(P1) Explain the different techniques for animation

Line Drawing Animation - 

Line drawing animation is the most simple type of animation that can be created. The creation consists of very thin pen lines which make up a simple shape, setting or character. This technique is the easiest technique to learn and use and is where many animators start out.

Line drawing animation is most commonly used in anime, mostly the manga comic style of anime. This is because the simple lines and character interpretations fit in with the style nicely, and make it interesting to a wide range of audiences (from teens to adults). These animation styles tend not to be used in kids shows and examples similar as they are more interested in colour than the black and white style.

Cel Animation/Hand Drawn - 

Cel animation is short for celluloid animation and was an extremely popular style of animation. This type of animation involves characters and objects being drawn onto very thin sheets of transparent material. Each individual frame is drawn in black ink, and the colour is applied on the opposite side. The frames are then photographed individually to create a finished animation. This type of animation has become less and less popular over the years as digital animation takes over.

An example of cel animation is most of Disney's animation back catalogue. Being more specific, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is cel animation and the original frames still exist to this day. This type of animation was used when access to technology was not as inherent.

Rotoscoping - 

Rotoscoping is an animation technique where each individual frame of a motion picture is traced over to create an overlaying custom image on top of it. This technique is mostly used for visual effects in live-action movies such as Ex-Machina (2014) and Avatar (2009). This type of animation is used as it is a cheaper alternative to using live on screen VFX which can costs hundreds of thousands to millions of pounds to use.

An example of rotoscoping animation is, as mentioned previously, Ex-Machina (2014), where some of the robot-inspired body suit is traced to save the money of using high end VFX and CGI.

Line Action - 

Line of action animation is when the animation creation follows a preconceived 'line of action' which shows where frames will be placed in advance to them being created. This concept is known as 'onion skin' on most animating softwares which is a more modern understanding of line action. The notion of this type of animation is that it is an imaginary line in which an object or character follows in the area of movement.

Stop Motion - 

Stop motion animation is a very popular, timeless yet time consuming type of animation. It involves using physical characters, usually created out of paper or clay which are moved in very slight amounts for each frame in a film. These characters are shot individually in photos on each frame to form the illusion of movement. Some notable releases which use stop motion animation are Wallace and Gromit (clay), Coraline (Clay) and Fantastic Mr Fox (Models).