Effects & Animation (and Updates)

Hey All!

So, we had the pleasure of being shadowed for the last 3 days by the lovely Isabella! Isabella is a current student in Worthington who's school has an awesome program for getting students exposed to the careers they want to pursue! We were very happy to have her here with us and wish her the best of luck in the future!

While she was shadowing, we decided to scope out what's currently trending in the industry. This lead to us talking about the differences between animation, motion graphics, and special effects. Because of this, I thought that I'd put together a little lesson on just what the difference is between these different styles of our business.


MOTION GRAPHICS:
From Wiki:
Motion graphics are graphics that use video footage and/or animation technology to create the illusion of motion or rotation, and are usually combined with audio for use in multimedia projects. Motion graphics are usually displayed via electronic media technology, but may be displayed via manual powered technology (e.g. thaumatrope, phenakistoscope, stroboscope, zoetrope, praxinoscope, flip book) as well. The term is useful for distinguishing still graphics from graphics with a transforming appearance over time without over-specifying the form.

SPECIAL EFFECTS (SFX):
From Wiki: 
The illusions or tricks of the eye used in the film, television, theatre, videogame, or simulator industries to simulate the imagined events in a story or virtual world are traditionally called special effects (often abbreviated as SFX, SPFX, or simply FX). Special effects are traditionally divided into the categories of optical effects and mechanical effects. With the emergence of digital film-making tools a greater distinction between special effects and visual effects has been recognized, with "visual effects" referring to digital post-production and "special effects" referring to on-set mechanical effects and in-camera optical effects. Effects include things such as lens flares, forced perspective, compositing, rotoscoping, shaders, ect

VISUAL EFFECTS (VFX):
From Wiki:
Visual effects (commonly shortened to Visual F/X or VFX) are the various processes by which imagery is created and/or manipulated outside the context of a live action shoot. Visual effects involve the integration of live-action footage and generated imagery to create environments which look realistic, but would be dangerous, costly, or simply impossible to capture on film. Visual effects using computer generated imagery has recently become accessible to the Independent filmmaker with the introduction of affordable animation and compositing software.

2D ANIMATION:
From Wiki:
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images to create an illusion of movement. This type of presentation is usually accomplished with a camera and a projector or a computer viewing screen which can rapidly cycle through images in a sequence. Animation can be made with either hand rendered art, computer generated imagery, or three-dimensional objects, e.g., puppets or clay figures, or a combination of techniques. The position of each object in any particular image relates to the position of that object in the previous and following images so that the objects each appear to fluidly move independently of one another. The viewing device displays these images in rapid succession, usually 24, 25, or 30 frames per second.

3D ANIMATION:
From Wiki:
Computer animation or CGI animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer-generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images. Computer animation is essentially a digital successor to the stop motion techniques used in traditional animation with 3D models and frame-by-frame animation of 2D illustrations.