3D CGI Animation

3D CGI Animation

History

3D CGI was first used in mainstream cinema in the film Futureworld released in 1976.  The film featured a computer generated hand and face, it was created by graduate students of the University of Utah Edwin Catmull and Fred Parke, their animation for the 1976 film is said to have initially appeared in their 1971 experimental short film, 'A computer animated hand'.

The same as 2D animation with 3D CGI each scene is created and tweaked slightly and when played we see a fluent piece of art come to life before our very eyeballs.

One of the programs used by animators is autodesk 3DS Max, this can be used to create character models, cars, buildings anything you put your mind to really.

3D CGI animations are made up of thousands of little pixles which can be altered and manipulated to change scenes.

3D is most commonly used in videogames where every aspect of it has been made using 3D programming tools.  Most movies these days also incorporate a huge amount of 3D mainly to make the films look cool and to make up for shitty acting with special effects.

One of the most well known films to use 3D CGI for the first time in mainstream cinemas was Star wars A New Hope, a lot of scenes take place in space which would require alot of CGI effects to bring the scenes to life, this then paved the way for many more films after they seen the potential within 3D CGI. 

The advantages of 3D is that it looks amazing if done right, it has endless possibilities, it's can be used for many things like movies, games, cartoons, presentations and shit like that.

The disadvantages are it can be expensive, its not particularly easy to make your own and the soft ware you need to make these things is expensive.




Here is some kind of dragon thing being made within 3ds Max.

Here is a video about 3d animation

2D Computer animation

2D Computer Graphic Animation

History

John Whitney was born and raised in America and is said to be the father of computer animation.  The first examples of 2D computer animation is thought to be between the 50's and 60's.

How it works

To put it simply animation is nothing more than a series of pictures called frames, quickly played along a timeline or reel. 

So why does animation work?

Why don’t we just see a bunch of still pictures?  

The phenomenon that enables humans to perceive animation is called Persistence of Vision, a theory that supposes that an afterimage exists on the retina for one twenty-fifth of a second before escaping the present consciousness, allowing for frames to bleed into one another and create the perception of motion.  It's basically a high tech digital flips book where the pictures move seamlessly and fluently.

Adobe Flash is one of the more popular tools among animators these days.

Although 2D animation has been around for quite some time it is still everywhere you look these days.  Shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons along with a few other thousand cartoons prove that 2D animation is still going to be around for many years to come.

Although some of these cartoons are using some 3D CGI in their shows 2D remains dominant and a world where all 2D animation is replaced with 3D well that's just not going to happen so lets leave it at that.

Here is a long but in depth video on how to draw a character in photoshop