
| CEL animation | Cel animation layers transparent sheets of hand-drawn frames to create rich, frame-by-frame movement—think Saturday morning cartoons. |
What is animation production?
Animation production is the process by which an animation is created. It’s a process designed to ensure your animation achieves its goals on time and on budget. Different types of animation have different processes, but some practices are standard across any production.
First, you need a concept or an objective. Maybe you need an explainer to showcase your groundbreaking new SaaS product. Or maybe you want to tell a riveting tale of a swashbuckling mouse who must escape the clutches a violent, homicidal cat. Whatever the case, you need to decide what you’re making and which of the different animation techniques you’ll use (or can afford!) to do it.
Once you have your budget, parameters and scope, you enter a stage called pre-production. This can be writing a script, designing assets, creating mood boards or style frames to develop look and feel. It may also involve storyboarding, which’s designing the pictures that will tell the story, and the creation of an animatic, where those pictures are edited to time. Sound gets recorded in this phase, so the animators can animate to time.
The next phase of animation production is production, which may be a little confusing, but go with it. Production-the-phase includes character or asset rigging, if applicable – that is, creating the virtual puppets that you’re going to animate. Then there’s the animation itself. Whether traditional hand-drawn animation, 2D animation, motion graphics, digital animation or any other kind of animation.
Lastly, we have post-production, the fine-tuning, the touching up, the integration of sound effects, and adding titles or music.
Once you have completed these three stages, your animation is ready for distribution.
What is animation rendering?
You know when you’re working with a computer file and you export it from the working application into its final, more transmissible format? It’s basically that. Rendering equals exporting, except that animation files are big and take a long time to cut down.
There are different kinds of rendering. In a computer game, when you turn the joystick and it makes the character move, that’s a live render, or a ‘real-time render’. This requires a lot of computer energy, but it’s great for gamers.
For films and animated videos, animations are pre-rendered. Someone hits the equivalent of an ‘export’ button and boom, you have your .mp4, .mov or other file.
Animation rendering can take a lot of time and a lot of energy. Whole ‘render farms’ of networking computers can be used, and export times can be in the hours or days if the project is a large file. So, hot tip, if you’re on a tight schedule for your animation production, don’t forget to allow for rendering time. Rendering in 2D takes a lot less time than 3D.
Conclusion
Animation is a storied medium across time, cultures, and styles. It’s also fantastic. To make the complex simple, or to move hearts and minds, animation is a great option. Better still, it comes at a variety of price points!
Do you need an animation studio? Get in touch with one of our expert team to learn more about how animation can help you achieve your goals.
