Animation Terms

Full Animation - This involves producing high quality films that are traditionally hand drawn with a great amount of detail. They often include a range of well thought out movements. The more famous and realistic animations are often credited to the Walt Disney Studios.

Limited Animation - Mostly used as an alternative cost effective method, where the drawings tend to be much less detailed, and can even by stylized and impressionistic.

Rotoscoping - This particular technique is used when animators wish to create a movement that is very life like and realistic. It is sometimes done by tracing a live action film, by hand, frame by frame, in order to get the correct and exact movements.

Live Action/Animation - This is the name for the technique used when animators combine live action film and hand drawn characters together. This is usually done by first shooting the live action film, and then adding in the hand drawn characters afterwards, using software programs.

An example of this is in the film, 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit'.

Cel Animation - Cel or hand drawn animation is the process that is used for the majority of animated films. Traditionally, this process begins by drawing out each individual frame onto paper. The illusion that the objects or characters are moving is created through each drawing being slightly different from the previous one, which eventually creates a sequence of movements.

The initial paper drawings can then be transferred or copied onto sheets of transparent acetate, which are known as 'cel's'. These can then be filled with colour.

Traditional Colour - The individual cels are coloured in by hand, using a paint such as acrylic or gouache. When the whole of a particular sequence has been hand painted, the photographing of these can begin.

Each transparent cel is laid ontop of each other, with the background cel being right at the bottom of the pile. The overall image can then be photographed using a Rostrum camera.

Digital Colour -  This technique begins the exact same, with each frame being individually hand drawn. However, after this, the frames are each scanned into a computer, where they can be effectively coloured in using a range of different software's and computer programmes.

These individual, now coloured frames can then be put together on the computer, so that they can be outputted as a final film to a digital video file.